← The Think Media Podcast
The Think Media Podcast
424: How Regular People Are Making 6 Figures on YouTube (Without Going Viral)
00:48:19
Loading summary
Transcript119 lines
- [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.
- [00:20]
Rory Vaden
So if you're new to YouTube, this.
- [00:21]
Sean Cannell
Will help you start right and avoid mistakes.
- [00:24]
Rory Vaden
And if you're a YouTube pro, this.
- [00:26]
Sean Cannell
Training will help you multiply your your growth. This class is 100% free and you can watch it now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com now let's jump into today's show.
- [00:38]
Rory Vaden
Having a hundred thousand followers is better than having 1,000 followers when it comes to making money.
- [00:44]
Guest Expert
Absolutely false. Everyone is so focused on the width of the reach that they are overlooking the depth of their impact. What the people who are getting wealthy off of content creation are doing is almost the exact opposite. That's actually the more likely faster path to cat with less competition. Everything we've been talking about so far is about going deep, not wide related to your messaging. I'm going to prove to you the same with money. I've not shared these on any podcast before.
- [01:13]
Rory Vaden
So in today's episode of the Think Media podcast, we're going to be breaking down a step by step masterclass on how to actually make money on social media without a big following. We're going to be covering why viral is often overrated and why sometimes some of the smallest channels are making the most amount of money. We're going to be learning some fresh tactics and how you can also stand out in the sea of sameness. There's a lot of competition, so how do you really find your voice, build your brand, and make an impact on YouTube and all of the social media platforms? My guest today is Rory Vaden, who is a leading expert in personal branding, the founder of Brand Builders, multiple successful, bestselling author, speaker, and is going to be breaking down his best tips in this episode. Rory, welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:01]
Guest Expert
Good to be here, man. Let's do this.
- [02:03]
Rory Vaden
True or false? Having 100,000 followers is better than having 1,000 followers when it comes to making money.
- [02:11]
Guest Expert
I would say that's probably true. I would say having. Having some followers is good. But here's the important part of that question is saying having 100,000 followers means you're going to make more money than having a thousand followers. Absolutely false. Absolutely false.
- [02:29]
Rory Vaden
Why so?
- [02:30]
Guest Expert
Because wide is not the same as deep. And here is, I think, the big misconception and the big issue that is plaguing every online medium today. Everyone is so focused on the width of the reach that they are overlooking the depth of their impact. And what I mean by that is that when you play to the algorithm, when you play to the number of views, the number of likes, the number of subscribers, the way to win that game, if that is your scoreboard, the way to win that game is to make the most amount of content that applies to the most number of people, which means it's shallow content. And if you look at the most viral videos, it's like cats and proposals and football. You might get some attention, you might get some followers, but you're not getting anyone's checkbook, you're not getting their credit card. And so if volume of views is the scoreboard, it's causing you to play to the lowest common denominator. What the people who are getting wealthy off of content creation are doing is they're doing almost the exact opposite. They're going, how can I make the most valuable content to a very specific niche? How can I be the go to expert on a thing? You're actually a great example of this, as am I right? You don't have billions and billions of people. You have a really solid following. But you make a lot more money from your business teaching people a tactic and a skill than most people who have channels that have way more views than you.
- [04:15]
Rory Vaden
True.
- [04:15]
Guest Expert
And that model, your model is more duplicate, it requires less luck, it's more predictable than it is trying to play the viral game, only making money off of views versus serving a smaller audience in a deeper way.
- [04:32]
Rory Vaden
What's the minimum follower count do you think that is needed to earn a six figure income on social media?
- [04:38]
Guest Expert
I want to tell you a story, a true story about two of our clients. Okay, So a lot of people know Brand Builders Group because we work with some really big celebrity clients. Lewis Howes and my lead, Amy Porterfield. You know, Trent Shelton, Jasmine Star. You'll pick, pick your a lot of really great creators and they're really brilliant and they have really great audiences and they have large audiences. But we had a scenario here last year where we worked with an A list celebrity. This is somebody who has millions and millions, like more than 5 million followers. They have a show on Netflix. This is like somebody that most people would know if you said their name. And this was a book launch. Okay. So we helped, we taught this person a system for how to get their most loyal fans to engage and buy books for their book launch at the same time. We happen to Have a brand new first time author. By the way, this other author is already a previous New York Times bestselling author. We had an author with 800 followers.
- [05:42]
Rory Vaden
Okay.
- [05:43]
Guest Expert
The celebrity did nothing that we said. All they wanted to do was post pictures of their book and go on Good Morning America. And they did. And they got outsold massively by the person with 800 followers. And the reason is because they wanted to just go wide. They just wanted vanity, they just wanted billboards and broadcasting. And what the person, the other person, this first time author who also hit the bestseller list while the celebrity did not.
- [06:13]
Rory Vaden
Wow.
- [06:13]
Guest Expert
And not only that, a year later, this new author has still outsold the celebrity author. Wow. Because what they did is they went deeper with fewer relationships, and those people bought more. They bought in quantities. They told their friends, they shared their content, they shared their book. And that is, I think, the biggest strategy that nobody is talking about. Because it's not how you get famous, it's more how you get rich.
- [06:40]
Rory Vaden
Well, we're gonna unpack that in this episode and I'm excited to hear about more tactics. But it sounds like in today's world, viral is overrated. Vanity metrics is overrated. It's about depth, it's about impact. And the challenge is, though, there is a lot of competition out there and cutting through the noise is tough. So you have a particular way of helping people figure out how they can be unique, how they can be different, and how they can kind of niche down. Niche down. You know, I was at a dinner last night here for Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. We're having this conversation and I think the mindset shared by an individual there was very shared by a lot of people listening to this. They just looked at the landscape of YouTube and social media and they just said, like, man, it just feels like everybody's doing everything already. And this person had a lot of expertise. They've been doing video production. It was actually kind of similar. Like think media is already doing. Other people are doing it. They followed experts around film for them. They've made their own videos. They actually have already grown their channel to a couple thousand subscribers, got monetized. But they had this massive weight kind of on their shoulders of like, it's just too much competition. What's the point? How can I stand out? I think a lot of people are feeling like that right now. Rory, like, you talk about niching down, like, why do creators resist? And maybe number one, feel overwhelmed, like it's impossible to beat the competition. Or if I niche down Too small. I'm not even going to be able to grow big enough. And so they kind of just don't take action.
- [08:06]
Guest Expert
Yeah, it's because they misunderstand the marketplace. And here's what I'd like to do. Let's think offline for a second before we talk online. We define personal branding as the digitization of reputation. One of the reasons we do that is we find that people get a lot of clarity from thinking about human principles in the offline world and translating them online versus thinking of online as like something that's completely new and different. So how many Mexican restaurants are there? How many coffee shops are there? How many rich financial advisors are there? How many rich real estate agents are there? How many rich doctors are there right in the world? Unlimited. Unlimited. And in an offline world we understand that. We go, we understand in an offline world intuitively the truth, which is that you don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Most high income earning financial advisors, like they might have a couple hundred clients, like seven figure, I'm talking multi seven figure earners. Most people watching this, you would have your best year in income ever if you had 12 of your perfect clients, maybe 24. Not a million, not 10,000, like a couple dozen of your perfect customers. In the real world is how you make money. And online we just compare ourselves to the biggest creators and we go, oh, I have to. The only way to get rich is to be Mr. Beast. Right? That's how we think. Well, one way to make money from videos is, is through ad sponsored content and like YouTube sponsored content and brand deals. But that's not how most creators get rich. Most creators get rich building a connection of trust with real people and selling them something completely separate from the platform itself. That's the real replicatable strategy. And you go, there's a bazillion Mexican restaurants. So if you love Mexican food, do you say, I'm only going to eat at this one Mexican restaurant forever. I will never go to any other Mexican. No, when you're, when you love Mexican food, you go to every Mexican restaurant.
- [10:28]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [10:29]
Guest Expert
You want to try all of them because you love Mexican food. So we're not competing in a zero sum game that if you teach, you know, in your case like video and YouTube strategy that you can be the only person totally. Even if there's 5, 500, even if there's a thousand. Even if there's 10,000. Yeah, there are millions of people who need access to the content. So we might go, oh well, I Won't, you know, I won't be the biggest doctor. And that's like saying, oh, I won't be Dr. Oz. Maybe you won't be Dr. Oz, totally. But you'll make millions of dollars serving your local market. That's how we need to think about the online world and building an online community. If you want to make money. Yeah, if you want to make money, that's super strong.
- [11:11]
Rory Vaden
So then you have a concept specifically for how to niche down. It's something people are very afraid of. And I think about it, one of the conversations this individual had, they didn't specifically want to teach YouTube, but I mentioned, I said, okay, you know, one, it was actually a great old book. It's called Positioning. And it was the second edition, I think came out early 2000. So social media had not started and the Internet had barely started.
- [11:34]
Guest Expert
Wow.
- [11:34]
Rory Vaden
And like the first page of the book, positioning on the concept of brand positioning was like, it's super crowded, there's too much noise. There is, there's too much overwhelm. And thus you need this skill to break through. And they weren't even speaking to social media yet, but you would have thought they were prophetically writing this message for now when they talked about offense, defense, flanking or guerrilla marketing. And they talked about, you're actually never going to go against Pepsi or Coke, but Coke and Pepsi are going to have certain strategies that most of us will not have.
- [12:05]
Guest Expert
Right.
- [12:06]
Rory Vaden
You might flank bigger competitors if you're a certain size, but even if you're smaller, you're micro. You're going to do guerrilla warfare. You're not going to take people in the wide open, you're going to take it into the trees. You're going to do guerrilla marketing. You're going to have a much more strategic approach. And by the way, we have a whole series on brand positioning that I'll link in the show notes on the Think Media podcast that you could save for later in a playlist. But break down why maybe getting narrow guerrilla marketing niching down and how creators might do that to stand out in today's world.
- [12:35]
Guest Expert
Yeah, well, the misconception again here is thinking by going small, I'm going to make less money. And it's actually the opposite is true. So the framework that we teach is called Sheehan's Wall. And there's two groups of people. There are those who are unknown and then there are those who are well known and those of us who are unknown. We look at the people who are well known, the Oprah's, the Rocks the gary Vaynerchuk, the Mr. Beast, whatever. And we're like, oh, we want to do what they do. And the Rock has multiple. You know, he owns a clothing company, he owns a football league. He has an energy drink, he has facial products, right? Or you look at Tony Robbins and he talks about money and relationships and personal development and health or, you know, whoever. They talk about lots of different topics. And, you know, Gary Vee's on all of these different platforms doing all this content because he has a giant team and he's doing all these things. And what happens is we go, oh, well, I want to talk about a lot of topics to a lot of audiences on a lot of different platforms. And they bounce off the wall. Because between the unknown, the obscurity, the people living in obscurity, and those who are well known is this giant wall we call Sheehan's Wall. Okay? So we named this after Peter Sheehan, who is a brilliant colleague that. I originally learned this in the corporate world, and we applied it to personal brands because we saw it to be even more true. And the reason you bounce off the wall when you do that is because when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. You're part of the noise. You are part of the noise you're trying to escape. And think about it like this. Here's another good analogy is if you walk into like a. Let's say you're in like a big conference room, right? There's a conference going upstairs that we're both speaking at, and there's a room of like 200 people. There's a murmur of noise. If someone goes, hey, Sean, you hear it not just because it's the sound of your name, but because it's a hyper specific, hyper customized, hyper frequencied communication that's on your range that you are biologically programmed to tune in. So if I come in and I'm just talking about a bunch of stuff, you're not listening. But the moment I say, hey, Sean, I cut through the noise. And that is about specificity of message. And that's how you break through Sheehan's wall and is instead of hitting all over on the wall, doing all of these different things, I'm going to hit the same spot over and over and over. One message, one problem that I solve to one person selling one revenue stream. And then just like in a wall, you start to chip away the paint, and then eventually you break through. And then once you break through the wall in that one spot, you can reach Back and pull, and the entire wall comes crashing down. And then you're on the other side. And once you're on the other side, then you can expand to more people because you're already well known, you have money, you can hire people, you have reputation. But if you try to do all that in the beginning, all you're doing is bouncing off the wall. So it's a paradox that we feel like narrowing in on a smaller audience is going to prevent us from reaching more people or making more money. The truth is, going back to our analogy, if I'm in a room of 400 people, when I say, hey, Sean, everybody's whose name is Sean, and anyone who knows somebody named Sean, all pay attention. This is the same way. You cut through the noise, not with volume, but specificity. And that's the strategy that nobody except the really wealthy people are talking about.
- [16:07]
Rory Vaden
That makes so much sense. And so the reason that creators are stuck and they're staying small, they want to break through on social media is there have so many different messages. Their messaging is unclear. It's not tapped into frequency, and they haven't been consistently hitting that one spot. They also are afraid of being limited, though, because they're like, but someday I see somebody else doing what I want to do. I see Gary Vee talking about the jets and wine and characters and garage sailing, as well as social media and business, and it works for him. Why can't I do it? And what you're saying is it's. It's really about sequencing. If you're doing the right steps in the right order, and early on, you're. You're doing the right activities of specificity to crash through the wall, then you're able to pull the wall down, and a lot of opportunities open to you. You're in a different place in your career in the examples you mentioned earlier.
- [16:54]
Guest Expert
And let's. Let's use Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, he's the ultimate example of this because he talks about a bazillion things today.
- [17:01]
Rory Vaden
He does.
- [17:01]
Guest Expert
But in the beginning, he talked about one thing.
- [17:04]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [17:04]
Guest Expert
Wine.
- [17:05]
Rory Vaden
Yes.
- [17:05]
Guest Expert
On one place.
- [17:07]
Rory Vaden
YouTube for over a thousand episodes.
- [17:09]
Guest Expert
And that is how he broke through. Yes. The Rock has a bunch of revenue streams. In the beginning, he was a wrestler. Yes. Elon Musk owns a bunch of companies today. In the beginning, PayPal.
- [17:19]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [17:19]
Guest Expert
Yes. Amazon sells a bazillion products today. In the beginning, one product.
- [17:24]
Rory Vaden
Books.
- [17:25]
Guest Expert
Books. Right. Like, you can see this. If you. If you look at it, you'll see this pattern everywhere. Like, I Have not found a counterexample. Like I have not found an example of one uber famous person who got famous for a bunch of things. Every single famous person got famous for doing one thing really well. Right? Like Messi is a soccer player and you know, Sarah Blakely had Spanx and Richard Branson had virgin records. Like Dr. Dre was a rapper. Like they became famous for one thing and then broke through the wall and, and then they expand. But if you try to expand first, you're just bouncing off the wall and it's, it's the secret that hides in plain sight.
- [18:06]
Rory Vaden
Man, this is so powerful. And I want to talk about your concept of fractal math. But if you're getting value, hit the like button, share rate, review ever. You listen and you also have a book coming out and a free event. What's the title of the book?
- [18:21]
Guest Expert
Wealthy and well known. Build your personal brand and turn your reputation into revenue.
- [18:26]
Rory Vaden
Amazing. And so this framework we're going to be talking about, fractal math.
- [18:30]
Guest Expert
By the way, if they're going to look it up, go to freebrandtraining.com think and we'll talk about this later. But if you're going to look at it, go there. FreeBrandTraining.com think.
- [18:41]
Rory Vaden
Yes. Okay, so we'll make sure that's in the show notes. We'll tell you a little bit more about that later. Your free event.
- [18:45]
Guest Expert
Free. It's not normally free but it's going to be free if you, if you.
- [18:48]
Rory Vaden
Preorder, pre order the book. Okay, so that's in the show notes. We'll get back to that in a bit. But this, some of these concepts are coming from your book Wealthy and well known. And one of the concepts is fractal mass. Explain why smaller focus audience generate more revenue than viral content. Explain this concept.
- [19:06]
Guest Expert
I love this. Okay, so everything we've been talking about so far is about going deep, not wide related to your messaging. I'm going to prove to you the same with money.
- [19:17]
Rory Vaden
Okay.
- [19:17]
Guest Expert
Okay. So let's talk about monetization strategy now. And fractal math is a simple concept. It's a, it's a, it's a pattern that we noticed in the most wealthy, high income, high revenue generating creators and their lists. Right. And what's happening on the back end is we're like looking at their metrics. So here's what. Fractal math is a super simple principle. 10% of your audience or 10% of your customers, excuse me, 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times more than they've already invested if you give them a more intimate experience. Okay, so 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times what they've invested. So we need a maybe we can draw this out or something. But think about it this way. So let's say that you had a product that was. Let's say that you had a product that was $30, okay? And you had a thousand people buy your $30 product. That would be 30,000 in revenue for math, for the math majors, okay? Thousand people, $30 product. Now, if I asked you, I said, how should you double your revenue? Or, what's the easiest way to double your revenue? Our brains are naturally programmed for width. So we go, let's go find another thousand people to buy my $30 product. And that's not a bad answer. I can't even say it's the wrong answer, but it's the hardest answer when you look at monetization strategy. So monetization strategy is one of the things we most specialize in. So if you instead apply the rule of fractal math, here's how it looks. You go, all right, if I had a thousand people buy a $30 product, then that means 10% of my customers, 10% of the a thousand, which would be a hundred, will invest at a level 10 times higher than what they've already invested. So out of my a thousand, 100 customers will buy a $300 product, and $100 times, or 100 customers times $300, is 30,000 in revenue. I have doubled my revenue without adding a single new customer. And that matters because the most expensive customer is a new customer. The hardest person to build trust with is someone who's a stranger. And yet all of social media and YouTube and podcasting, everyone is consumed with, like, how do I get more strangers on the Internet to follow my thing? And yet the path to riches is to go, how do I get the people listening to my thing to engage in a deeper level and take another step? So that's how you double your revenue, but it keeps going forward. So now let's go to the third level. If I had 100 customers buy a $300 product, that means that 10 of those hundred, because 10% of your customers will invest 10 times more. 10 of those customers would buy a $3,000 product. So now that's another 30,000, and it keeps going. Of the 10 people who bought a $3,000 product, that means one person would actually buy a $30,000 product. That's another 30,000 so you haven't just doubled your revenue, you've quadrupled your revenue without adding a single customer. That should be amazing. That should be encouraging. That should be exciting to go. What if I didn't have to get one new follower? All I had to do was serve the people who are in front of me in a deeper way and, and offer them more access to me and a better experience. And I could get more money from the same people who already love and trust me, who are already in front of me, versus spending all of my time trying to sell to random strangers on the Internet. I submit that that's the real path to get rich, especially in the future as more noise comes online.
- [23:13]
Rory Vaden
This is a revolutionary concept and I hope people are catching this because it's really life changing. There is like a trap content creators fall into which is just chasing more content. They're like sprinting, just burning out, like trying to post more content, trying to post their next best video, trying to constantly reach strangers, trying to reach the next person, maybe even getting off brand a little bit because they're trying to just go, broad appeal, what's a trend? How can I get the most views? Not even thinking about how to get the right views. But you just flipped everything. And I've heard it said that the quality of the answers we get in life is connected to the quality of the question. So it's like instead of asking what's my next viral video? Or how do I double my Instagram following or my YouTube subscribers, the question could be for those that are established at whatever level is actually, how do you take the customers you already have and apply fractal math four levels deep?
- [24:09]
Guest Expert
Yes.
- [24:09]
Rory Vaden
So how do I actually develop out my business and my offering and my offer rings and my communication and my depth with the current audience that's already there? Probably half of our Think Media podcast listeners could change everything in the next 12 months if they applied what you're talking about. Do you agree?
- [24:27]
Guest Expert
Absolutely. And do you want to know the four ways, the four things to do to be able to increase your price, to sell a higher priced product to your current customers?
- [24:36]
Rory Vaden
No, I don't, I don't think anybody cares about that. Let's move on. Just kidding. Of course I want to know the four ways.
- [24:40]
Guest Expert
Okay, so. So I've not shared these on any podcast before.
- [24:44]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [24:45]
Sean Cannell
Hey, we're about to get back into.
- [24:46]
Rory Vaden
The podcast in just a second, but.
- [24:48]
Sean Cannell
I have a question for you. Do you want to grow your personal brand this year? Do you need more leads and sales in your business, if the answer is yes, then right now is the best time to go all in on YouTube. Today's podcast is brought to you by thinkmasterclass.com where you can get on demand access to a 11 hour deep dive training revealing how to start and grow a profitable YouTube channel this year. For a limited time, you can get access to this on demand class entirely for free, where you will learn the three biggest mistakes that people make when starting a YouTube channel. The new rules and changes that have been happening on YouTube and how you can use them to create an unfair advantage, and the exact strategy we use at Think Media to generate over over 350,000 organic views every single day. The data is clear. 70% of viewers claim that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands. So don't wait any longer to start growing your brand and business with YouTube. Just go to thinkmasterclass.com to get access to this. No fluff, highly tactical, free on demand training. That's thinkmasterclass.com so we call, we say.
- [26:00]
Guest Expert
It'S the sexy formula.
- [26:02]
Rory Vaden
Okay?
- [26:02]
Guest Expert
S, E, X, I.
- [26:04]
Rory Vaden
Okay.
- [26:04]
Guest Expert
Okay. All you have to do is make your offers sexy.
- [26:07]
Rory Vaden
Okay?
- [26:08]
Guest Expert
The sexier offers become, the more likely that people will invest at a higher level with you. So here's the four things that people will pay you extra money for. So number one, the S in the sexy, it's an acronym. So the S in sexy is speed. People will pay for speed. They will pay to go, how do I move faster? You go to Disneyland, right? It's like fast pass, but pay big money. I will pay to get to the front, to the front of the line. So how do you help me succeed faster? So we'll pay for speed. So the E is execution. Execution. People will pay to have things done for them. So you go, what templates can I give them or what team can I give them? What technology can I give them? What tool can I give them to help them actually execute the things that you're teaching them? The X is exposure. People will pay extra for exposure. Can you put them in front of your audience? Can you feature them on your podcast, on your social, in your shorts, on your email, on your blog, whatever? People will pay big money for exposure. And then the I is intimacy. People will pay for access. They want to be up close and personal with you. So basically, as intimacy goes up and implementation goes up, price goes up, right? So sexy speed, execution, exposure and intimacy.
- [27:31]
Rory Vaden
Man, when you pair fractal math with the sexy framework, we now can see clearly that, okay, we don't just have to reach more customers and more people. We can go deeper. And I love this because I mean, use the math of kind of like a thousand customers. But if someone. And that, that with a $30 product to start, which brought us to $120,000 a year income, totally, which is really cool.
- [27:53]
Guest Expert
Which is.
- [27:53]
Rory Vaden
But like there's so many individuals that I think you could, you could pare this down. If you could reach a hundred people and then 10% of those would be 10, and then 10% of that would be 1 10, 000 a year, $25,000 a year, $55,000 a year. This is the creator economy. Anybody could get in the game, but they have to be thinking different about monetization, about their approach. So beyond views and subscribers, then if we're measuring this, what metrics do you think individuals should measure? And I wanted to tell a story. We, we actually had a social media meeting with some new social media team. Like we had a great team member transition. He went to work for his church, which is something we always champion, but we had a role to replace. And as we were getting somebody new that was kind of helping. They did a report and on the report they presented, here's how much reach we got and here's the new followers we got. And here's some of the likes. And this was post that did the most. All right, that was the end of the report. And. And that's what the full report was. Was it missing anything?
- [28:49]
Guest Expert
I think so, big time. So let's talk about the metric that everybody looks at versus the one that they should look at that makes all the money. Right. So those are all the ones that people look at is the likes, the views, the subscribers. The real metric you should be looking at is where do your customers come from? Where is your next customer going to come from? I promise you there is a very high likelihood that your next customer is not going to be a stranger on the Internet. Your next customer is most likely to come from your current customer. What we should be measuring is how many of our current customers are introducing us to their friends and how many customers are coming from our current customers. And we should be building like funnels and using AI and creating content for our existing community that serves them in such a way that makes our current customers want to introduce us to their friends, not just watering it down and creating content to try to appeal to a broader audience. So I want to know consumption. Right? Right. So at Brand Builders Group, so we're a membership, we're a coaching program, right? So we do one on one coaching. We do, it's all live events, it's all bundled together. And my wife aj, who's our CEO, she has a mantra and her mantra is utilization equals retention. Utilization equals retention. So our company internally is not consumed with how many, how much new exposure are we getting and how many new customers are even are we getting. We're consumed with how much are our current customers consuming the content that we have, how much are they watching, how much are they showing up, how much are they sharing, how much are they commenting? Engaging. And so internally we're looking at are they showing up for calls and showing up for events? But even inside of a content community it would be the same thing as like what's the watch? Time is what matters. This is why all the platforms care about it, right? It's going. If I'm going to build trust, I need people not just to watch, I need them to stay focused and engaged and complete. So we're looking at metrics around consumption. Less about attraction, more about consumption. Show me not that people are showing up, show me that people are staying. And don't just show me that they're staying, show me that they're sharing as a business. That's what's driving revenue, that's what's driving metrics, that's what's driving conversion, that's what's creating cash. Even though it may not be the thing that is rapidly accelerating followers and subscribers and you know, new email opt ins and those things. But that's why the whole world is consumed with all this surface stuff and they're all struggling and starving to make any money. Meanwhile the creators that have figured out, oh if I serve a smaller audience in a deeper way, they're going to consume more of my stuff because it's tailor made for them and they're going to, they're going to turn that into money.
- [31:57]
Rory Vaden
What if someone's listening to this with zero followers? So those who have existing customers, we have this massive epiphany to, to go deeper with our current community. We also can look at consumption rate, how much consumption transformation are people experiencing once they enter into our ecosystem. But of course there's individuals listening to this of like the new way to make money on social media to the faster way to make money without chasing virality, but to start making money right now and to make that first sale or to get that first customer or to design your first offer and so what would you do first in terms of the metric you're going to reverse Engineer back from. For somebody that's new listening to this.
- [32:38]
Guest Expert
That'S a great question. Yeah. What do you do first if you have no followers and you want to create money again? Let me tell you what you don't do. What you don't do is go, I'm gonna start this new thing. I'm gonna start a YouTube channel and think I'm gonna suddenly make millions. Right. That's like, you should do that. And it will build to that. But like, that's a crappy strategy for short term income. It is. I always tell people, marketing is slow, sales is fast, marketing is slow, but sales is fast. Now marketing scales. Long term sales tends to not scale as well. So now let me answer your question. If I really wanted to make money quickly from YouTube, let's just say YouTube and I had no following, what I would do is I would get super clear on my. Who. Who is my perfect client? Who is my perfect customer? Because I know if I get 10 of my perfect customer, I can make way more money from serving 10 of my perfect customers in a deep way than I can having 10,000 subscribers on a channel that is a bunch about a bunch of random stuff. So I would figure out, you don't start with why, you start with who. You start with exactly who you're trying to reach. And then I would make the most life changing one single video for that person and I would go, how could I teach the best of what I know? We say save the best for first. Save the best for first. Teach the best of what you know to that one person, to where you go, if that one person watched this video, it would blow their freaking mind. And I would, I would go all in on creating this one video. And then I would have one clear call to action. Like request a call, email me, fill out this link, QR code, doesn't matter. The tech doesn't matter. Just one call to action.
- [34:23]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Guest Expert
And then I would find people in real life who have that problem, who are that person.
- [34:31]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [34:31]
Guest Expert
And I would share that video with them. I would reach out to my offline friends, to my text messages, and I would say, do you know anybody who is a blankety, blankety blank who struggles with blankety blankety blank? And I'm not trying to make money as a creator in the way that people think of getting paid from the platform. I'm using the platform though, to make money and going this. What's amazing about a video on YouTube is like if I tell you how awesome I am, nobody believes me. But if I Send you a video or my friend sends you a video and you watch this video, right? Someone is going to watch this video who has never heard of Roy Vaden. They have no idea I'm a New York Times best selling author. They had no idea I'm working with, you know, these big clients that we have an eight figure company. They've never heard of me, never seen me speak, but they'll watch this and go, well, if Sean thinks this guy's good enough to have on, maybe I'll pay attention. And, you know, maybe not everybody, but hopefully somebody's gonna go, I see how these concepts could apply for me and I'm gonna buy from him. It doesn't matter if this goes viral.
- [35:35]
Rory Vaden
Yes.
- [35:36]
Guest Expert
I might only need one customer to go, this is amazing. He's talking to me, that person, that one person can buy and, and it can pay for a year of what I would be doing trying to make like generic viral videos.
- [35:50]
Rory Vaden
Wow.
- [35:51]
Guest Expert
So that is how I would use it. And by the way, I think I'm seeing a lot of big content creators who are monetizing in this same way. They've realized, you know, there's something to be said for volume and reps and practice for sure. And early in the life cycle of social media, there was a lot to be said about volume. Just the more that you're posting and there is always truth to that. But there is a point of diminishing returns, to just going like, literally, it's not. The more you post, the better. I mean, if I posted every minute of every day, that would not be good, right? Like, it would start to go backwards. So there is a point of diminishing returns. So what I'm saying is you can do more by going, what is my best performing video? And spend less time thinking, how can I create 50 new videos and spend more time going, how could I come up with 50 new ways for people to see this one video, right? What can I do on Instagram to get people to watch this amazing YouTube video? How could I drive my email list or my podcast or how could I use paid ads and go, this one video? And by the way, this is how we launched Brand Builders Group. I had one video of me on Lewis Howell's podcast because he was our first customer. I ran ads to a video that was free, right? And you could actually do that. So I run ads to that one video and make sure you save the best for first. Make sure that people see you in order for someone to buy from in order for someone to buy from you. You don't need to have millions of followers. You just have to earn their trust. The number of followers, the number of subscribers, that's one metric that maybe contributes to trust. But our trends in personal branding national research study proved that it's not nearly what people think. What makes people trust you is amazing content. Right. If I have a bunch of cat videos and I got bazillion followers watching my cat videos doesn't mean someone's gonna buy from me. But If I have one video that only 3, 300 people have seen, but it solves a very clear problem. Life changing advice for some small number of people. Those people might give me thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's where I think the magic is. So I think it's going, how can I syndicate this one piece of content that I know performs well? So to me, the volume game, the reason for the volume game is, is that is the test. It's the market test to go. Just create content, see what performs, but then play your greatest hits and be thinking about how do I get more attention to, to the existing videos. Which by the way is what YouTube does. It shakes your old videos.
- [38:38]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [38:39]
Guest Expert
That perform well and it keeps pushing them out. That's one thing that's great about YouTube because they know the value of that, that deep consumption, that deep trust. Not shallow views and likes and followers and subscribers.
- [38:53]
Rory Vaden
So if you're at zero, you would get hyper clear on the person you could help the most. You would craft the best video possible. Not saving the best for last, but the best for first to bring true transformation. You dropped a bomb in there. Follower account is not what actually carries weight and trust. Good content carries weight. I think that bounced off the ears of a lot of listeners and needs to even be said again, like if the content's truly good to the right individual, it's creating the light bulb moments, it's solving the problems. And we don't have time for it in this episode. But I want to actually reference in the show notes we have a whole series with you and we have a playlist where you break down content frameworks, break down titling content. Very tactical. So that are some previous thick media podcast episodes that we'll make sure are in the show notes. But that's so powerful because you really only need then one customer. You know, I'm speaking tomorrow during the keynote and here at Social Media Marketing World and I talk about the power of one view. One view, which is so underrated because people think that's meaningless. But actually one of our one on one coaching students, Stacy Tuchel, she actually has, she's been in it but her social media manager is a part of our Love Stacy VRA accelerator program. And through from being in that she does not have a huge YouTube channel. She is an experienced business owner with a couple of dance studios. Now she has well oiled operations helping other business owners that get their burnt out, tired, exhausted operational issues, hiring issues. So she's meeting entrepreneurs that are at kind of a mid like high six figure, even seven figure level. So she does a 45 minute deeper dive training almost like a webinar just on YouTube for free. That's public. Yes, like slide driven.
- [40:38]
Guest Expert
That's live stream ungated.
- [40:41]
Rory Vaden
Ungated. And it's. She gets 736 views which by all accounts again it's not thousands, it's not hundreds of thousands. And if we were to do the YouTube ad revenue on that had a good business RPM it's about anywhere from 40 cents to at the high end $4. So you would have earned four, four dollars from that video off YouTube ads. But she earned $30,000 because she got one customer for her high end consulting package.
- [41:15]
Guest Expert
That's it.
- [41:15]
Rory Vaden
The perfect business owner that's at multiple six figures that heard her content, that needed her, that saw that she was good for it. She has results she can get. And so she only needed one customer. And she like, so she like 3x is the investment into our program from just one sale. But she's playing an entirely different game. She's thinking entirely different. And it's definitely not about size and broad appeal reach. It's architecting content to attract that ideal individual. What do you think?
- [41:45]
Guest Expert
Yeah, that's exactly it. And think about how many videos she would have had to make at four bucks each to make $30,000 like hundreds.
- [41:52]
Rory Vaden
Like thousands of videos.
- [41:53]
Guest Expert
It'd be 10,000. It'd be 10,000 videos. And this is the game. This is the game people are playing and they can't figure out why they can't win. It's like I gotta create 10,000 videos to make $40,000. Or one video.
- [42:07]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [42:07]
Guest Expert
That reaches 700 people, but it reaches the right one person. I'm telling you, that's the whole conversation here. And you, and here's the thing, you have to start with who.
- [42:17]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [42:18]
Guest Expert
The sooner you're clear on who, you are addressing what. Once you're clear on your who, every single other downstream decision in your personal brand becomes crystal clear. But if you're fuzzy on who your who is every single other downstream decision. What content should I make, where should I post it, how frequently should I make it, what should the titles be, the thumbnails, who should I interview, what should I sell, how much can I charge? All of it's super fuzzy unless you're locked in and you're like laser focused on exactly who you're serving. So by the way, so, so we mentioned this event that we have coming up.
- [42:51]
Rory Vaden
Yep.
- [42:51]
Guest Expert
FreeBrandTraining.com think we're going to spend a day together live. Okay. Virtually, depending on when somebody watches this, we may or may not have the replay. But if you go to freebrandtraining.com think I'm going to lead this live one day experience. And like the number one thing is to help you find your who, to get crystal clear on your who. Because we know once that happens, you know exactly who, where to advertise, what conferences to go to, where you should speak at, where you should write articles, where you should syndicate this one video, who you should ask for referrals from your friends and family. That's where it starts. It starts with being crystal clear on that. And it also starts. So that's where it starts tactically. But one of the things, Sean, that I think a lot of people need to hear is a lot of this is an emotional decision and an emotional maturity to be willing to choose less vanity so that they can make more money. To say, I'm okay not reaching tens of thousands of people, I'm okay reaching less and making more. And the issue is more of a self. It's like an imposter syndrome that we have connected our identity to the volume of views and we've equated our self worth to the volume of views rather than to the depth at which we're helping people. And that's not true. I mean, you go, I mean, just look at this again, to this whole conversation about width versus depth. Somebody posts a video that gets a million views, another person adopts a child. Tell me who made a greater impact in the the world?
- [44:35]
Rory Vaden
Number two by far, probably number two.
- [44:37]
Guest Expert
Now, at some point you could go, well, if it was 100 million people or what's a video? And you don't have to choose between the two necessarily. But what I'm saying is everyone is chasing the one.
- [44:47]
Rory Vaden
Yep.
- [44:47]
Guest Expert
And they're the millions. Right. They're chasing the volume and they're overlooking the like, I could change one life. And that's not only how you could change that one life in a deep way. That's actually the more likely faster path to cash with less competition, that is higher probability, less luck, more trust and easier and simpler and all the things. But you have to emotionally detach from the number of views is my self worth. And I'm gonna. Here's the technique to do this emotionally. Think of your online audience as an offline room. Think of your online audience as an offline room. There's something mysterious about the psychology of views online where we go, oh man, 67 views.
- [45:37]
Rory Vaden
Yeah.
- [45:37]
Guest Expert
What a waste of time. What a bunch of crap. What a bunch of garbage. That Sean Cannell. He's full of crap. Like I couldn't. This is not worth it. This is never gonna work. No one's gonna imagine if you. If someone came out and said there's 67 people in this room and the speaker just got sick. We need someone to stand on stage. Most of us that would get our heart rate. Yeah, it's the same 67 people, y' all. It's the same 67.
- [46:04]
Rory Vaden
67 humans.
- [46:05]
Guest Expert
67 humans. And any one of those or a couple of those could buy and change your entire life and change your entire business.
- [46:12]
Rory Vaden
Well, Rory, that's so powerful. I feel like you actually just got to the heart of the whole issue of this whole podcast and that is the emotional mindset game. It's ego. I mean, you're tapping into like my abandonment issues. Like freshman year in high school when I didn't fit in as like a, you know, with the athletes and the jocks and the starting lineup at football and I was in jv, like. But we get into that because unfortunately social media can kind of be like high school.
- [46:40]
Guest Expert
It is.
- [46:40]
Rory Vaden
It's like we're trying to fit in with the cool kids and we're trying to flex the numbers and we're trying to have all that. But like what you just said, if we could detach to impact and ultimately income so there's money for the mission and sustainability and just who cares what other people think? Who cares if I don't have 6.7 million subscribers, but I've got 6,000 subscribers and a six figure business as I build this thing up or even less. Right. And so this has been so powerful. Well, I want to make sure that if people want to get be a part of this event where you're going to be going really do deep on the who and everything else we're talking about here. Link that in the show notes. It's one day and all they gotta do is pre order the new book.
- [47:17]
Guest Expert
Yeah. So normally we sell tickets to these events, you know, they're a few, few hundred bucks. But we have a the new book coming out, wealthy and well known. So we were like what could we do that would make it a no brainer for people? So if they go there, they'll see the information. You'll go pre order the book on Amazon and then you'll redeem at that receipt, that special, that special link and then we'll send you access to login to see the free training and then you just go through it.
- [47:40]
Rory Vaden
Huge win win. So if you hit the show notes you could go to grab pre order the book and get access to that event and then also check out the show notes for other of the past episodes for more tactics on this. Rory, if people want to follow you, where can they connect with you on social.
- [47:57]
Guest Expert
Actually I would just say go to freebrand training.com forward/think.
- [48:00]
Rory Vaden
That's the place.
- [48:01]
Guest Expert
That's the place. All my links and stuff are there if you want, but I would just say go there and then, and then we'll continue the conversation.
- [48:07]
Rory Vaden
Perfect. And think media podcast community. Thank you for listening to this episode like rate, share, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and I will connect with you in a future episode.