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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
I'm excited to announce our YouTube 1K Challenge, a free five day event that will give you the exact blueprint to start and grow your YouTube channel in 2025. Whether you're an entrepreneur, business owner, or somebody ready to grow their personal brand, this challenge is your roadmap to success. To register, just go to tube1k challenge. Com. We're going to be doing one training session a day for five days and you're going to learn how to get your first 1,000 subscribers and start earning real income. You insider strategies that make viewers want to click on your videos and keep watching multiple different ways to earn money from your YouTube channel, even if you have a small audience. And how to build an authentic personal brand that truly connects with people. But it gets even better. We are giving away prizes every single day of the challenge. You could win professional microphones, lighting kits, and premium content creation software. And during this challenge, you're getting access to the exact training that we offer in our $4,000 coaching program. But you're getting it completely for free. And you can start with just your smartphone. So if you're Ready to turn 2025 into your YouTube breakthrough year, go to tube1kchallenge.com to register. That's tube1kchallenge.com or click the link in the show notes or YouTube description to register for our upcoming challenge. For 99% of creators, views alone won't pay your bills. In Today's economy, the YouTube game has fundamentally changed. While millions chase viral moments and subscriber count, most will never turn those vanity.
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Alex
Metrics into actual income.
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Sean Cannell
The algorithm shifts, ad rates fluctuate, and suddenly that video with hundreds of thousands of views barely covers your coffee budget. I've personally worked with creators who hit millions of views but can't afford to pay their rent. And other creators that are making six and seven figures a year with modest view counts.
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Alex
What's the difference?
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Sean Cannell
These high earning creators understand the YouTube business bridge, and in today's episode of.
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Alex
The Think Media podcast, I'm going to be sharing the 3 framework for how.
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Sean Cannell
To actually make big money on YouTube.
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Alex
Even if you have a small view count, you'll learn why a lot of.
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Sean Cannell
Top creators actually don't chase viral fame and what they focus on instead.
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Alex
Plus how to position your channel for.
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Sean Cannell
Sustainable success even when your view count is down. Let's get started.
- [02:26]
Alex
Let's dive into session number one. We have such cool stuff coming up. There's going to be a lot of business breakthroughs, a lot of opportunity for Q and A. Breaking things down on the whiteboard. But there's going to be some foundational sessions and I do want to kick it off with our first session that'll kind of tie a theme of our whole one and a half days together and talk about the YouTube Business Bridge, the strategic path to impact and profit. And you know, if you've been a part of our program VRA and VRA accelerator, then you'll be familiar with our system. I know we have some new people. Thank you for just jumping into the event. And you know, one of our favorite quotes is you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And we're gonna be talking about our seven step system all event, always going back to the 7R system. And today though specifically we're gonna be talking about a specific framework for this room and it's the YouTube Bridge framework. Views, leads and sales. We're gonna identify your biggest opportunities, fix your weakest links, and then map your next five to 10 priority actions. So in this session, that's what we're gonna wa do. And then after a session like this, you'll be maybe taking some notes, making some notes, there'll be some discussion and a chance to really process. And what we're asking ourselves kind of all event is hey, what do I need to fix next? You know, not just what is all the things to do, there's so much opportunity on YouTube shorts, all these different things, but what is the next most strategic move for me and my business. But as we dive into, you know, this session, I think about there is so much opportunity on YouTube right now, but there's also some specific challenges and specific challenges in online business in general and social media in general. If we, we did this survey a while back and we asked people what's happening on your channel? You know, 26% of people were saying my views were down some 17% saying my views were up, 20% saying about the same. And then some people haven't started. And so we are seeing a few challenges happening. There is organic reach decline. We're going to be able to overcome every single one of these challenges. But it's true, sometimes YouTube isn't what you know, there's more competition, views are more distributed across channels, economic challenges, content overload. Figuring out how to stand out is more important than ever before because there's more stuff to watch than ever before, more creators than ever before. Engagement shifts where people's attention is, technology shifts, AI coming in and all these different things. And so Gary Vaynerchuk at our last summit actually said that the current landscape of social media requires more rigor. And over the next couple days, we're going to get really geeky. Like, what does rigor mean? It means, like, more attention to detail on titles and thumbnails, more attention to detail in our scripting, more thoughtful about our strategy, more work being put into things. Can we overcome challenges? We absolutely can. But it's like, it used to work if you played just checkers on YouTube. Now we got to be playing chess. More strategy, more thoughtful about what are our next moves, what is our sequencing going to be. And so the biggest mistake 99% of people make on YouTube that I see when it comes to the fact that the algorithm can be up and down and views can be up and down, is actually chasing views. Now, we want. I know that all of us are here for views. Like, how do we get the most views? How do we go viral? How do we do those things? But I think that if we are fixed on views only, we're always gonna have a roller coaster life on YouTube, or that ultimately we can stay stuck on YouTube. What I've learned and what we're gonna be talking about over these days is that clients are better than clicks. Like, at the end of the day, getting views or getting someone even to click on a link, it's one thing. But actually getting a client, like somebody joining your business, your offer, your program, and you might say, sean, I don't have any of that yet. But more than clicks, I want to get clients like, let's get real business happening. In fact, if I don't get a lot of views, but I get a client, then I'm going to be way happier with a client than with views. Quality is better than crowds. There is a temptation to want to get the biggest numbers possible. I was talking with one of our Mastermind attendees right before the session, and he made a pivot in his content from something that was a little bit more broad appeal, that got a lot of views. And it's natural that the views would go down if you get something that's going to attract a different audience. But the question is, do we want to reach the crowds, or do we want a quality community, quality customers, quality group that we're building? Like, what ultimately are we building? Customers are greater than clout. Now, again, these maybe aren't everybody's philosophy, but this would be the philosophy we want to lay as a foundation. Do we just want kind of a following? One of my favorite quotes is leaders create other Leaders, they don't create more followers. Like, what's our goal? I mean, do we just want to reach the masses? Well, then at least we know our strategy. Or do we want to reach customers or a deep community? In fact, faithful fans are greater than fleeting fame. If you made it in the room, you're familiar with the 1000 true fans concept. You get a real ride or die group of people that are following you. Not just subscribers, but people that really love you, want to do business with you. You get the right people in a small community following you. Seth Godin talks about this concept of what is the smallest viable audience for your business. It's worth thinking about, like, what's actually the minimum number of customers for the offer I would create that would give me a business that's sustainable so that from there I could build whatever I feel called to build next. Because everyone's chasing the fame or the clout or the crowds or the clicks when if we have some ride or dies and quality and customers and faithful fans. And so to do this, we're gonna be working through a framework called the YouTube Bridge framework. And where we can sometimes find ourselves is alone on an island without clothing, like Castaway Tom Hanks, you know, of like man, no subscribers, or like, you know, trying to get views, trying to make things work. And we're gonna be going through a process of how to get to not just ultimately YouTube growth, but money for the mission. Like a sustainable business is why we're in this room. Yes, we'll talk about views and you know, we are always coming from a purpose driven place, but at the end of the day, your purpose is going to die out real quick if you don't have the finances to fund it. And so what we would call this would be the YouTube Bridge framework. And what I like to think about here is again, where are you right now? And think about that for yourself personally. Where are you in your business? Where is your channel? What's this? The current state of things, good leadership. I heard from, I think Jim Rohn talked about, or actually be a Napoleon Hill thing. It says, you know, success starts with accurate thinking and an assessment of like, really, where are you? Where are you right now? What's the situation in your business? Where are you right now? And then, you know, where do you want to go? That's the. What would be, what do you need? If you could get from here to here, what's the amount of monthly revenue that you need in your business? And you could go full time. I had a few conversations with individuals here at the Mastermind. I'm working full time right now. I want to be able to live this online dream, build my online business and do it full time. Well, how much is that going to cost? And then what's the impact that you want to make? Where are you and where do you want to go? Well, the three steps that are in the YouTube framework are this number one views. So over the next couple days, we're gonna be talking about, okay, how do we get views on YouTube and how do we get the right views? In online marketing, you call this traffic? Like, if nobody knows you, the next step's not gonna help. And we're gonna talk about a lot of different stuff, but of course it comes back and we'll have sessions on, like, how do we get more views on our channel? You know, even subscribers. I know we want subscribers, but like, you might even notice, Think Media is over 3 million subscribers now. Older channels that have gotten subscribers over many, many years. People have subscribed to your channel, but they don't even log into YouTube anymore. So subscribers are great, but you actually need present views right now from the right people. So we're gonna need views. The next thing we're gonna need if we're gonna complete the bridge across from where you are to where you wanna go is going to be leads. Leads. We have to translate people from watching our content to building our own audience. Is anybody here building an email list? Raise your hand. So 20% of the room you're thinking about this, you're building a newsletter, you're building an email list. Now, sometimes that is the overemphasized way of doing it. And I think that's what we should be doing. I think it's email marketing. And email is so, so important. But when I say leads, it might be that you're getting phone numbers, it might be that you're getting. You're building a Facebook group, it might be that you're building a discord. The bottom line is that algorithms can be fickle and we need to be able to build our audience off platform, which then the next thing we need to generate would be sales that we translate in this whole process. How are you going from YouTube into a sales process to some sort of offer that you have Now? There might be some open questions we have like, well, I don't have an offer yet, or I don't even know if that's right for my business. Well, there's all kinds of business models on YouTube, brand deals, ad revenue, affiliates, and we could touch on all of those. But it would be my deep conviction that we need to at some point create our own offer and productize in some way that we would have a sustainable business so that we can weather any storm on YouTube. We want to be unbreakable. I think we could be recession proof. And in doing so, we're going to need views, leads, and sales to do so. But here's where the challenge comes with the YouTube Bridge framework. And what I've learned personally in my life, and really that's probably been the mistake I've made over and over and over again, is when I find myself on this island over here, I'm dreaming big. You know, I'm kind of unhappy because I'm not where I want to be yet. But I've got, you know, I've got big dreams, I got big ideas. Wanna do this over here. And, you know, I'm thinking about my YouTube channel. When I find myself on this island, I find that the biggest thing that can happen for me is getting distracted and starting to chase shiny objects. And so who here has a lead magnet or something like that? You have an idea for building it? That'd be like a free ebook or a checklist or something like that. But it's not done. Anybody? You got a couple that are not done. So what's your lead magnet?
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C
Just an E book.
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Alex
You're going to. You're going to do an ebook? You want to do an e book? Have you started it? You started kind of a framework. So, okay, so what happened? Okay, so I can relate to that. And I've done the same thing. I think back when I started getting a vision for doing YouTube for me, I was mainly focused on YouTube and views, which is where a lot of people focus. It's a great place to be. Right. We all want the views and we might know we need these other things. And you mentioned ebook. And so we might start building. You kind of build a little bridge here, you know, but it's not done. So it's kind of just out there. And we got an ebook, which would be our lead thing. Okay, how about who here is building out an offer of some kind? You're building an online course, Raise your hand. It's not done. Keep your hand raised. Awesome. And of course, we're going to be in process. So I'm not trying to shame anybody. We're all in the same boat here, right? But it's like, okay, so then we also have like this over here. But it's kind of is your online course does it look like this. There's like missing pieces of concrete. It's kind of, it's really sketchy and it's just out there. So, okay, you got your course. Who here is trying to grow multiple social media platforms at once? Raise your hand. You're trying to grow multiple social media platforms, not just YouTube. All right, yeah, I'm the. So some of us then we're, we're trying to get views, but it's not just YouTube views. Right? But we got. You see somebody on Instagram, you're like, man, Instagram would be a great place to get leads. And it is, but we start trying to do Instagram and so we got that going. What else would you say? Different things. Maybe you've been working on. Anybody have shiny object syndrome stuff that's like kind of half done projects? Yeah. You raise your hand. Is there anything that you've been working on? Maybe you're doing a couple different things. You're working on your website, YouTube channel, lead magnet. Course. Yes. She says yes. Okay, so are you seeing what I'm talking about here? So now we have, we're kind of trying to build a website which is also that kind of be like a place to capture our views or our leads and our sales. We got our website. Is anybody seeing the problem? And can anybody relate? We've got like this idea of, okay, I'm where I'm here and I want to get to this goal of having like not just some income, but sustainable income. I want to get over here, but I'm trying to do all these different bridges and none of them are complete. And the really sad part about it is that sometimes it's like you start doing Instagram for a while, or Even you do YouTube for a while, right? And so people start coming into your world and they're pumped, they're driving, they're like on this destination with you. But what's about to happen? Yeah, people are drowning. You're like, wow, that got dark. Like, geez, you know, like so. And even on YouTube though, because who here you do have a lead magnet. You have like a landing page set up. But you would be honest and you're willing to raise your hand and say, sean, when I think about it, I know that it sucks. It's really bad. Raise my hand. Yeah, your landing page sucks. You could take. Right, okay, so, so exactly. So you got the views, but they get here. And then sure enough, maybe a few people make it through, but you know, couple hundred, couple thousand views. But how many deaths on that journey you know, and then. And if you've got the leads and they make it through your landing page and they download your thing, how many people got stuck in junk mail? How many people got stuck in spam? How many people didn't even find the thing? All right, they make it to your offer like your checkout page. The experience with purchasing your offer, if they even really. Is your offer really dialed in? Is it really irresistible and aligned to your audience? Is it actually aligned with one YouTube bridge? Or is it kind of a. Is it such a perilous, you know, snaky ride through here that, like, the amount of people, you could have a thousand start here, you could have a million start here, but the amount of people that make it here, there's only a few stragglers. There's so much dangers and peril on the bridge that their car's all beat up by the time they make there, right? Because our thing's kind of broken or our checkout process isn't working. So our goal here at this particular one and a half days is to work on this entire process and then for your business to think about getting honestly one bridge built. And here's what I've learned, that even if you've got one right now, and that would be that who here, full participation, that you're creating content, you have a way to capture leads and bring them into a sales process. And your sales process is actually working. And like the stripe money is coming through, or PayPal money is coming through, raise your hand. The whole process does work. Awesome. So, by the way, look around with some of the people you're meeting here as well, because iron sharpens iron. Like, what do you use? You know, like, what's your software? How does this stuff work? Because once you get this thing duct taped together for the first time ever, that's a huge feat. But what I've also learned is that even once it's put together, sometimes the temptation is to move on to something else, when ultimately going back and improving it, maybe reinforce the structure to handle more traffic, more people. How can I improve that part of the process? And oftentimes what we think is the broken thing, I just need more subscribers, I need more views, I need a bigger channel may not actually be our biggest issue. It's these other pieces of the bridge that often are the struggle point.
- [21:26]
Sean Cannell
Are you a business owner or serious content creator that is struggling to crack the YouTube code? Are you feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or just plain frustrated with slow growth? If so, then our new one on one coaching program at viral videocoach.com is your premier ticket to YouTube success, becoming the authority in your niche, attracting engaged leads and loyal customers. We offer one to one coaching with our YouTube experts that'll help you get results fast and a supportive community that's cheering you on. So if you're ready to stop wasting time with trial and error and to stop leaving money on the table, then head to viral video coach.com to apply to see if you qualify for our coaching program. But heads up, this offer is not for everybody. It's only for serious content creators and entrepreneurs that are ready to take action. So if that's you, head to viral video coach.com to apply or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's jump back into the episode.
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Alex
And so here's a couple of steps as we break this down to of what we just talked about and what we're reviewing. Step one is get the right views. Get the right views. If we think about it, you know, someone's over here on, you know, or we're here trying to get over to prosperity in our business and impact in our business and we start getting a lot of views and people make it onto the bridge across to the other island only to realize that they're on the wrong bridge. Man, you can't even turn around until you get to the other side. Like, oh, I'm distracted. You ever. I mean, I've done that. I just think about, like, I missed that turn when you missed that critical turn. And now it's 20, 25 minutes. Like, and so just getting views is what everybody's obsessed with. But we want to get the right views. And that's why when we start with our 7R framework, it's always reverse engineer first. It start with the end in mind of who would be the right audience to attract for this whole bridge to work together. So here's a cool AI trick for getting the right views. Number one, who is your client? Number two, what are their problems and desires? And then what we want to do is just run that into AI to think about who could we attract? What content would we create to get the right views? Okay, so one volunteer. Yeah. Shout your name out, Joe. And your channel the married life. And are you doing the leads and sales thing yet? What is the offer, Joe?
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C
I'm doing offer views. We have four different free PDFs I can get. We have a free sex conversation starter date night questions.
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Alex
Did you say sex? Okay, I have to write that on the board. Okay, so you got 4 PDFs sex. What else? What kind of channel is this? No, I'm just kidding. Date night. Okay.
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C
52 date night ideas.
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Alex
Okay.
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C
And then three T's of communication.
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Alex
Okay. So we got three T's of comms, 52 date night ideas. Which one's the best one? Yeah, by far. All right, Think Media Mastermind. Just got 0 to 100. Real quick. Okay, so. And they all work? People download them. Yeah. And then where does it go?
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C
So we use that for kit. And so we get all the leads in the kit and from there we obviously gather their data to be able to email them and let them know.
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Alex
About future events or products and what is the offer, what is the sales.
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C
So that's where we are not at that yet. We have a course, but we haven't put it out on.
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Alex
Okay. So they're. So you've got the views and you've got the leads, but then just a bunch of people are drowning and just carnage everywhere. Their sex lives are terrible and their marriages are like. People are being harmed right now. I mean, I'm sort of shaming you, but it's like if we actually think about the impact and the difference we're making, I think there's something about feeling. Of course you do. That's why you're here. But like the ethical responsibility of completing your bridge, because it's like, how long have people been able to download your free stuff and get on your newsletter? How long you've been building that? Four months. How often do you email people? Okay, so you have been. So you've been nurturing people. So they're getting help. They're not. They're. Yeah. Okay.
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C
YouTube video that goes out. So we send out two videos a week. And then I also take that, put in AI and make it into a blog. So it's like bullet point.
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Alex
Great. Who here is building your email list? Raise your hand. But you're not emailing them, and you haven't emailed them in a long time. Keep your hand up. Yeah. Look at us. Right? This is my. And I am you. Like, we. This has been what I meant. I'm like, I know. I need to build an email list. I'm building. How many people on your list? 754. When's the last time you emailed them? I don't know. Haven't just cars just, oh, this everywhere. Right. It's like, you have the leads, but there's no guardrails. People driving off. Okay, so this is great. And building out the pieces of the bridge. This idea of getting the right views. Let's just dive in here real quick to AI along with. And we'll be doing this throughout. Who is it? Who here is using AI already to start brainstorming and stuff? We're going to be doing prompts the whole time. I think AI has changed the game for video creation. I'm using Claude here. We'll be using ChatGPT, Gemini. I like Claude. And we're going to be talking about getting the right views for our. Well, we need to have one other question. What will the offer be? What's the course?
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C
It's called the Blueprints of Marriage. And so it's like taking people on kind of like 10 steps that every marriage is going to like struggle with and deal with. Whether it is communication, whether it's sex, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's finances, all.
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Alex
Those different areas, how much and then target audience.
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C
Our target audience is age 25 to 50 and they're obviously married Christian couples because it's a Christian based concept.
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Alex
And then what else is probably true about them that's unique to you from like a psychographic standpoint?
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C
They want to strengthen their marriage. It's not necessarily people that are on the brink of divorce, but they're learning like, kind of like this. I, I want to get better. I just don't know what to do. And so people that are actually wanting to develop themselves.
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Alex
Okay, so great. All right, so we're trying to get the right views and all of these questions are really powerful to feed into AI for coming up with video topics and ideas. So let's go for it. Hey Claude. So I want to come up with a list of video ideas and topics. I have a channel that is targeting really 25 to 50 year olds. They're married Christian couples. They're not necessarily on the brink of divorce, but they want to strengthen their marriage. They might be having some relationship issues. And ultimately I want a lot of good topic ideas. But eventually I'm going to offer a free gift which will help people with their sex life in marriage. And eventually I'm going to offer a Blueprints of Marriage course. So I want to attract serious couples and I'm looking for some 10 topics that would be broad appeal on YouTube to attract this group. All right, so we're going to start with get the right views, which is going to start with topics and then we'll dial. Dial into title and we'll go a little bit deeper in session two, Communication secrets that transformed our marriage. Finding time for connection when life gets busy Let me know which one of these you like the most. And I know you're already creating content, so you've probably created a lot of these. What it really Faith centered marriage. Resolving conflict without damaging a relationship. Rekindling romance after years together. Resolving conflict without damaging your relationship. Why resonates? Because you could talk about it. You think that's what they need? Okay. All right, so can you come up with 10 title ideas for number four? I want to do Resolving Conflict, and I want the title to be SEO based, but also to be highly clickable, as broad as appeal as possible. But I do want to again, attract the specific audience I want to reach as described in the previous prompt. All right, Five conflict resolution techniques that saved our marriage. Stop fighting. Start talking. A biblical approach to marriage conflicts. Let me know which one you like best. How to resolve any marriage argument in 15 minutes. That's pretty cool. That one's really good. All right, we could stop there. Was that helpful? Any insights on that process? Is that kind of how you've been using AI, or is that kind of a yes and no?
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C
I got to get better at using it for coming up with the titles. But I have, like, again, just to your point, you say I have like, hey, what are the top 10 things or 15 things that married couples struggle with? I want to break this down into, you know, these conversations. But what we've seen, and you know, Alex has done such great coaching us on this. Even when I get ideas or Chrissy gets ideas, or AI gets us ideas, the views that we get the most always have to do with sex.
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Alex
Yeah.
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C
Like, I mean, you've said that sex sell. So it's like, people want that because we'll put out stuff that I think is really strong for 15 minutes. How to, like, dissolve, you know, like, like, yeah, what is that answer? Where some people are like, I want to have better sex, you know?
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Alex
Yep. Or.
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C
Or I want her to engage, engage in sex. I don't want to always be the one. And so, like, because we've had that conversation where she's like, I feel like we talk about sex too much. But Alex is great because he's like, but if this is what's getting the momentum for growth, you can still add in the other things, but maybe you are known more for that one.
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Alex
Sure. Well, and, and absolutely. And again, if you. The big key here as we keep going is all of us in this room, we need to know our ideal client. And did you hear their level of knowledge of their ideal client? Very good. There's Greater depths that we can always go to. And what's cool about AI is the better information we feed into it, the better unique insights that we could get to find fresh perspectives and angles on what videos we could create. So that's gonna be foundational, because if we're gonna get the right views. And I know I'm just kind of verbally saying this, some of us are familiar with the 7R framework, but the first two Rs in our 7R framework are reverse engineer. Who's our ideal client? What are their problems and desires? And then research getting fierce clarity. Because again, if this is right, but these are wrong, or we get a lot of people here, then it breaks down. But then also right as we go further, if there's no ultimate sales, you might say, man, we'd love to be making more money right now. Now, from our YouTube channel, I'd probably point out one of the biggest problems would be a lack of the. An actual offer. Because if you just complete that bridge, we're going to make it all the way across. I saw the hand.
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C
I have a question about your opinion. So if he. He uses a title like that and at the end says to have better sense.
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Alex
Yeah. At what point does that become too.
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C
Redundant using the same finish line, what's your opinion?
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Alex
Yeah. So the question was if he uses a title like the one that we used here and then just adds to have better sex at the end, I think that would be unnecessary. That would be fluff, in my opinion. You just have the chance. Like, I think a mindset shift would be get comfortable with creating videos. Create a lot of videos and commit like you and have endless content ideas and always be ranking them by the next one you should make. But we teach in vra, like one keyword phrase, one topic idea, one video. So don't try to force things together. Sometimes you might be like, oh, I kind of want to say three things in this video. Let me try to force it all in the title. Make three videos. Does that make sense? So if it's about sex, I'd go all in on that, but I wouldn't just try to. I mean, if you could spice it up. And it's true. But it is interesting to say how to resolve any marriage argument in 15 minutes. A Christian perspective. Now, it would be potentially. It would be much broader appeal to not say, a Christian perspective. This is an interesting point because you might get more views, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. But if you know that eventually you're going to be selling A course to Christians, calling out your audience is a good thing, but it's discipline to actually sort of be saying, I'm going to get less views. If you're telling the algorithm who to show this to, and thus clarity of the YouTube Bridge framework is critical. You may be realizing I'm not chasing virality, I'm chasing the right views as principle number one. Okay, so step two, get leads from your videos. So one of the commitments I want all of us to make is to create your first lead magnet. What's a lead magnet? There's terms for it, Freebies, giveaways. It is essentially free premium value. And it should be that you should give away free, valuable content on YouTube. That's what YouTube is. And then you should give even more valuable free content off of YouTube. Now, on screen is a list of possible lead magnet ideas. And this could be an ebook, a checklist, a white paper, a webinar, like a free web class. Chances are you've watched one of my web classes. A challenge is technically a lead magnet. Five days. It's a lot of work. A calculator could be a lead magnet. It's anything you're giving in exchange for somebody's information. But the challenge that I want to. So number one, I want you to create your first lead magnet. And while here by the end of this event, identify what would be the best lead magnet for the bridge I'm trying to create. My second challenge to you is that if you already have one, I want you to assess if it's good or if it needs to be fixed. We're constantly asking ourselves, what do I need to fix next in my business, does it need to be fixed or improved? My next challenge to you is if you have four or 13 like a lot of us might have, which should be eliminated or ignored. It's not a badge of honor to be like, I've got so much stuff going on. In some cases it might be identifying what you should say no to. One of the things early on is I just kept adding and this was my bridge problem. I'm working on writing an ebook that I want to give away free. And I'm working on a free mini course and a free four video series. And I'm working on, and I've put out a lot of mediocre efforts and incomplete bridges, but I haven't completed something and done it at a world class level. So even with your coach and over the next few, over the next day and a half, we could be pulling up landing pages, looking at them Having somebody here go through it. Hey, yeah, let me try it. Hey, can you try to go through my process? They enter their name and email and nothing happens. I used to work at a place called Red Robin. It's a burger joint. They have free bottomless fries and things would happen. One of our greatest fears as a server and as a waiter of tables is that one day we might get secret shopped. And then we'd be talking to other servers, they'd be like, do you think that's a secret shop or do you think that's they're asking you questions or seeing. Did you offer them a refill? Did you offer them any upsells, dessert, all this stuff? Did you hit it all? So the powerful thing with secret shopping, though, is when was the last time you secret shopped yourself? And so our own bridges is like, yeah, I mean, I kind of got my landing page set up and, you know, doesn't really work on mobile. And. Yeah, you know, how's the email deliverability? Is there certain words in your emails that trigger things like, we're here to coach you through this whole thing. But what I have found is that getting this whole bridge complete working and then considering this that maybe it's time for expansion. There's so much traffic that's trying to get to the island. Let's add two more lanes, let's do a construction project. Yet the temptation could be to try to build the next bridge instead of improving the one that we're on. And so we want to get leads from our videos and figure out where are we sending people. And again, we got some real estate agents in the room. You know, if that means like, hey, shoot me a text. I just spoke for the CEO summit at Keller Williams this past Monday. And in my opinion, as a real estate agent, what would I want most? I think I would just want the person to text me because that's where the business is happening. Get their email. Cool, that's fine. But I want them. I just, I want to like, text me right now and let's start talking. We engage in text, maybe dm. But what. Here's a good question. What is the least friction path to make it through your bridge? There are sometimes things that we do that we didn't even realize. We're like, I just don't know why there's sales, why we aren't getting sales. And there's like a blockade, right? There's like literally blocks that have been set up because we've created friction of some kind that it's like enter your email and go to the page with the page is broken, which is again, we try to fix those things. But like how can I just make this as streamlined and as smooth as possible? Which brings us to step three, which would be generate sales now over the next couple days. When you do affiliate marketing, you don't even need leads. If you can get really good at views with good calls to action and integration, it goes straight to sales. You can just compress the process. Problem with like affiliate marketing though, which has been a big piece of my story is on Amazon. I get like 4%. When I created my own offer, especially a digital product, I get like 97%. It's better. I mean I just, I wasn't good at math, but like 97 is better than 4. And so what is your irresistible offer and how does your sales process work? What is your irresistible offer and how does your sales process work? This is a challenging one because just because we actually have the bridge completed, sometimes it's good to evaluate and actually say, does this, does this need a total renovation? Does this just need some paint and some touch up? Or does this need a total renovation? What part is actually maybe broken in this process? And so when we say what do I need to fix next? It's like, maybe I actually need to fix who's my target audience? What's my vision? What am I actually building here? Maybe I need to really master the getting of views. But again, if I'm getting a lot of views, I don't know where they're going. Maybe I am getting people really interested in my lead magnet and wanting to improve their romantic life. And okay, so let me really dial in this offer and what would be the best name and what are people wanting? And could I send how many people on the email list approximately? Actually 300, 302 ideas I would do number one, have you surveyed them? So could I when I'm at the lead stage, survey and ask to get data about the exact things, problems they have in their marriage, things they would want, areas they want help and the style they would want help in. Have AI be like, Hey, I want to survey my 300 people. This is who they are. I want to create a course, what questions could I ask? I don't want it to be very long. Let's do it and survey so that this will be a way to fix and improve or build for the first time. So I want to send a survey to my 300 people that are on my email list. They've downloaded our how to improve Your sex life and marriage and their romantic life, date night ideas, things like that. But eventually I want to sell an online course. It may be called Blueprints of Marriage, but I'm not committed to that name because I want the best name possible. Now again, My audience is 25 to 50 year old married Christians and I've got the 300 on the list. Can you just lay out a quick survey that I could send them? And I don't want it to be overwhelming. So it's not completed. So can you just, based on data, give me the best length of questions that I actually get, the highest response rate that would give me the insights that would help me produce the best digital product possible and give me language that I could use in marketing. And with tools like Typeform, you can get this up and running in like 10 minutes and email your people before lunch. This would be multiple choice. What's your biggest challenge in marriage right now? Select two communication issues. This data is going to be powerful for all kinds of stuff. And then if you could approve one aspect of your marriage immediately, what would it be? Which format would you prefer for marriage improvement? Content, Video lessons, Audio interactive modules. Text based live group coaching. What would make you most likely to invest in a marriage course? Which of these potential course names appeals to you? A couple different names. What price range would you consider reasonable for a comprehensive marriage course? Any other thoughts on what would make this course valuable to you? 7 questions Only sweet spot typically yield 83 to 89% completion rates. Mix and multiple choice tells you exactly how to do it. Type that in. You could send that and tell us the results tomorrow at the Mastermind. Powerful. Here's the second thing I would do. I would do a free Zoom call with anybody that wants to show up. So when I was creating vra, I one of the first things I did pre creating an offer was I developed a framework. The 7R framework wasn't pretty yet. It didn't, it was just, it was on paper, it wasn't even visual yet. But I wanted to test it with people and I. So what I did was I DMed people one by one and actually asked if I could do free coaching with them. Would you be willing to take your time to do free coaching with me? I know you want to do YouTube to see if my stuff works in exchange if it works. And you're willing for a video testimonial before I even started. So if you got on Zoom, built some relationships, you're starting to create a beta group immediately. But if you also Record those calls, the way they say things, the words they use, could all be put into your marketing. Pretty powerful. And so what is your irresistible offer? Some of what we just talked about there is how we could be workshopping our irresistible offer. Or you might be thinking right now, like, I do have an offer, but I don't know if it's that irresistible. I mean, again, like, it's. It's. It's like a wooden, you know, bridge from an Indiana Jones movie, from the leads over to the island. Like, I don't know if anyone's even gonna make it across that thing compared to what it could be by improving the offer, refining the offer, thinking about what it is, dialing in price, things to tweak. And then how does your sales process work? And then how fluid is that entire experience? And so this is the YouTube Bridge framework. And there is really trying to make it as simple as possible. But I think you see that it's really just three things. It's views, leads, and sales. And my challenge to you is to get one bridge, one working and to go back to that bridge, to get it improved before expanding. Because I think there's a lot of power in that, you know, as we get ready to transition. I'm reminded of the story of Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple in 1997. And by this time, with his absence, they had gotten to a place where they just had added, like, hundreds of different product lines. And so the company had become really complex and all these different things that were happening. And he was famous. He came in for slashing it down to, like, four products, just cutting everywhere. And it really made me think of the YouTube Bridge framework. Like, obviously at that time, Apple was already generating millions. They had a big business. But I have fallen into the same trap at the beginning of my business in the middle, and I still fall into the same trap today. Like, all the way back in 2014. My wife and I were living in Irvine, California, in an apartment right by Irvine Spectrum. And I was a campus pastor at a church at the time. But I wanted to start building outside income. One reason was because my salary at the church was about 72,000, and because I opted out of Social Security and got a housing allowance as a pastor clergy, they said it was an equivalent of 80, whatever that means. And so cost of living to live comfortably in Irvine, California is about 125, they say is what's needed to live there. So my motivation for side hustle was just to keep us at a water level and try to Rise beyond that for our finances. And so at this time I'm making YouTube videos and I had money coming in from affiliate marketing, I had money coming in from ad revenue, but it's like 50 and 100. And I do some freelance projects and I love that stuff. Like I know that if you made it into this room, you're an ambitious, you've probably done a lot of things, different side hustles, you've done all that kind of stuff. It's all helpful. Cause it's learning, but it's random, right? And what I did not have is I did not have the views lead sales thing. Well, from the power of investing in mentorship, which you already know is the most powerful thing you can invest in. And at this time I discovered someone named Chalene Johnson and she started talking about even the power of building an email list. And I was like, maybe I should do that. So I remember I was like, I need a lead magnet. And I had written one random chapter for my friend Phil Cooke for his book about social media. So at least it was fast. I was like, well, I already wrote something and there was no AI in these days, right? So I like saved it as a PDF and like put it up on a page. But it was terrible. Like it was so bad. I mean it had like nothing. And so I was making some videos and I was kind of sending it to that lead magnet. I did another thing called YouTube for churches. It's actually a good idea, but put out some videos, but it didn't really go anywhere. I remember I did give away a free video series and maybe it actually did go somewhere. I wrote an ebook and the ebook was $7. And so by sending people to that, it was good, it was an offer, but it wasn't an offer at a scale big enough to generate any kind of revenue or I didn't have the next thing. And so I remember I was trying to run my Facebook page and I was trying to run my YouTube channel and I was building this YouTube for churches thing and I was building the get notice thing and all of that. And it made me think of Steve Jobs that like even at the beginning when I had no right to be doing 36 different things, like I was still chasing a lot of stuff. And so that was the campus pastor days. And then eventually though that even once we got established, you know, I think about we started having some success and we do launch video ranking academy. After I learned how to rank videos and generate a six figure income off YouTube and ranking videos and talking about Tech as well as some other niche products. You know, start teaching what I know in a program that a lot of you have been through. And after a couple years into video ranking academy, we added another program called Inner Circle. Kind of cool, in fact, it got to $25,000 a month. It was a membership program. Now I'm a small town kid, college dropout. When I thought about making like if I hit six figures, like was the vision I had growing up in Arlington, Washington. And so when we had this $25,000 a month inner circle program and that's how much money was coming in, what I started to realize, though, was that the bridges were hard to maintain. And it was actually a distraction, a $25,000 a month distraction. And sure enough, even though, again, depends on where your business is at. And that's the point of the interaction here. We sunsetted it. We shut it down. And I want to say we maybe done 1000 or 2 units of VRA previous years. Up to that. The next year, we did 5,000 units of our core offer of our one bridge. That's over 5 million in revenue of that one offer from actually shutting down the distraction. So if you're at the midpoint in your business, you already have some things going. My challenge to you is, do you need to shut down or slow down? You know what it is. So here's our goal. You don't need multiple bridges or dozens of offers. What is one complete bridge from views to sales that actually works? One core offer that transforms lives, One clear path that generates sustainable revenue. And you could just screenshot this. I think we've hit it pretty hard. But 12 reasons. Your business isn't growing. You're building half ridges everywhere. You got views, but they're not turning into business. Your lead magnet puts people to sleep. Your sales process is a maze. You're chasing viral instead of valuable. Your offer isn't irresistible. It's invisible. You keep changing direction. You're treating YouTube like a lottery ticket. You're building without a blueprint. Your bridge collapses under pressure. You're stuck in feast or famine or your checkout process is broken. So here's your next move. And, Brian, I think you can help us into, you know, discussions or whatever, but let's journal. Let's talk about it. Identify your biggest constraint for you. What's the missing piece? What's the choke point? What's the weakest link? And if you were, I want you to keep a running list of your next priority actions. Don't overthink it. It might Change, but like be thinking because you might re rank them. Like when I really think about it, the thing I need to fix next is this. So what you just listened to was.
- [55:18]
Sean Cannell
A recording from one of our recent Think Media masterminds that happens a few times each year in Las Veg where we get together with all of the Think Media coaches and myself to work on your YouTube channel and really your online business.
- [55:32]
Alex
And actually, if you want to learn a little bit more about that, just.
- [55:35]
Sean Cannell
Go to Viral Video coach.
- [55:37]
Alex
Com.
- [55:37]
Sean Cannell
Those masterminds are a feature and they're a part of our video ranking Academy accelerator program.
- [55:44]
Alex
And if you go to the website.
- [55:46]
Sean Cannell
Or click the link in the show.
- [55:47]
Alex
Notes, actually you're just going to find an application there because this program isn't right for everybody.
- [55:52]
Sean Cannell
But if you're somebody who is serious about your YouTube growth and using YouTube to generate views, leads and sales for your online business, or you're a creator.
- [56:02]
Alex
And you want to figure out how.
- [56:03]
Sean Cannell
To build a bigger business, you've been.
- [56:05]
Alex
Chasing views, you've been kind of falling into the trap of getting maybe a.
- [56:09]
Sean Cannell
Lot of views, but really having not.
- [56:12]
Alex
A full bank account, then this program might be right for you. And all it is is an application. We only work with people that we're.
- [56:18]
Sean Cannell
A good fit for. So that sounds interesting to you and you'd love to learn more about our one on one coaching program.
- [56:25]
Alex
Just go to viral video coach.com or.
- [56:29]
Sean Cannell
Click the link in the show notes.
- [56:31]
Alex
Now, if you got value out of.
- [56:33]
Sean Cannell
Today'S episode, it means the world.
- [56:34]
Alex
If you like, rate, review or share wherever you watch or listen, shout out to our audio family on the Think Media podcast.
- [56:44]
Sean Cannell
And if you're on YouTube, I'd love to know any questions or feedback that you have in the comment section.
- [56:49]
Alex
Section. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. And I cannot wait to connect with.
- [56:56]
Sean Cannell
You in a future episode.