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- [00:00]
A
Really quick. If YouTube growth matters to you, you can't afford to keep guessing. The YouTube Growth Sprint is a free three day online event designed to give you clarity, focus and real momentum fast. You can register for free@ytsprint.com and we're also doing a bunch of cool giveaways, including gear for your YouTube channel, software that'll help you get more views and subscribers. And it's gonna be a lot of fun and you're gonna learn a lot. So just go to ytsprint.com to register for free. All right, let's jump into today's episode. So there have been some major changes and new opportunities when it comes to growing a YouTube channel or your social media following using AI.
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B
YouTube, like, come on. Like, people come here to see the light behind your eyes, see your unique perspective. Like, you don't wanna automate that away with like, script writing. You will ask it to extract your tone, your voice, your cadence and your vocabulary. Authenticity rules on this platform. Right? And there's probably certain words that you use that others don't use. Again, you might not be aware of them. You extract the vocabulary when you're turning your three minute voice note into a script.
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A
One of the biggest mistakes though, you see creators making when using AI for their channel.
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B
Yeah, okay. Actually, this is an easy one. I see this all the time. They use it to.
- [01:18]
A
My guest today is Igor Pagani and he is the founder of the AI Advantage, an incredible YouTube channel where he's going deep on that topic, but he's pumping it out incredible amounts of content himself and going to be also breaking down those workflows, some of the best video concepts and ideas that get views right now. So, Igor, welcome to the show.
- [01:40]
B
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you, Sean.
- [01:43]
A
So let's go 0 to 100 real quick. What's the biggest single best AI hack right now that you're enjoying or that YouTube creators and entrepreneurs could be using on their content?
- [01:53]
B
Okay, let's get the value out of the way. So. So look, there's so much you can do, but YouTube is particularly great when it comes to working with AI because as you might know, AI really likes rich context when you work with it, right. You say, write me an essay about xyz, it's going to be a random essay. If you say, write me an essay about XYZ and then you give it the last three essays that you wrote, and all of a sudden it's really going to be able to extract those patterns and understand how you write and what preferences you have right now. Here's the beautiful thing. If you're on YouTube, every video has a transcript, right? And that transcript is rich, right. As YouTubers, we're used to making videos that, you know, sometimes are 5 to 10 minutes, but often are 20 to 30 minutes if you're doing a podcast. Even more than that. All of that is context and all of that is very pattern rich context. That's what we're looking for with AI. Now if you're a short form creator, you know that 30 second short, like cool, you can extract the hook, you can extract like the value piece. Maybe there's a gimmick in there and maybe there's a formula to it. Sure. But really, YouTube is just so thankful with AI. So the biggest hack and the biggest unlock is working with transcripts. And then obviously the question is like, okay, Igor, I got transcripts. What do I do with those? Well, first and foremost, like the number one thing that I tell anybody creating long form content is just let it analyze yourself, right? Because it's so seasoned, it's so smart, it's so well ready. I don't care how many books you read, it read more, right? And it saw patterns across all of that. Plus, by the way, there was this whole thing where they were talking about how they OpenAI trained it on YouTube content, right? They kind of just ripped it and it was kind of like unclear and then it was swept under the rug. But like, truthfully, it watched most of YouTube, I think, and you can use that to your advantage. So what you're going to do now, let's get practical. You take your latest transcripts free, at least five, ideally. Okay. If you don't know, it's very simple on YouTube, you kind of just go under the video, you expand the description and there's a button on like 90% of the video that says show transcript. You can just copy paste from there. That's the easiest, no cost way. Sure, there's tools and other ways, but you just copy paste three of these transcripts into ChatGPT. You say transcript one paste, transcript two paste, transcript three paste, right? And then you tell it extract the patterns, habits and unexpected truths that I wouldn't even know myself as the creator of these videos. Those three keywords, use those in there. That's it. You gave it so much context, you gave it so many patterns. I guarantee you if you do that, you're going to learn something about yourself, about your video creation style that you might not have known. This helped me, it helped many others. I'M sure it'll help you too.
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A
Yeah, so that's incredible. Extract the patterns, habits and unexpected truths from these transcripts. When you did this, what was like one epiphany you had about your own content that you were able to double down on?
- [04:45]
B
Oh, my God. So we do this one content format on the YouTube where we pull together all the different stories. And then I basically, it's a news show, right? And the thing is, that's how I saw it. I thought, okay, it's a, it's a news show, right? When I did this on the past, I think I pulled like the past 10 transcripts and I ran this on it. It told me, hey, Igor, you're not just presenting the news, you're trying to tell a story. Every time you leave out the stories that don't fit together or are not that relevant to your audience, you're very clear on your avatar. Like non technical middle aged people who already have skills and are trying to amplify them with the use of AI so they have more like time to do what they want. Right? That's avatar. And then you weave it into a story. So you, you will cluster certain topics that belong together in that segment and you, you weave them together and you kind of give examples or sometimes you weave two things into one. You try to like tell something that's relatively coherent in a sea of, well, madness quite frankly, because that's what AI is these days. There's just so much of it, it's so overwhelming. And you try to tell a little story once a week. That insight to me was like, it's actually kind of true. So then it changed the way I think about it now. Like, in my preparation, I categorize these things according to their length, according to the theme. And in my head, I weaved them together in the preparation process. Whereas that took so much more like cognitive energy during the shooting because, like I was, you know, presenting, I was doing the tech stuff. You know, this is, as a YouTuber, like you always have to spin so many plates and this one just made it easier. It just felt like, okay, like in my preparation I can go deeper and I don't have to freestyle as much while recording, while doing all these other things. So prep the stories like that in advance. And it showed me what to prep, which was amazing.
- [06:32]
A
Yeah, that's super powerful. So I know that listeners will either save this or do this immediately and use that prompt you just gave us. Take three of your transcripts and then you find these key insights and you double down on it. So now it takes less cognitive load in the future. Such a powerful framework. Well, I'm curious. That's a really great hack to use AI to grow your channel faster. What's a big, one of the biggest mistakes though you see creators making when using AI for their channel or maybe where AI is overrated or less helpful.
- [07:05]
B
Yeah, okay. Actually this is an easy one. I see this all the time. They use it to create rather than to edit. There's a big difference on going from 0 to 1 rather than going from, you know, 1 to 90 NARA. Okay. Like in this analogy, it's a, There's a big difference between going from 0 to 1 and then going from 1 to like the polished finished product. What I see a lot of people do is they go in and you know, they give it a lot of context, but they say, you know, write me a script. That's like, like in my mind that's. I don't, I don't ever write scripts of it. Not to saying I never create scripts of it, but I don't write scripts with it. Big difference. So what you do want to do is maybe you want to hit the microphone button and you want to start speaking for three to five minutes and mind dump all of your thoughts regarding this video that you're creating into it and then tell it to turn that into a written script, right? Then it's like re editing and rearranging those ideas. It's using some of your writing or another one. In the first example, I told you to like use multiple transcripts to extract, you know, unexpected truths and patterns. Well, you can do the same thing, the step of the transcripts, but you will ask it to extract your tone, your voice, your cadence, and the big one, your vocabulary. As YouTubers, you know, we usually have a unique way of expressing ourselves. And that's like there's a, there's just authenticity rules on this platform, right? And there's probably certain words that you use that others don't use. Again, you might not be aware of them. If you extract the vocabulary, then if you have a list of that or that in a document, you can put it back in. When you're turning your three minute voice note into a script, right? You add the little vocabulary document and all of a sudden you're working with it, right? Maybe you're improving flow, maybe you're, if you're doing like for scripts, it doesn't matter so much, but you can do things like adding punctuation or fixing the grammar. You're editing, you're not creating. That's a big difference.
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A
That was one of the most powerful AI hacks I've heard this year. And so a lot of us want AI to write better for us or write in our voice. But what you can do, as you just told us previously, download a couple transcripts, three of them, in this case, prompt by saying, hey, can you extract my tone, my voice, my cadence? But then here's the super prompt of the year is what is my unique vocabulary? Can you put that in a list, save that, and then use that in the future? Because when everyone sounds like the same chat GPT script regurgitated it will have already. You don't have to sit down and try to think about all the unique words you use or the types of words you use. Just pull those out of a transcript and refeed those into AI in the future. And now it's going to sound like you. And what's powerful is that's a very contrarian take that. You just said you're like, I use AI to create scripts, but really not to write scripts or however you said it. And I think that's a trap a lot of people are falling into. We're even seeing especially faceless channels. But if there's no interchangeability and all the scripts are just, you know, like you said, authenticity is king. And so I love how we can use AI, but not just depending on it. We become vanilla. We just sound like everybody if we fully lean on AI. So you're giving us the exact prompts, another one as we before we get into like your YouTube tactics. And I really want to hear about even just your gear and your setup because you have this cool way of turning videos around quickly to hop onto viral stories. You talk about AI being a thought partner. Explain that a little bit when you're thinking about your YouTube channel growth strategy and some ideas that we could learn from 100%.
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B
So I think as you kind of graduate through these different levels of AI usage and as I experienced what's hopefully most of the facets that AI provides, most of the use cases like, I've literally made a living of just no lifing it and testing everything and then seeing what works for me and then working with others and seeing what works for them, one pattern that became clear over time is that there's a progression. And it's always the same thing. Okay. It's always the same progression of where people come in, they create an account and what's intuitive is to start using it as a Google. What's really intuitive for people is also to start drafting stuff, right? And that's the trap that I just talked about is like with an email draft, it's fine, right? Like you're kind of just moving information along. But with YouTube, like, come on, like people come here to see the light behind your eyes, to see your unique perspective. Like, you don't want to automate that away with like script writing. So let's just underline that last point. But what people do is they draft emails, they draft different documents, right? They use it to develop like a fitness plan that works really well. And all of these, like sort of like entry level use cases where it just makes sense. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, right? But there is way more, right? There's way more potential. And I think the biggest potential of AI lies behind its ability to hyper personalize things to you, right? So in other words, it's giving you outputs that wouldn't make sense to any other person on this world but you, right? That's where you want to get. That's where we start entering this territory of a thought partner, or what we also refer to as a clone, because you kind of clone yourself. Like there's a second you and you're in the same level. And what I can tell you is like people who kind of like reach that level and use it at this level, they couldn't imagine a world in which they don't have this anymore. They would, they wouldn't give this up. Like, it's as valuable, almost as valuable as their closest people in their life, right to them. Or like maybe, maybe a better way to put it is it's as valuable, it's more valuable than their most priced toys and gadgets. And it's just like smartphone level importance to your existence in this modern world. When you get it right now, how do you get it right? Well, first you need to kind of like master that first level and start getting comfortable there. But over time, there's a method to the madness. And it's basically what we teach is you develop these documents where you save certain characteristics and facts about your identity and your goals and why those goals matter to you in a document. And then you add that document to a project and you just keep using that and you work in there. That's your baseline, right? And the difference between just interacting with chat or maybe even having memories on where it randomly kind of pulls things together about you and really being conscious about that. And having this clone set up is like the difference of like being on a first Date with a girl versus being with her for six months. It's just. It's just familiarity. And all of a sudden, you can open conversations that are deeper because there's. There's context that is established. And all of a sudden, she, or, like, the clone or Chad will respond in a way where that answer wouldn't make sense in any other context, but it makes sense to you. And when you get to that level, you start, like, almost. I almost want to say, like, respecting how AI can help you. And I know even a lot of. Lot of leaders, I don't care what industry, I don't care how successful you were, they start viewing it in a way that they don't make big decisions without consulting their thought partner. And that, to me, seeing that over and over again says, like, one thing, and that's. This is just something that people. People should have. Like, it's just. It's just incredible. And it's, you know, doable in hours of learning and progression. So that's what a thought partner is.
- [14:42]
A
Did I hear you? This is like the levels. And so most listeners, you got to ask yourself, what level are you at when it comes to using AI? Are you using it just kind of as advanced search, Using it as Google, using it just to draft things? Have you cloned yourself? Those are the two big levels, Igor.
- [14:57]
B
Exactly. So that. And then beyond level two comes this level that has been hyped so much recently, right? This level of not AI just working alongside you like this as a thought partner or as an assistant, but an AI working for you while you sleep, right? Often this is in the public referred to as a personal agent. And really what that means is that all the stuff that you've been doing manually in chat now happens automatically, and it connects to more applications. So all of a sudden, like, if you think about it, like, if we think in YouTube terms, the difference there would be, you know, level one, you're kind of, like, using it to answer questions and do research. Level two, all of a sudden, you're maybe already, like, bringing in data and it knows you. You analyze your style, you. You. You analyze your transcripts, you know what your patterns are. You kind of have that saved and set up in your chat, and you're working with it. And maybe you, like, look at the past five podcasts you did, and you. You copy paste all the comment sections and you analyze all the comments, and then it gives you really good insights. Well, level three is where you can say, okay, go pull the past 50 podcasts I were on, and Analyze all the comment sections and then once it's done, you say okay, get another 50. And it just happens overnight. Right. And you don't have to sit there copy pasting. So those are really the three levels. But it's important to understand that just like school, you don't want to skip levels because if you skip from level one to level three, then it's like you're giving a stranger the keys to your car. It's a good car, but he doesn't know where you want to go. There's one way of putting it. Another one way of putting is you'll be going really fast but in the wrong direction. Like it really matters that you get that level two in between, that you get it dialed in, that you get it calibrated, that it knows your patterns, knows your habits, knows your identity, knows your goals. And then level three really works.
- [16:48]
A
That's mind blowing really. These three levels of using AI and for anybody that wants to grow their channel, grow an online business, make more money, impact more people, there's level one, using it as a Google drafting things. Level two, you clone you Level three, you get it working for you while you sleep. But it's a powerful insight to not just skip levels, especially in the midst of the hype and maybe follow the shiny objects of AI with a lot of truth under the surface, but doing it right and doing it in a process. Well, I want to really get into your YouTube strategy, but you actually are hosting a summit that's going to be going deeper into those levels and a whole bunch of other stuff. You're partnering up with Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi. It's like the AI Advantage Summit. We actually went to this six months ago. Brian, on our team, we joined your community and we've been loving everything we've been learning from you. But can you tell us a little bit about this summit? I'll put a link to this in our show notes if anybody wants to register. It's free. But how will it take people a little bit deeper when it comes to creating an advantage with AI?
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B
Yeah. So I love YouTube. Right? As do you. And as everybody that watches this does. Totally. I grew up with it and it's incredible. But the one big problem is like it's rarely can you build a curriculum that leads somebody on like a long journey. Sure, you can upload like a two hour video. Right. But there's a difference between having a two hour video or having free 30 minute videos with exercises in between. Like, it's just a whole different journey. So what we do over at the AI Advantage with the summit and everything around that is really, we take people on that journey that guides them through these levels and gives them all the wins that took us thousands of hours to unlock with AI. Right. A lot of it is subtle, a lot of it is not so subtle, but basically in just three days. And it's completely free. It's not kind of free, it's completely free. We have guest speakers, myself, Dean and Tony, all leading you through this journey of mastering AI and understanding how you can really put it to work in a way where it's going to give you back time and where it's going to increase the leverage in your personal life and your business. Right? That is. That is the ultimate goal. And we do that not to, you know, become like techy and have fun with it. We do that because, like, we want you to do more of what matters to you. Right. Ultimately, maybe that might be spending time with your family, maybe it's hustling more. It doesn't matter like it. It's up to you how you spend that time. But we give you that time back by leading you through these levels, by showing you this journey, by teaching you and really talking also about what's going on in the world. I mean, Tony's going to be interviewing Ray Kurzweil who's like, he's like the Edison of our age. It's going to be unbelievable. So you can sign up for free. May, April, April 23rd through 25th, free. The link is below and yeah, you can check it out there. And more on the levels also on that summit.
- [19:42]
A
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to be taking notes. So if anybody wants to check that out, we'll make sure there's a link in the show. Notes to the free AI Advantage Summit. You are crushing it on YouTube. 400,000 subscribers plus you are covering AI, but you have done some really cool things that anybody listening, business owners and creators could copy to get more views to grow their channel. And that is by some of your show formats, some of the strategies that you're using. So I kind of want to unpack those. Give us first an overview of what has been the weekly schedule or the types of videos that have helped you grow. Like, how'd you grow to over 400,000 subscribers on your channel?
- [20:25]
B
So first of all, I should say to start this off so anybody that's listening, they can put into context, right? Because I started my first YouTube channel when I was 17, which is 15 years ago now. And this is my fifth channel. Okay, this is the first one that really worked out in a big way. But I've just always been doing YouTube just for the love of the game. 15 years ago, was it 2011, nobody was doing it like for. There was no ad revenue, there was no sponsors. It was just like a bunch of people recording themselves, gaming and having fun on the web. So that's, that's kind of the cohort of people that I come from. And just in short, let's, let's now hop to this like AI moment and do this AI advantage channel. What happened is I was running two YouTube channels at that time and next to my video production company. So you know, I was, I never let go of this idea of like creating and producing. I always loved that all throughout my 20s. But I realized at a certain point like, I just want more self expression, I want more creativity. And I did that through the YouTube channel. Now I told you I was running two YouTube channels right now. What happened is like Covid came around. Like that started during COVID and I kind of learned like Python development and I started hanging out in communities who were doing that. And in one of these communities, just randomly, it came up that, yeah, there's this new thing called ChatGPT. It's really incredible now because I didn't have much of a personal life back then, honestly, I guess it is what it is. I was hanging out there every day and I found out about ChatGPT. I was like, what is this? Kind of go in there, I try it out and it blew my mind, right? You could do like storyboards, you could flesh out like these client emails. Those were the first things that I tried. And I was like, this is unbelievable. Now this is, that version of chat was compared to today. It's like, please, that was GPT 3.5 or something. It barely worked. But it was incredible to me. So as I usually do, I kind of like locked, like I closed the blinders, locked the door and I stayed inside all weekend and obsessed over it and kind of figured it out or like learned some, figured some stuff out for myself, right? And on a Monday I did what I usually do. I went back to work and I was like, I gotta create a video about this. Like I'm doing one of the channels was on video production and the other channel was on. It was actually on gaming NFTs completely, not even the investment side. And it was like technical tutorials around the tool. My most viewed video was like how to mint NFTs from the blockchain directly. Anyway, on that channel, I uploaded an AI video because I just figured I was interested. Okay, it's tech, whatever. That video, Instead of like 50 views, it got like 70 views in the first day. I was like, right on the money. Like, they want. This is great. This is what I'm obsessing now about and what they're doing. So what I did then is I uploaded one more right, two days later, and that video kind of just blew up. It got a thousand views in the first day. I was like, amazing. And it went on to be. I think right now, it's kind of insane. It's the second most viewed ChatGPT tutorial in the world. At a certain point, when people. That's the power of YouTube, you guys, by the way. Like, it's insane. At a certain point when people Googled, Like, I had a friend who lives in Dubai from University Times, and, like, he googled chatgpt and my face popped up next to the OpenAI logo. And he sends me this, and he's like, dude, I thought, this is a joke. I VPN'd over into, like, Asia. And it was the same thing. I'm like, well, so truthfully, like, that was, you know, preparation meets timing. Like, truthfully, you know, so I was doing it since a very long time at that point. I was uploading twice a week for two years, doing long live streams to get the channel monetized. Barely got over that hurdle. And I think that also helped the channel. So I want to add that that's like, a strategy, you know, I think if that was my first upload, the AI video, there would have been no existing audience. The 50 views wouldn't have been there for YouTube to gauge how it performs. It would have just landed in, like, zero View land. And this way, it was like, oh, this does a bit better than the rest. And I believe the signal from the first video amplified the second video. So, you know, it was two years of uploading in preparation, getting the channel monetized before, and then all of a sudden, it just took off. Now, mind you, this was December 2022. Yeah, so by Christmas, I already. I knew, like, the whole, like, online marketing game pretty well. So I wrote a book and I started an email newsletter. Like, one day before Christmas, I started, you know, just building the full stack, the full, like, ecosystem with products and everything, and then just kept going. And that stuck with me, you know, And I think, like, the lesson there is really, like, timing is not everything. Because, you know, I think if the channel wasn't monetized at that point. It wouldn't have worked if I wouldn't have had like already two years of like speaking on camera behind my belt. That wouldn't have worked either. I think if I wouldn't have had like a video production company before that and like a good setup and everything, that wouldn't have worked either. So timing is essential, but it's not everything. And I kept that throughout and I'm happy to share how we use that today. And videos that do really well on the channel.
- [25:29]
A
Well, I think you just broke down a full stack of tips for listeners to just also think about because so many are on the climb and I mean you got 400,000 subs, they've got 40 or four, you know, and we all start from zero. And sometimes it can feel like, man, how do I, how do I break through? But that's your story is the untold story of so many successful content creators. This wasn't your first channel, it was your fifth channel. And the stack of practice, it's underrated that the more time we have to practice to develop our voice, develop some communication skills plus preparation. You've done different channels, getting ready, even being in spaces, I always think about that. People wait too long on the sidelines, overthinking, not realizing that if you get in the game right, they're afraid to pick a niche, they're afraid to pick a topic. But once you get in the game, there is a relate, it's related gaming NFTs. It's kind of that digital space, forward thinking. So you know that first or current idea that if you're listening to this, it may not be working, it's still working on you even if it's not working. And it's working for you because you might pivot in the future, but you're taking action. Preparation, timing, right time, right place, you see that AI of course there's insane traffic around that one topic. Not every niche is as big. But you just never know what the future holds. You know, somebody could be talking about Lord of the Rings and it's not super hot. And then Amazon prime launches the Lord of the Rings show and all of a sudden your Channel 10 X's because you never really know if sourdough is going to be a trend again. But if you're strategically taking action, so there's that timing and then I just think perseverance, it's like a really good foundational mindset for any of us, whether we're trying to reach 4,000 subs, you know, 40,000 or cross 400K. But I want to ask you. So now you have a workflow though. And I think one of the most powerful things from talking to you about your channel is a system like kind of like a weekly routine. What is your YouTube routine that's helping you consistently get views, grow your channel so that things can be sustainable for you to create content.
- [27:41]
B
Yeah. 100 we're super systematized especially because as kind of everything grew it's. You just don't have the time to be like a full time YouTuber where you spend like 40 to 60 hours a week on the content. You really have to. So the first thing that I did was as most people do and as most people probably should do, is outsource the editing. Now I was the quintessential guy who would claim nobody can replicate my editing style. I have my Sean, I have my 10,000 plus hours in just Adobe Premiere Pro and I was messing around with other software in the beginning. I was a freelance videographer turned, you know, video production company owner all my twenties. I did like in the beginning I did like three nightclubs a week and I edited everything myself. Each one of Those took. Took 812 hours. I was doing that for years. So I really thought like that's irreplaceable. That was the first thing. So it takes some time. I always tell people, don't judge editors on the first edit. Judge them on how they take feedback on what you tell them after the first edit and then give them a few more shots and see how they readjust. And now by this time my editing team is incredible. They get so creative with it. They have their own language, right. And it's just amazing. So that was the first piece but now also we have a producer now that prepares scripts and does research. We have a research team too that we also utilize in other parts of the company. We also have some automated research workflows where. Where that feeds into the research team. But really ultimately I, my goal is to get it to a point where I do. I spend as little time as possible on the YouTube while not sacrificing the performance. So I think the high leverage things, right. I always love being involved in the title thumbnails discussion. I obviously have to record and also have to stay on top of the content because AI is very unique in that it's new every week and I actually need to be playing with those things. So I spend my time there but I don't spend my time in graphic design or editing or I don't Spend my time in ideation for the thumbnails, right? I want to have the final word give me some options. But I like, even now, I extracted myself from the ideation meetings too. Whereas for years I used to be there every time. But it's like, no, they got it. Like they know my thinking patterns. And if they don't, I'll use AI to formalize them and give it to them. Like, hey, this is the rating system. This is what we're looking for in the thumbnails. Hey, I take screenshots of the best 20 performing thumbnails and what patterns exist across these? And then I edit that myself and I give it to them. And that can give them guidance. So we pretty much systematized everything except of me recording and me actually playing with the tools. Because that's just essential to me being a trainer and a creator in this space. But we have a really good system. And that system then slots into a content cadence if we do one news video a week. Although I always refuse that format. It's essential for the channel. Like, you know, in the AI niche, new stuff's been coming out that, that covers it. And then we do these beginner tutorials where we use a formula where we say XYZ in X minutes. Like how to XYZ in X minutes. That works really well for us because there's just so much new stuff in AI all the time. And what I found over time is that kind of like my unique gift that life has given me for everything that I went through, I found that I can really simplify things down well for people. And really people at all levels have an ability to follow. And that's why those short videos, those short tutorials, they perform really well. Because it's not just that I get the click with packaging that is like, what? Like no way. I thought this skill takes hours to learn. How can you make a 10 minute video? Like teaching that, but then also that video delivering on an outcome. And then, you know, they subscribe and they come back and that's really what it is. You gotta get them in and then keep them watching. That's it.
- [31:35]
A
So I want to hear a little bit about your like actual physical content creation tech stack for making these. But just so I'm clear, and you dropped a lot of. It might be worth rewinding and saving this episode because you talked about some team stuff, systems and structure. But your upload schedule is one news video per week and then one video on how to XYZ in X minutes. Is that correct?
- [31:57]
B
That's the base. Sometimes we kind of veer from that, but we try to do like one tutorial and one news video a week.
- [32:04]
A
Okay. And then you specifically said a title that maybe doesn't apply to everybody listening, but I think everybody listening should, should try this. How to XYZ in X Minutes. That's. That's not just a title. It's a content format and it's a concept that is incredible in a day when the most valuable resource I think it's almost that anybody has is time itself. There's so much overwhelm so much. And you doing the heavy lifting. I mean that's why even your channel and the event y' all are running, it's like you're investing the thousands of hours like you. You need specialists that you can follow that invest the thousands of tens of thousands of hours. And it is difficult to simplify complex things. So you know, this is a longer form podcast, but we've been talking a lot about shorter long form content. And that shorter long form content being 10 minutes, 13, 18 minutes. Still long form, still rich. But it's honoring people's time which is such a scarce resource. I encourage you think media podcast be thinking about that of maybe how to distill down some of your ideas. But I am curious because one of the things you have set up is these news videos that when we talked before you said you can sit down and just like hit record and record these in 15 minutes. You do this at what's your home office. I'm actually curious if you do at least like a flyover of your tech, how are you recording that? Are you screen recording? How do you teach through? Because there's a lot of busy especially professionals that I think could imitate what you're doing and get incredible results in their industry. Business owners, finance professionals, real estate, cover the news or do something quickly. On our team, Craig calls it quick and dirty YouTube videos like because sometimes we over polish you've developed. Yeah. Break that this framework down for us of how you're doing that and what gear you use.
- [33:52]
B
So just to say like we especially use this when. When news really breaks and I, I create like and that this allows me to. I don't know. OpenAI comes out with GPT5 and this allows me to have an upload of 2 to 3, 2 to 3 hours within the blog post being posted. Right.
- [34:08]
A
Okay.
- [34:09]
B
So this is where I mainly utilize this and it's in short, it's basically bringing a live streaming mindset to recording a YouTube video. It's like you don't take breaks. If you say something wrong, you correct yourself and you keep going. And you kind of just imagine that you're talking to a person that's there, right? If you're over coffee with somebody, you're not going to be like, I said that wrong. If you over coffee with. I said that wrong. If you're over coffee with somebody, you're not going to do that, right? But we catch ourselves in those loops when we have the ability to edit. When you know you can edit. But this is really something that it's not easy. I'm not here sitting here claiming that's an easy thing to do, but it's incredibly efficient, right? Because you just hit record, you talk for 10 minutes. That's the video. Most likely you don't even need to edit that much, depending on your speaking ability. Now here's a real kind of hack that I found for people who might try this or not. Like, be like, not sure I can do that, man. If you just put a person behind that camera, even if you just FaceTime, my friend, I tried putting YouTube videos of people behind. That doesn't work. I need to fool myself properly. But in a live stream, I'm not gonna get stuck, right? I kind of just talk through it. When I stumble over my words, whatever, I'm like, it's okay, we keep going. Right? Now if you can put a person behind that camera, it becomes really easy because you just talk to them, they hit record and then you keep talking and keep explaining and that you kind of got to trick yourself. All of us could like explain a concept to a friend over coffee in 10 minutes that we're confident on, right? But somehow that YouTube camera comes on and you're like, oh my God. Gotta make it perfect. You can edit this. This could be better. My hook could be better. Just. And so now let's get into the weeds of what that actually looks like production wise. So it's a live streaming setup, you know, I have. Because I had the video production company is overkill. I have a Sony FX6 on a tripod and that's linked via cam. Link 4k into my Mac mini that records it through ecamm live on a Mac. And then I have a Rodecast Pro 2, I think that links into Audio Technica RE20. That's on a boom. Arm off the table. No, it's an arm from the table. And that's it. It's all just linked together and it's all recorded in software. And then I Do the camera switching between my screen. Because you know, AI stuff is a lot on your screen. I do the camera switching on the little switcher that I have. What is it? Elgato, you know, stream deck. And I just have one preset for screen plus me in the bottom right and the second preset for just camera. So start the video. I'm like, hey, what's up guys? Welcome. Today we had brand new news from OpenAI GPT5. It's unbelievable. They upgraded its computer usability. It is better at using agents. Blah blah, blah, blah blah. Let's get into it. And then I just press the button and edit myself and it switch to my screen and the recording software. You know, there's no editing needed because you just go to the screen and then you just go ahead there and you're talking. You're in the bottom right. Screen is in the middle. The mic is still the same. You kind of go for the whole thing. If you want, you can always switch back and kind of make a point to the camera. I do that sometimes. It's kind of nice, you know, adds dynamics. But then yeah, I just finish up the video like that. It gets saved. And then my video editing and graphic design team, they just design a thumbnail while I'm recording the video. I just ping them immediately. It's a protocol internally we call it a code red and it's like when code head reads, they make more money. But it can also come at any time and we've become pretty good at kind of doing that. So yeah, that's a way to pump out videos quickly and efficiently. And if you get good at it, all of a sudden you can do like free videos in an hour, you know. Now. Yeah, you can edit them too, right? But it also just works.
- [37:47]
A
That's amazing. So a couple things for listeners. Let me summarize some stuff and get us all synchronized here. One, I love that you gave the disclaimer that, you know, you've really worked up to this, your level of production knowledge, your experience on camera switching, et cetera. But what I'm going to do for our community is there's actually, we call it our 2 under $250 live streaming setup. And a real estate agent in our community recently got this simple webcam. 250 bucks insta 360 simple USB mic, simple light. And then he's using Streamyard and he's doing like Seattle Metro real estate updates. He goes, he actually does go live. He goes live talks good or bad beginning. You're Live. And so he talks, he shares his screen. It's a very user friendly software and if you're interested in that, I'm going to put a link to that. It's just a Google Doc. I'll put that in the show notes and you could check out that gear checklist and some other things. So we'll put that there for you. You just got the fancier gear, but basically it's camera plugged in the cam link. Ecamm Live is a great software. It's Mac only though. And what's really cool about that though is you're capturing it. Rather than capture to an SD card or separate whatever, you're switching live, right? So you're saying you only have two preset scenes. Sounds complex, but basically it's like you on camera or you screen share and you switch that whole thing live. Correct. Which means as you're filming you just click on your mouse between the two looks. You've got used to kind of having a hook teaching through your screen share that becomes an exported file through your software. You upload that directly to YouTube. You mentioned having a team, but anybody listening to this, then your next step would be come up with a good title design a great thumbnail, make that video public. But the big key here is how can you have a low friction setup that when news breaks, you're saying you're publishing a video within two to three hours of the news breaking. And that's the real key, right?
- [40:00]
B
Yeah, 100%. So on the technical side, that's a fixed setup. Right now I'm in Miami traveling and this is my mobile setup. It's simpler, it's just one light. There's also like, I use what like two lights basically at home. But the real key is the velocity of like the upload, right? So even like if you're doing that solo, if you do everything that Sean outlined so beautifully there, what you can do is you can just like while it's uploading to YouTube, you can just throw it into some software that pulls you the transcript of that recording and you can throw that into chat. Be like, give me 10 titles that fit my channels again. Ideally you already have a set up there that knows you right where it knows how you title. Usually you want to fix these things in the custom instructions or in the context files. As we talked about at the beginning. You don't have time, right? You don't have time to like mess around and now go and pull the lightest 20. So, so you go in there and while it's uploading, you could come up with title and thumbnail. Now, look, practically, I always start with title and thumbnail because then it allows you to reframe the video. So actually, ideally you would add. But that being said, there's always instances where I do it during the upload. I remember in the beginning I used to, oh, my God, it's uploading. Here. I'm in Photoshop. I'm brainstorming title ideas with chat. I'm doing it all at the same time. It just uploads. Boom, boom, boom. And also sometimes what I do is I do a thumbnail that is like a placeholder. I just want to get it up. So the thumbnail is maybe like a 6 out of 10, but I go with it. And then I spend the next 30 minutes refining the thumbnail and I update it. But you already have traction. And I don't know, especially in the AI space with competition being so high that velocity really matters. Like, if I upload the same video three hours after the news breaks or just 24 hours after the news breaks, we're talking four times the views.
- [41:49]
A
Wow. I mean, think about that now. Not everyone's velocity and niche as as hot, but 99% of niches at some point. And that's, I think a big key. News is not always breaking. It is an AI but in other niches. But if you've got alerts of some kind set up and this will be a conversation for a future time or really what people should do is register for the summit that you're hosting with others. Because getting the right AI tools in place to get you that right information. So then you're like, when you're ready. Hey, honey, instead of watching, you know, a show tonight, I had to see it a couple hours because if I jump on this just in 3 hours vs 24 hours later, could be 4x more views. And some of us are reaching stories days later. Still good. There's still like a long tail there, but speed to upload could be a major edge. The promise of today's episode is how to grow your YouTube channel with AI and AI. AI can really give you that edge. Well, listen, there's so much more we could talk about this. I want to make sure people are subscribed because we're bringing you back for a couple other episodes. And this was pure gold. So we're going to have those. I also want to make sure people get registered for the summit because obviously AI is changing the world. It of course matters not just for growing a YouTube channel. But really for listeners that are thinking about, they're already entrepreneurs, they want to build an at home business, they're looking at AI disrupting even the jobs market and thinking about starting side hustles. Investing in your AI education right now is probably the most important investment that you could make.
- [43:20]
B
Yeah.
- [43:20]
A
And the fact that this summit is free, it's a pretty good price. So if you want to register for the summit, we'll have a link in the show notes. I mentioned a few other resources that we'll have for you, including Igor's channel that'll all be linked in the show notes. But again, tell us a little bit about that summit in terms of, I mean, zoom out a little bit and you're getting to study this all day. I'm already on, you know, the, I'd say kind of the, maybe not the bleeding edge. I'm like an AI early adopter. You're on the bleeding edge. You're the expert. We look to, to, to give us some information where we're at in today's landscape. What is the urgency of like, no matter how busy life is, not missing an event like this just because of the sheer disruption of AI. Break that down a little bit.
- [44:06]
B
I think the big problem is a lot of it like compounds. Right. So what I laid out there, what we learned across teaching hundreds of thousands of people is like that framework is very real, the three levels. And the problem is the people who are just hanging out at level one, not just that they're missing out at the benefits and the time savings of level two, that's fine. The problem is the world is evolving into this level three, this kind of agentic reality. And the thing is, Level 3 only properly works if you've done the work at level two. And the results that, it's just, the results are completely different. It's not just people doing things, the same things more efficiently at that final level that everybody should aim to get to eventually. If you want to stay relevant in the coming years, you just have to, you think really there's going to be a reality where there's one YouTuber who is doing everything manually and the second YouTuber is ripping a hundred transcripts and analyzing 10,000 comments overnight and that they're gonna, it's not a level playing field anymore. Right.
- [45:10]
A
Wow.
- [45:12]
B
So at level three, things start becoming possible and you just have a new way of operating versus people who are like blindsided to this. And it's developing every day. Like we know that. Right. And what I always say is like not every Latest update matters, right? These companies, they always hype everything up. All the creators hype everything up, because that's how it works. You got to amplify. Your thumbnail's got to be a 10, not a 8. You use more sensational words to get people in there, and once they're in there, you deliver the best content. So it's good, and it's good that they clicked on it. These companies do the same. They want to increase their valuation, but they overwhelm people, they scare people, and then it just starts feeling like too much. And I get it. Like, we get it. Like, both Tony and Dean, their entire life, they've been helping people manage their emotions and become the best versions of themselves. And now in this partnership, I get to show people how to do that through the usage of AI. And what the summit is about is not about the latest, greatest thing. Like, we might, you know, talk about it, but the whole point is just giving you a system so that you know where you're at and you know where the next step is and so that you can thrive in this new age, not just survive, right? Everybody, like, watching this. They're probably already really good at something, right? If you've been around, you build certain skills and you. You have experience that is unique to you. Now, AI is like this great amplifier, and our job is to show you how to amplify the goals that already is there. And that's. That's the whole mission. We do that for giving you time back. We do that for giving you more leverage on that goal that you already have. But ultimately, it's going to be up to you to take those steps and to take that action, because nobody else is going to do it for you like this. Technology is democratized. It's available to all of us. It's up to you to use it. So, yeah, summit, April 23rd to 25th. We're going to show you all that and more. Lots of amazing speakers. Don't miss it. The train has left the station, but it's up to you to kind of run a little and catch up, get in the train, and then do what you do, but in an amplified and empowered way.
- [47:24]
A
I appreciate you breaking that down, and I can't wait to continue to learn from y'. All. We joined your community because obviously your mission to be the number one AI education company in the world is super inspiring. And we're just trying to think about, man, keep us on the cutting edge and help us do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice for freedom, our sanity, and allows us to prioritize things. So Think Media Podcast, grateful for you. And if you want to register for the free AI Advantage Summit with Igor with Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosis and a bunch of other great speakers, we'll put a link to that in the show Notes. We mentioned a few other things as well, so always take advantage of those. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. This is the Think Media Podcast and we can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.