← The Think Media Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your your growth. This class is 100% free, and you can watch it now on demand@think masterclass.com now, let's jump into today's show. If you're tired of working on YouTube with little to show for it, this is why the real reason your channel isn't growing is not the algorithm, it's leverage. For example, in the last 30 days, the Think Media YouTube channel's passed 5 million views. And this podcast channel alone saw a 30% increase in in revenue. Subscribers are up. Momentum is compounding. And it's not because I'm working more hours. It's because I'm changing how I work. But maybe that's not your story. Right now, growth feels slow. You're posting consistently, trying all the tips, and still getting stuck in the same cycle. I've been there, and I know how discouraging that feels. But there's a better way. And in this episode, I'm going to be sharing the four strategic shifts that I'm focused on right now, the same ones that are driving my growth and and revenue today. Because in 2025, it's not the most creative or even the most consistent that are going to win. It's the most leveraged. Let's dive in. Well, I'm excited because we're going to get into another session that I've titled what I'm laser focused on right now. The untapped content opportunities I see after 5 million views last month, there's four things I just thought about. Like, personally, I think there's takeaways for all of us. We're all in different places. It's not that you would need to do these, but you might find some insights. You might have some questions from what I'm focusing on right now. So four things that I think about. You know, also for context, my life's become interesting because I would say the hats I wear are maybe more than two, but in our company, we would be CEO, creator, and who can relate to that? Like, you're actually trying to operate a business and be the creator. So that's challenging for Some of us, sometimes we might think creator, and we then eventually have to add the business stuff. But for our company of something like 25 W2s and you add contractors, maybe 10 more, maybe close to 40 people. When you think about the different people that assist, it's like a lot of kind of ops and things to do. And we have an incredible team. I think, as you know, you're getting to meet some of them, but there's definitely the business side. So for me, and I'm going to come back to this word a lot, but I think it's worth writing down. It might be one of my favorite words, and it's the word leverage. Like, I always am asking myself, what is the most leveraged use of my time? What is the best use of my time? It would be awesome. I'm sure a lot of us would dream if I just had that person that would, like, maybe do all this stuff or do that, like, eight pages of title planning and then, like, tell me the titles and I could, you know, if I just had that person. Is there, like, one person I can hire on upwork that would do, like, these 26 things on my to do list that I've written down? You know, like, we. But a lot of times there isn't that. And so we find ourselves in the weeds trying to get stuff done. So because of that, These are the four things that I focus on right now in 2025. Number one is video podcasting. Video podcasting. I'm not saying you have to start a video podcast or that it's even right for you, but I would. These are the things that I would do. And there's a lot of reasons why, like, video podcasting is incredibly leveraged. And so YouTube recently, in fact, their most recent update of the end of the year, it'd be like their quarterly update and revenue update. The key takeaways from YouTube's latest quarter was a couple of cool things. They did 10.5 billion. Their advertising is up. They did 10.5 billion, up from 9.2 billion a year ago, which is just a good sign of that. YouTube is expanding like the pie that you're involved in. That's a great thing. But what it says on here is. The owner of Alphabet spoke of growth. First time that YouTube has ever surpassed 10 billion in quarterly ad revenue. 11% of all TV viewing is YouTube, which is wild. According to Nielsen, one of the reasons for the ad revenue spike was the election. But here's what I want to hone in on YouTube is seeing success in attracting podcasters. And people are watching over 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices. YouTube is now the most popular service for podcast listening and in the US and so on their earnings call, they highlighted their investment in podcasts. And what they essentially set up was not just that they're going to care about it more, try to have the algorithm be around podcasting. YouTube Music is the competitor to Spotify and Apple that's integrated as well. It's the most popular platform for consuming podcasts. And so for some of those reasons, I'm like, okay, YouTube is investing in podcasts. They love podcasts. And so one reason why I wanted to launch a podcast is because already doing YouTube, I thought, okay, this is gonna be a good use of my time because it's also leveraged besides committing to it on YouTube, we are leaning into Spotify. Now, of course, this gets more complex. We use buzzsprout if you wanna write that down. It's a good software service that helps us distribute to the other platforms. But even Spotify is also allowing you to upload video. You can upload a vertical video clip to promote your episode. This is like the podcast wars. So Spotify wants to compete with YouTube and I'm here for that healthy competition because they just want more dominance of who's listening to what. So I just think about the fact that if I can create a quality episode, upload it on YouTube, also distribute it to Spotify, also distribute it to Apple, and do my best to Invest on the YouTube side of things for us. The first podcast episode came out basically January 1, 2020. And so we're almost at $200,000 in ad revenue, almost 300,000 subscribers. And in, you know, four years and two months of the age of doing a podcast didn't happen overnight. And. But it's something I'm obsessed with and obsessed with making quality and investing in again, not just myself. We'll be talking about at the mastermind, building teams and hiring. And so this would then be our audio. Almost a 3 million audio downloads of the podcast. But when I'm talking about four things I'm obsessed with, I'm going to go deeper as to why, because if I sit down, go through this title process, why is it worth it for me to come up with something really high quality and try to come up with an episode that is. Doesn't take me forever to create, But I want to make sure I research it well, I structure it well, I deliver as much value as possible well, because it could be Chopped up into clips that could be distributed elsewhere. And so basically my main format of posting on social media, especially lately, I would say I've been off of social media for a few months. I mean, if you follow me, you see like a story here. Like earlier this week I was like, rise and grind was like the first time in like 60 days or something. Yet we still post about 300 pieces of content a week. So that's what my life of being off of social media is. 300 pieces is me is me on a social fast. Well, and I just mean I'm off because there's a system to it. There's a whole routine. It's leveraged. And so I just focus on making the video podcast. Now, this is not a member of our team. We actually outsource the vertical clips to an agency. And we started by paying them about $4,000 a month for one clip a day. Now the only reason you actually, I think, can get that many clips is you need a good amount of content to start with, and then they can chop it up. And then we went to two clips for a little bit of a discount, maybe 7,600 bucks a month, and then that gives us two clips a day that start on TikTok official think media Sean Cannell can then be distributed. But to me, again, that's leverage. Is it even all ROI positive? We could talk about that in Q and A if you're interested. But the point is it's actually sustainable. It's a system. And it's something that is happening, if you will, without me. But I speak into it and try to lead it, because this is all from really one commitment, and that is to podcasts. And then it also goes to Facebook reels as well. And so all this content and all this distribution, which all tracks back to the same thing, views, leads, and sales, because we know our business and we know what we're doing, then that is the one thing I do is that video podcast that creates all this impact. And so Archimedes, you may have heard of Archimedes lever before, that's the ancient Greek mathematician and physicist. The principle refers that a small force applied correctly can move a massive object. He said, give me a lever, a fulcrum, and a place to stand, and I'll move the earth. And so in content creation, this idea of one long form podcast repurposed into 10 short clips, automated distribution versus scheduling, tools and team, is a highly leveraged activity. And so with the right system, the right strategy, you can move mountains with minimal effort. One of our Mastermind attendees, Cap, which, if you haven't got to meet him, Cap, stand up so people can actually connect with you. Many people you should network with here, y' all. Cap has a video podcast directed life with Cap Chatfield. And so it's a smart commitment. You've got the opportunity to have consistent episodes by interviewing others. There's a whole networking side of it as well, and just relationships and building. But then you can chop up your clips and you have them on social media. And so four things I'm focused on. One, personally, I'm focused on trying to master video podcasting. And then I ask myself, it's like, the bridge is complete. Then I say, how can I go to another elite level of this and another elite level of this? And as we have revenue, how can I reinvest in this? The team we hire, you know, at an advanced level, our podcasts basically have little movie trailers. I'd call them trailers. Is a big trend in podcasts. Discouraging. If you're starting and you're like, I'm going to hit record and turn it off, like, yeah, you can't compete with diary of a CEO yet you can still win. But when you think about your podcast or your videos, there's always another level you could go to. And so maybe that's the hooks, the editing, your delivery, all of those types of things. Number two is strategic content repurposing leverage. Like, how do I take what I'm already doing and use it at a deeper level? And so we already talked about that with the clips, but this is another one of my favorite obsessions, and it's what are called, we call them content marathons. The probably more just understandable term would be a compilation. So this video came out on December 26th, and it's a video titled how to start your YouTube channel in 2025. It actually was very intentional. I started planning this video out maybe two months ahead of time because I looked at Google trends. This might have been obvious, but the absolute peak of the year when people say, how do I start a YouTube channel? Is the end of December, like the last week until January 16th. So I wanted to upload my video right before the rise and ride the entire wave. I also realized and banked on the fact that 99% of my competition was going to be full of cheese and eggnog at the exact moment that I was uploading this video. And so I started to architect a video on how to start a YouTube channel in 2025, titled parentheses free online course but the content of this video is actually. The video is 1 hour, 46 minutes and 38 seconds long. And the content of the video is actually four episodes of my podcast. Now this is kind of. We're in a weird space, we're pumping out insane amounts of content and there's a team and a system and. But because we have two channels, I have a podcast channel where I upload twice. And this would be our main channel. Think media where we'd upload less YouTube strategy stuff. But every once in a while, a video like this, it's already got 118,000 views. 6.4x outlier, 56 views an hour. But if you look at the time codes and chapters there, really what it is is just I looked at the best performing podcast. I looked at a logical organization of four episodes. I did. I then put those together into a one long video. And then I hosted in between each of the different episodes, I hosted, like fresh content, a fresh hook. And then in the transitions, views, lead sales. Every transition is kind of a commercial. Now the way I would do it is to just be like, hey, so we just learned this. We're about to get into this next part. But by the way, did you know I'm giving a copy of my book YouTube Secrets Away Free. If you want, you can go to ytsecrets.com just pay shipping. And so tell them about it. And then be like, all right, let's jump into the next section. Time codes and chapters for you. And so this is even a lot of work, I would say, but it's completely leveraged. If there was year, I would only put episodes that the information was still relevant. If there was references to time points, those would be edited out. And so this entire ep, this entire video that's now on fake media, it not only already has 118,000 views, but here's what's wild. I wouldn't be surprised if it collects more views than the other four videos combined. Repurposed content, strategically repurposed, but completely just repackaged. Repurposed. Now, one of the things that is also fascinating about this maybe sub point of what I'm focused on is, is, you know, if You've been in YouTube for a long time, you've heard about like, do the hook. The first opening, 30 seconds matter. Make your hooks good. Like, I get it. No, you don't. And neither do I. We can do better hooks. In fact, these ones broke a record. If you go into your YouTube analytics and you look at how many people are still watching at 30 seconds, my best, my worst is usually like 50%. My best was like 72%. These ones, 92%. These openings, crafting them in AI, the words that are said, B roll. That's used because I just realized it's like if. And I was also like, man, I'm trying to get somebody interested in watching an almost two hour long masterclass. This opening is going to matter something worth looking up later to just think about again. Some days you're just going to film a video in your car, hit record, turn it off. Like it's not. This is not every video. But this was reverse engineered to do what it's doing because I was looking for the leverage. And again, every single throughout that episode, it's connected back to views, leads and sales. And so it actually. One term I'd love to share with you is an insider phrase we use at Think Media. We're like, oh, we're going to chop the chicken. Okay, that's going to be a chicken chop. And I will now describe what that is in case you want to use the term for yourself. So one of the things I learned about was that grocery stores, you know, you could go into a grocery store and they're always thinking about how can they maximize revenue, save money, things like that. And so if you were to go into a grocery store, right, you could say, okay, I'm going to have people coming over, I'm going to head over to the meat section and the refrigerated section and I'm going to purchase a chicken that I plan on preparing and cooking tonight. And so that's, of course, one way you could sell the chicken. Maybe that's it. Great. But then as that expiration date approaches and nobody has purchased the chicken yet, what's going to happen? Do we just throw the chicken away? Well, no, let's cook that chicken up, put it up front as a seasoned rotisserie chicken. Come on, we're busy. Parents know, it's like, man, just grab that thing, it's ready. That's a whole other way to take that same chicken before it was about to expire and then sell it. But what happens if someone doesn't buy that rotisserie chicken, man? Probably throw that thing out. No way, man. Let's make a chicken curry. Put that in the. Give that another day or two. Ooh, it's getting a little. And that's our joke would be like, okay, like, what level of chicken curry is this? Like, how, how, like, is this still edible? Is anybody going to get food Poisoning from this content Is anybody, like, how far? But you think about chop the chicken, it's like, and so the big idea is letting good ideas go to waste. Most people only create once and they move on. But chop the chicken is repurpose, remix. Squeeze every last drip out of drip of value out of the content you're creating. Like scripts you've already shot that you could or already prepared that you actually should just kind of recreate. Maybe a different title, maybe a different angle on it. Like videos you've shot last year, you should be remaking this year. And even content you've uploaded that could be repackaged. And so the question is, how many ways can you chop your chicken? Ask your neighbor that. Like, there's. How many ways can you chop your chicken? When's the last time you asked somebody that? It's kind of awkward. That's weird. How many ways can you chop your chicken? I think it's a lot more than you think. And I think that the myth we believe is people are like, oh, that's repetitive. You know, I've already seen that. You know, it's different when people roll with you if you're more vlogging and they're following you in every episode. But I just don't think we, you know, or they stick with you like that. There's just so many ways we should be thinking about repurposing our content. And so the longevity principle is that a couple things. Build it to repurpose. So when I'm shooting, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about one. If you start with weak content, repurposing it won't save it. So what I'm not saying is start a video podcast, sit down, no plan, riff for 20 minutes, put that into opus clip, and then think the clips are going to be good. The content sucked to start with, like, or you might have got 10%. This is why more time just invested. And I hope you're seeing the roi. Like, I don't have time to start making better content. I'm busy. You don't have time not to. Because I'm telling you this from a very. Like, I don't have time. But because it's such leveraged activities, I'm like, the hours I might put here trickle down into the content, marathon into the clips, into thinking. As I prepare, the more quotable things or crafted statements I have are gonna translate a lot better to the vertical content. And for us, vertical content, sometimes we'll tack a little trailer on the end and use manychat and we have a whole Instagram thing going with leads as well. But it all starts with a YouTube first mindset. So if you start with weak content though repurposing it won't save it too. Build for repurposing from the start. Refining the idea, sharpening the execution and then making something worth multiplying. And then I mentioned earlier that Jen made $44,000 from ad revenue. $44,000 from one video. It's 2:53:44 long. The mega budget meals, ideas, three hours of delicious cheap eats. 1.1 million views. It is her other videos, her best videos. Stitched together but not haphazardly cut out the things that are irrelevant. Maybe a sponsor spot something else and repackage. Give it up for Jen for chopping the chicken. How many ways can you chop your chicken? All right, number three, search based content and rank videos. What am I obsessed with ranking videos? Man, it's 2025. I want to create search based content like never before. 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 Virginia viral video coach.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. You know, in our system it all starts with Reverse Engineer. And you can do this for trending content and you could do this of course for viral type videos. But I really think we're in an SEO revival and tomorrow I'm going to be talking about kind of some fresh things on 2025 YouTube SEO. But I'm doubling down on high intent long tail keywords versus broad appeal titles. And so this is back to which videos will attract the right people, you know, your ideal people and search based content, while oftentimes less gratifying in the moment, because it might be 10 out of 10. Anybody that's been uploading YouTube videos, you know the feeling when a video is nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10, which, if that's new to you, one out of 10 means YouTube's like, hey, your video just beats your previous 10. And 10 out of 10, you're like, well, I might as well quit today. You know? And that's the one you really worked hard on, too. So 10 out of 10. But when you do this, you have to, like, have an emotional resilience. You're like, I'm just planting a seed. It's the farmer mentality. At the Keller Williams event on Monday, I was talking to somebody and they were like, yeah, I just found that when I kind of do search stuff, it's, you know, it's more slower. And there's these other type of videos. They get more views initially, and I'm like, bro. But if you have the farmer mentality, and that's why your competition won't do it, they don't have enough mental toughness to wait it out. But what happens when you plant 3,000 ranked videos around? You still research them. I'm not talking about just, like, pointless videos that get no traffic, but I'm talking about very strategic videos. The compound effect that builds over even months and years is unbelievable. So the idea, it's leverage. Make it once, get views forever. That's the power of ranked videos on YouTube. Number four, leadership, team building and systems. So what four things am I focusing on then? What can I do? A video podcast? Make sure that I do my best job at that possible. How can we repurpose stuff? Even more leverage. How can I make some ranked videos, but mostly leadership, team building and systems and 100% in this room could benefit from even if you're just starting. I wish I would have thought about leadership and delegation and team earlier. And a lot of you are at this stage at varying degrees. This would be your ultimate impact point to grow in. You know, there was a girl named Molly Mae who had a quote when she was being interviewed. She was on Love Island. She was a Love island contestant. And there was a controversy around this quote because she said, well, you know, Beyonce has the same 24 hours as we all do. And people got offended, and they should have, because Beyonce doesn't have 24 hours a day. Beyonce has 1600 hours a day. Why? Because she has 200 staff. So every single one of those staff working 40 hours multiplied by the day they work gives Beyonce 1600 hours a day. And so people are right. It's not fair. And it is out of touch to just be like, oh, Beyonce has the same 24 hours. Anything's possible. No, there's people who have an advantage over you, your competitors that have two staff. When you're playing a solo game, that gives them an advantage. So the question, though, isn't to complain about it. The question is to think about, man, how do I build my team? How do I delegate? You know, there's. It's interesting. Some people that are doing incredible revenues and they don't have a money problem, they have a time problem, are still. You're still editing your videos or you're still doing the YouTube stuff yourself. It doesn't make sense. Like, you want to create the leverage. And so if you think that's crazy, during her last Tour, she had 2,600 people working on the tour with her. So Effectively, she had 22,400 hours a day. If you add up her 200 regular staff, that's equivalent to 933 days of work in a single day. Not fair. How does she pull off the tour and set up the lights and set it all up and do the video and do. Because of a team. So the takeaway is you need the team. And people were probably right to be offended that Beyonce is far beyond the same 24 hours. And I'm pretty sure Beyonce's my day is pretty good, but I bet her day is better. You know, she's got, you know, wakes up, maybe somebody. Which would you like today? Like, beverage choices as she's going to the spa or whatever it is. Like, there's something about leverage. Reid Hoffman, the co founder of LinkedIn, said this. No matter how brilliant your minder strategy is, if you're playing a solo game, you're always going to lose to a team. You got to get a team. You got to be thinking about it. It doesn't. It doesn't have to be a big team. It doesn't even have to be. It doesn't mean you have to have healthcare and employees. But it could be contractors, you know, different things that you delegate and you outsource, buy your time back. You know, I think about the team evolution for me, and the biggest aha moment was I had a big block when it came to hiring at first. And the main thing was as a content creator. I was also the video editor. Of course, I was wearing all the hats. I would film and I would shoot and I would edit, and that was my skill set. Video Itself since all the way back when I started from my church in 2003 doing video. And so I realized the thing that took most of my time every week was the editing itself. Sometimes the video would take four, six, eight hours to edit. It's a lot of time. And I was like, man, the thing I would get the most time back from was delegating the editing. But. But I had this huge block in my mind, and it was this block of. But I've been building Think Media to this point, and it's built around my personality and my connection with my viewers and this relationship that we have. If I delegate the editing, then people are gonna go crazy in the comments. They're gonna be like, you sold out. How I could tell, like, between this last video, who did this? You betrayed us. You know, I was thinking, maybe I'm gonna start getting mail, you know, and, like, just be torn apart. And this was real, like, feelings. I was like, this might just be the beginning of the end of my career. Like, my YouTube channel will stop growing. My audience will abandon me. It is over if I delegate editing. And so I actually was wanting knowing, though, but I need to build a team and if I'm gonna grow. And so I actually started. I went on meetup, meetup.com. i've been building relationships here in Vegas, and I went to these creative meetups and these blog meetups and these podcasting meetups, and actually didn't really meet anybody until I met one guy named Jay at this creative meetup. He's like, hey, yeah. Like, oh, yeah, I do some editing. I'm like, hey, would you try editing a few Think Media videos? He goes, sure. So I paid him just, you know, I think, like, a few hundred dollars just based on a few videos. I remember he edited the first one, and I uploaded it, and I was terrified. Video scheduled, upload to go the next day. Schedule uploaded to go public on the next day. And sure enough, you know, I made that video public. I waited for a while, and I read the comments, and you would have been shocked by how many people were tearing me apart in the comments about a different editor. 0 people mentioned anything different at all about the video. And even though. And I. When I watched his edit, oh, here comes the insight I saw, like, oh, I would have done that different. And, oh, I didn't like that. And, oh, that felt different. And no. And then, like, even the feedback I gave him, even the final version, I was like, I'm sick. It's just not a representation of my brand. But it went public and people had no zero comments about the difference of on my brand. Nobody cared. So it was a blow to my ego because it made me think, huh, maybe I'm not like God's gift to editing on planet Earth. And apparently nobody can even tell when I'm editing. And it just let me know that there's something about letting go and delegating. And it's one thing to of course delegate the stuff that you're not good at or whatever, but it's a whole other thing actually to perhaps delegate and hire around the stuff you are good at and you do like, because you just need leverage. And if you're like, man, how am I going to have time to do that? Next thing it's thinking about delegating, giving away the thing you're on. John Maxwell, leadership expert, talks about that. If somebody can do what you do, I would say he says, at at least an 8, man, I think if they're at a 7 and they can grow to an 8, it's time to hand it off. It's time to take like if somebody else. If your content drops to an 8 or to a 7 because you're in the process of reinventing or building a team, you got to let the drop happen because. Because you can't, you can't make the transition if it never drops. Because of course you doing everything is going to be a certain way, but that's going to be a block to you growing your company to the next level. So these are the four things that I'm laser focused on right now. And what are we doing next? Next is going to be a break and I didn't start my clock. What time are we at? Okay, good. So let's do some Q and A. Let's run the mic. Raise your hand if you've got a question and we'll get you a microphone. We'll have a second mic coming to the back right now. Go ahead.
- [31:58]
Enos Hershberger
Yeah, my question is just. My name is Enos Hershberger. I have the YouTube channel, the Amish Media Group. And I'm just curious how I. I started this YouTube channel, like interviewing people that wouldn't normally be able to get on a podcast. And it formed into people didn't really care about who I interviewed other than former Amish people. And so now I've just been creating Amish content around conversations about the Amish community, insights of the Amish community. But I don't really have a product to offer to them. I haven't really. I'd love to be able to offer a digital product. I mentioned an ebook, but just be able to offer something in my videos because I've had a few videos take off and it's kind of a shame because I don't have anything in the videos to offer or a way to make money off of it.
- [32:53]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. I was looking at your channel and you've had some great videos take off. I do think you're in a unique place. I mean we are talking about. Would you. Your content's kind of entertainment.
- [33:03]
Enos Hershberger
It is. Yeah, it is. Really?
- [33:05]
Sean Cannell
Yep. So in light of your content being entertainment and this is a mastermind, so there might be other ideas in the room. If I think about viable products, I think about when it comes to entertainment, I could see that merch merchandise, sometimes maybe phrases or creative things come out of shows where the merchandise ties into a fan base that grows around the show. I actually think that writing a book, not like an ebook in the sense of educational, like a lot of us could do, but writing a book that also is inspired by the conversations and the things that happen, that maybe you kind of have a comedy angle to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could see like, which is going to be a multi year process probably because I wouldn't rush something like that. But the fact you're building a YouTube channel could be the precursor to launching a bestseller because of something that, you know, quirky insights from the Amish or, you know, whatever. And we have one of our students, Mary's Nest, her second book is coming out. Publishers want to work with channels that have platforms. Okay, how many subscribers? You already have subscribers going?
- [34:15]
Enos Hershberger
Yeah, it's about a little over 11,000 subscribers on YouTube.
- [34:20]
Sean Cannell
So I mean, you already have 11,000. What happens when you go to 25, go to 50? You're now in an interesting place for a publisher being like, well, you have an audience and a fan base and that could be a six figure book advance. They help you maybe write a book, you figure out the angle for it. Because you're building a platform that has this unique stories and angles to it. The thing that is good to bring up in this conversation is I wouldn't. Anything's possible. But it's not a online course education type of audience that would be interested in something like that. The other thing is paywall content for premium content at a lower cost. That could be. I don't usually recommend channel memberships because YouTube takes 30%. But as you build a fan base, if you are cutting conversations and there's longer conversations and everybody wants the Uncut thing or the early release of People Love the channel. From a more entertainment standpoint, then a percentage of your audience might pay five bucks a month and ten bucks a month just to kind of be a part of what you're doing and get early access to content. And as you build up that audience, 10% might be tough to get at that 11,000. But if we could get 1,000 people at $10, that would be $10,000 a month. Thank you. Brian's my math guy. He's like, yeah, sure, keep going, you're good. And, and so that would, that would be. I mean, that sounds crazy though, right? That would actually be pretty wild. So. And that would be, you know, temp. So even more practical would probably be 1% of your 11,000, assuming you craft the experience of what that premium offering is. Follow up question.
- [36:09]
Enos Hershberger
Yeah, and. And I actually just playing around with YouTube, I don't know much about the online stuff because I didn't grow up with a cell phone. Really. And so did you guys have.
- [36:21]
Sean Cannell
Was it okay to have electricity?
- [36:23]
Enos Hershberger
No, we didn't have any electricity. It was like outside toilets, no running water.
- [36:28]
Sean Cannell
That's wild.
- [36:28]
Enos Hershberger
Bathtub. So, yeah, people have like found that very interesting. And so I just like around that. I did turn on the membership and people signed up. Several people signed up and I don't have anything to offer them at this moment.
- [36:47]
Sean Cannell
Oh, they just signed up for nothing, Just to support.
- [36:50]
Enos Hershberger
Yeah. So.
- [36:54]
Sean Cannell
I mean, you should offer people in this room advice on how to do that, like how to sell. I just offer a membership. People just pay me. What do you offer? I don't give them anything. I offer them an opportunity to pay me monthly. That's pretty. I mean, that's what I would go deep on. And you know, I'm not sure. Are you an accelerator?
- [37:17]
Enos Hershberger
No, I'm not. I just signed up a few days ago.
- [37:20]
Sean Cannell
Awesome. Yeah. So, I mean, definitely talk to our team because we have a special offer on accelerator here and just like building out those verticals to me, like, that would kind of be your bridge and in a way, leads. Leads would be your subscribers, like building a newsletter, building an email list. But really the compound effect of the channel itself, getting people into the channel, getting them into the membership, and then just architecting a membership experience, which is basically a content strategy. What's free, what's premium, what's going to go where? How are we going to articulate all of that? How. How can we brand it all? And the momentum you already have is a matter now of like steering that momentum. So great job. Can we give it up for him?
- [38:02]
Enos Hershberger
Thank you.
- [38:04]
Sean Cannell
Appreciate you. Next question. Yeah.
- [38:09]
Blake
Hey, guys, Blake with Blue Form Media here. My question to Sean today is in regards to, like, leadership and team building and then also that quote you hit the very first. It's been slapping me in the face all day with Gary Vee. You know, social media requires a lot more. Was it rigor?
- [38:27]
Sean Cannell
Rigor, Yeah.
- [38:27]
Blake
I almost said vigor, but they're about the same.
- [38:29]
Sean Cannell
Right.
- [38:31]
Blake
So we have a. For some context, we Blue Form Media, we're running about 16 video podcasts right now, four clients with a team of about five. And we're finding out there's actually a six team member. It's the client. Because we're very much a do for you type pitch. Like, we plug in and do most of the work for them, but a lot of times they're lacking a lot of that rigor. They're just like, oh, do it for me, you know.
- [38:58]
Sean Cannell
Right.
- [38:59]
Blake
And so what would be your advice to us or some insight you could give on how do you get someone to give you the rigor needed if you're not the visionary or the head of the project? Because, like, for our content, you know, that's us. So we can control that. And, you know, a lot we're more rigorous some days than we are others.
- [39:20]
Sean Cannell
I mean, what comes to mind. I have a few thoughts for you. Would be. Would be partly your onboarding process. What would be. Would be your onboarding process and would be the tension when it comes to client work like that between we'll take the client kind of no matter what, because we have spots to fill and we've got revenue targets to hit and then maybe the opportunity to be choosy and then to sometimes realize that if we take the client, it's a lose lose. Cause if they don't follow through or even if they do follow, like. So in your onboarding process, it could have to do with such things as the questions you ask when onboarding. Are you committed to. On a scale from 1 to 10, are you committed? Do you understand? Like, sometimes in Sale, like, I learned this in hiring too. Sometimes in an effort to get one to say yes to a job offer, we try to, like paint how good the company is or maybe downplay some of the challenges or the pressure. When you should do the reverse as a leader, you actually should up, like, how bad it is and how hard it will be.
- [40:28]
Blake
Yeah.
- [40:28]
Sean Cannell
Because it's a filter like, you would actually want to be honest about. And so if you could in the onboarding process try to be as discerning as possible. Now you could even take it to a place of such thinking as personality tests or assessments of. We don't work with everybody, we work with only certain people that can meet these types of standards. Because again if their commitment level at some point you've probably felt that maybe it's almost impossible to lift them to a certain level if they're not going to invest the effort. Maybe you do things such as a trial process as well. Like you date before you get married and before they're allowed a one off shoot day or something. Assuming then you have the bandwidth to then say no, like hey, I don't know if this is going to be a good fit and there's others in the room that could talk to you about agency model. I think agency's challenging in light of that because maybe one client's great, the other client's tough. And a great client though is the win win. Like a great client's refreshing and maybe the challenging quiet could be draining of resources. So I think that part of that could be onboarding process and then it also could be the dedication of a team member or somebody and I'm sure you have probably somebody that onboards people, coaches them a little bit or helps them like get prepared for the shoots.
- [41:45]
Blake
Yeah, at the moment it's us and we delegate the like editorial and post production. But yeah, we're the face and it's, it's basically word of mouth in a local area and it's business to business. Yes, we're focusing on businesses but so.
- [41:59]
Sean Cannell
That'S, that's another thing, you know, like one of the things we, that's newer for us is not really like a full on agency model but like an immersion to try to work with us for a day. We'll shoot videos with you. But it's also the experience and it would, it's still like selective of like.
- [42:17]
Blake
A trial period kind of.
- [42:18]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. And for us it's, it's a, it's like a one day shoot in a prep session, two hours of prep where we're going to outline your videos and get your stuff ready. But there's still going to be an assessment of the client to see are you prepared for this step. You know and one of the helpful things could be, I'm sure a lot of people come to you with nothing, no channel, no content, no. So there's certain gap you're trying to assess. Maybe somebody comes and they like used to be the weather woman. Well, she's going to probably crush, you know what I mean? There's level experience there. Somebody else you might be like oh, the hurdle and so of getting them ready to be on camera or what even that shoot day might be like and things like that. These would be some of the challenges to think through. To me that'd be systems and processes of maybe assessing the individual and all of that could potentially be solved through giving people more hoops to jump through, like wisdom tests to pass, which could be like, yeah, we will work with you, but you do X first. Like we'd like you to go through this material or this first, which also could be an opportunity for an upsell, a win win for them. And you like you're going to need to go through our camera confidence day long workshop or whatever to just because maybe they get to that shoot day, they're just not ready. And so are some of those thoughts valuable. Cool. I appreciate it. You basically, yeah, you have to. You hire a client and you don't hire them all. Yes.
- [43:48]
Luisa
Hi, Luisa and Michael from Retired Life Mexico. So I have a question about the video podcasting. Back in the day we did a podcast before there was video attached to it and then we went to YouTube because then we could get some feedback from people and now we do some talking head videos we call them, but basically that's a video podcast. Right? But I guess I missed something when you said you send that to Spotify as well. How does does Spotify get you to back to the YouTube channel? Because I don't know.
- [44:25]
Sean Cannell
So this is a good question. The other day we were having this kind of like joking debate about what even is a video podcast and why is it called a video podcast and why is it different than a podcast. And while I could list off a few things, I think my answer is I don't know. My answer to the question would actually be this. A video podcast is something you sit down to record with the intent that it would be a great audio experience and that it would include the best practices that an audio podcast would have and that you're going to turn the camera on. That's what I think a video podcast is and that you should turn the camera on. Joe Rogan podcast is a good example. He sits down. It is a podcast and at some point they turned the camera on. And in that particular show he doesn't look at the camera, they don't address the camera, they don't call to actions and ads are just cut in. The conversation just flows. So there's a lot of different ways you could do it as far as how you chop it up and different things you could do. There is no reason why you couldn't just make your talking head videos a audio podcast as well. It's not. YouTube is just going to be one thing. You'll strip the audio or export the audio, Sign up for a service like Buzzsprout and just upload the audio. And the issue being is if you were to say, and hey, subscribe on YouTube and click like and leave a comment, you just have to realize that all of a sudden on the audio experience, that stuff doesn't make sense or doesn't work there. However, that would actually beat a poke in the eye. A lot of things would beat actually being poked in the eye, but like, that it would give you a chance for distribution there. The question is, would that particular show work good in an audio format? Would it be strategically crafted to do well in that audio format? So I'll end with saying that starting with the end in mind, reverse engineering is a good idea to sort of think about, like, what's the purpose of this show? Who's the target audience of this show? Does it work on both YouTube and audio? How could I? And the way I've done the Think Media podcast is it takes some brain power. Even today I'm like, we really like, okay, how do I integrate this? How do I make sure I verbally say it? There's sometimes where we'll repurpose a session. When I teach off slides. I will never put that on a video podcast. If it can't be a good audio experience. It breaks sort of the rules, if that makes sense. So I think through it of how can it be a great experience in both places? I don't know if I answered your question. It's like, you could just start doing those talking head videos. That would be fine. But if you're going to expand into audio, I wouldn't maybe avoid doing it half heartedly. It's kind of like, how's revenue going? How is views lead sales or your revenue model going right now?
- [47:37]
Luisa
Well, that's my question. What do I get out of it being a podcast on Spotify?
- [47:42]
Sean Cannell
You get more people. Here's what's weird. I have a video podcast about video and YouTube. So why does anyone listen on audio? Why did 3 million people download it? That's super weird, huh? So what if you asked me, well, what value do I get out of uploading my videos that I'm podcasting onto Spotify and Apple? 3 million downloads is the value that I get so that, I mean it's crazy now it's gonna be percent, like whatever the percentage you just want. If you think about the show name, you think about what it is. If it's viable. The reason you would do it is then views, leads and sales. In this case it would be listens leads and sales. Because I'm thinking about the strategy I've built my business. It is another channel of distribution. And it also might not be something you wanna lean into because. Because if also there isn't a leads and sales component to this yet. Do you have an offer?
- [48:46]
Luisa
No.
- [48:47]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. So if you don't have an offer and you don't want to build an email list at this moment, then you don't get any value. And I wouldn't do would be you might get some downloads, you might get some expanded reach, but what you're also going to get is expanded distraction and you're going to get another thing to do. I might triple down on your YouTube channel, ads, brands, whatever. Think about how you can monetize there. But throughout this mastermind and this, a lot of us are, I'm sure being challenged. What's even our end goal? Let's come back to some. What's my niche? What's my bigger strategy? What is my offer? What can my offer be? Do I even need to make a radical pivot into like a much more viable market? There's a lot of questions we could ask. And if I'm true, like reverse engineer isn't even just all the way back to what should I do with this talking head YouTube video. Reverse engineer could be like what am I even doing with my life? It's a good, you know, and then like what even business am I? These are good questions. And that might bring us back to okay for this next season of my life with how leveraged I want things to be. What if I came up with a great video podcast idea that hits my current Target audience on YouTube? It's maybe a new show with a new strategy and a new business model. I'm not saying that's the next step for you. What we want to be identifying here is what do we need to fix next? What is the next best move for us? And in some cases, and we're going to be expanding this over coming sessions, there very much is a move to launch a new show, start a new brand, maybe start something else. Those could be steps, but it might not be the next right move. Depending on where you are. Some of that conversation helpful.
- [50:34]
Luisa
Yes.
- [50:35]
Sean Cannell
Amazing. Okay?