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There is something that happens when you get in a room with the right people that just cannot be replicated by a course, a podcast or a live stream. The energy shifts, the excuses fall away, and you leave with a level of clarity and momentum that you couldn't create on your own. The Think Media Mastermind is that room. It's a live, in person, two day event in Las Vegas. It's small by design, intensive, and by application only because we make sure the room is stacked with incredible creators and business owners. If you're serious about using YouTube to build your business or grow your side income, stop waiting and go apply right now@thinkmediamastermind.com all right, let's dive into today's podcast.
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Podcast.
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If you want views in 2026, you do got to up your game. There's more competition than ever before and that would be thinking how well are you communicating your thoughts and ideas? Let's like break down five to 10 things that make a long form video interesting. Welcome to the Think Media Podcast. I'm fired up for today's episode. First of all, I'm standing on the streets of Seattle, Washington. Second of all, we're about to dive into a deep dive Q and A that happen at the Seattle Creator Summit. We're talking about the creator economy, how to get views, how to structure your content, and really how to be making money as well. Today's episode is brought to you by thinkmediamastermind.com if you actually want to meet up with me and our coaches and our team in Las Vegas, we're doing a two day event. You can apply@thinkmediamastermind.com or I'll put a link to it in the description down below. If you also not just want great content, but a chance to to have myself and our coaches looking at your analytics, talking to you in between sessions, really going deep with AI tools, frameworks, and really figuring out how to start and grow your YouTube channel to the next level, especially with the changes that are happening. Definitely check it out and there's a link to that in the show notes. But let's dive into today's featured content on the Think Media podcast. Right now, the state of the creator
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economy and especially in long form. In particular, I'd like to talk about some of the growth that's happening in the creative platforms and some of the edges. Then we'll shift and we'll go on a little emotional journey and think about some of the challenges and we'll kind of take it home at the very end if that's all right with you? The first one is about the growth and edges and I'm curious about that idea. We were talking beforehand and you sent me an email with some of the research that you've been doing recently and you talked about how the fact that on long form platforms the money is real and growing. What does that mean right now for creators when they're looking to monetize in terms of how they're strategizing which content they're creating?
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Well, I think we could first zoom out on the opportunity in the creator economy and that is that in the last four years, YouTube just YouTube has paid out $100 billion through the YouTube Partner Program.
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B
That's crazy.
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So there's a lot of money, of course, that goes to the top 1%, but there's also insane billions of dollars that is being distributed on the long tail to creators of all sizes. So there's such a significant financial opportunity and that's just YouTube and that's just ad revenue, not multiple sources of income. And then the most recent research right now reveals from Goldman Sachs and others that the creator economy is a $250 billion industry, which is massive. Which is, you know, those of us in this room, whether we're just getting started, we're already making money, we're thinking about the future opportunity, but that in the next seven years, I believe it's going to about 1.2 or $1.4 trillion.
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Wow.
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Which is massive growth. That's 4x growth, 4 to 5x growth in the next seven years. So I don't know if, you know, a lot of us can relate. We think it's too late to get into the content game or it's so hard now. Competition is fierce. Is it too late to start? These are legitimate questions because algorithms, competition. But the math itself, like if we just look at the math, the growth is so massive. I think that if you got the right strategies, you know, you're coming to events like this, you're networking, you're working on your craft, you're improving. The future looks bright for the creator economy and the financial opportunity is insane.
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B
I have a question around that actually, which is that, you know, I think that there is a tension slightly, there's alignment between attention and monetization on any of these platforms. Of course, that's how you monetize, by garnering attention. But I do think that there are times where those diverge a little bit. Right. Not all attention is valued the same in terms of your ability to monetize it. And of course not everybody monetizes that attention that they have. In the same way, when you think about that growth that you just described, with those opportunities going, what would you prioritize? Would you prioritize the monetization or would you prioritize the attention?
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I feel like that question is a false binary.
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Fair.
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Yeah. So, yeah, like you have to choose one. I think I would zoom out from that and say that when you're developing a creator strategy for any platform, I think you want to ask, of course, some fundamental questions, like who is your target audience and what problem are you solving for them? Like, everybody in this room needs to know, like, who really is my target audience? And then what problem does my content solve? And I think there's two big categories, and that's going to be you're either in entertainment or you're in education. Are you going to be in entertainment or are you going to be in education? And so if you are going to win, when you said, would you ask, would I prioritize attention or would I prioritize monetization? Yeah, I think, I think it's a false binary. I would prioritize both. But how you approach it's going to vary depending on entertainment or education. So if you are in entertainment, you really want to be studying virality. You want to be thinking mostly, you know, as big of numbers as possible. Because typically with a model of ad revenue from platforms and brand deals being your big primary drivers, you know, maybe fan funding like Patreon, you're. You want usually higher volume and you are looking at lower RPMs, how much money you're paid on views for broader entertainment audiences, significantly lower than in education, typically.
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And that's in specifically with AdSense or that's across, like maybe across platforms.
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Yeah, because on any given platform, you could just think about it from an advertiser's perspective, the more generic the audience is. Or you'd ask what's the buying power of the audience? So if somebody's in bed just scrolling, what is their intent right before they go to bed? Maybe just kind of trying to unwind, be entertained a little bit, whatever comes my way. I spend most of my just kind of social media consumption time on Instagram and I Instagram reels. My algorithm is so dialed with the stuff that's showing me. And the stuff is showing me is so weird and my God doesn't know me. But Instagram, like, it's just getting to know what we think is funny. And actually my reason for being there is almost purely entertainment, random stuff, funny, reels you can send to your friends, etc. But that's the intent, my intent of being there is not a credit card in hand like researching or ready to spend money or whatever. So anyways, entertainment RPMs across meta platforms and everywhere is just going to be lower interesting than let's say an education audience. And then these are the things that lead to audiences that making more money. You really just ask what's their buying power? You know, what's the buying power of a 21 year old versus what's the buying power of a baby boomer, which there are many on all platforms consuming content that are maybe looking for a financial product to. They look for a financial advisor to manage their $2 million in retirement at 1%, 1.5%, you know, fee. That baby boomer is worth like maybe tens of thousands of dollars to whatever business where somebody else that they're just trying to get to buy a consumer package good or something like that. So all that to say is that you think about usually an older audience, different demographics and especially in like personal finance, real estate, business, but even fit like you get into fitness, it's going to be higher than just entertainment. You get into some travel. So there's that, that's that arc of like the type of views you get. Let's try to summarize. I would be most concerned, at least I am personally most concerned with not how do I get the most views, but how do I get the right views. Yeah, and that's my. I'm in education, so I, you know, teach cameras and lighting and YouTube strategy itself. So I don't know if that was a good answer to your question, but that's how I think about it.
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Yeah, that helped. And I think the distinction between entertainment and education is a huge one. Even going back to what I was just discussing about the TV shows and things like that is that you take a look and there's educational TV shows and there's entertaining TV shows and that's a big binary that you see in that world as well. Right?
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Exactly. Right. Yeah. I think that your show model is huge for both entertainment and education.
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And let me talk about that a little bit. Right. Because obviously that was inspired by the idea that the viewing device was tv. It's making us think differently about the content that we create. Right. And one of the things that we got to chat about or that you kind of were showing me was that idea that connected TV is kind of a big play right now when it comes to long form content. I think I have it Here, which is that from Variety, you had some research that said TV surpass mobile as the primary YouTube viewing device the US during Q1 in 2025. How is it under exploited?
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Television.
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Television, yeah. Making content for the television.
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Yeah. I mean I think I know that not all of us have started creating long form. Some of us are, you know, maybe not sure what our next move is. And lots of us are, you know, one of the things in the research that I sent you before our talk was I just think video length. I think video length plus the format to support the video length.
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Yeah.
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Like because you're not just making longer content for longer content sake. That is not holding viewer retention or is not interesting. But one of the most fascinating recent stats was two things that came out of that research. One that showed the top viewed YouTube videos were trimming their length. They were trimming the fluff more than ever before to get around 28 minutes.
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B
Really?
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And the length of 28 minutes is basically the top performing long form metric. Right. Interesting. There's some other studies where also what's fascinating is up to 30. This was one of 10 study 50,000 YouTube channels and up to 30 minutes. Right. Around 25 to 30 was the highest performing video length for YouTube long form. And then between 30 and 60 it cratered a little bit. It didn't perform as well. But then when you got past 60 and even up to an hour and a half or longer, it actually shot up again. Huh. And. And that'd be the person pressing play on the long form podcast. Yeah, that's like letting that thing rip, whether it commute or whatever. And, and, and other things as well. And I do think if you study, you know, you look at Ryan Trahan and you know, Mr. Beast and these types of channels, why are all their videos 28 minutes? I mean, I guess they also go to 44 and 43. You could overdo the math a little bit and you know they're getting 50 million views regardless or whatever. So. But, but I mean across way more channels than that. I think that's interesting. So to answ, how do you optimize for connected TV? What's fascinating about 28 minutes? That is the length of your typical 30 minute TV show, half hour soap opera or news segment, including advertising.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So that's a good question for everybody to ask. If I was going to create a show you recommended, hey, create your show. What show am I going to create and how long is it? But I think it's also fascinating is like we have a Show. We have a podcast and we're not. We're all over the place. We do 70eens, nineteens, 40 fours an hour and you know, 15. And so there's a lot of variables but to me it's a length thing and then reinforcing that length with quality. Quality, like what's, what is the format that people will enjoy? What are they returning for what's happening in that time? How do I expand the content while keeping. This is a good term for everyone in the room to write down. It's VPM. I think every creator in 2026 needs to be thinking about VPM. It stands for value per minute. Value per minute. So many short form creators could benefit from that because it's how much value is coming in 33 seconds on TikTok. But as you step in the long form, that's an interesting thing about how the game has changed. If you stitched a bunch of 30 second TikToks together, how much value per minute is in your long form and so what's the value proposition of the show? Is it. Oh, that was an unique insight. Wow. They really, that's, that's really good teaching. Oh, that was a good story. They, you know. Or is there craters and where it gets boring. You lose the plot, you lose the storyline. Some movies value per minute. You're on the edge of your seat. Some movies, they got the biggest budget and the best cgi, but the storytelling so bad.
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Yeah.
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That you just don't care about the characters and this, you know, you lose it. So value per minute I think is interesting. So that would be what I'd be kind of optimizing for is what is a long form video length that is pushing up to those higher numbers for connected tv. So much money there. You're in living rooms, you're on every type of device. There's a lot of opportunity with going longer and then how can you pack as much value inside of that as possible in terms of entertainment and even getting more granular. You are with beyond like it's really dopamine hits like if. Yeah. How a good comedic special on stage of the best Netflix come comedy shows is how many jokes hit how. How consistently are those hitting. If you're just listening to education podcast, getting geeky on YouTube Analytics. How long are you going to wait until you're like oh that was good or that's a takeaway I could take. Or that was interesting in the way
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B
that you framed it there. The idea of it's almost we're going to talk about competition and some of the challenges here in a second. So I want to frame it in the. In the terms of competition, which is that the value per minute is something that is a metric that you can measure across platforms. Right. Like, so is your long form content giving the viewer equal or more value per minute than their TikTok feed is kind of what you're getting out there in that scenario.
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Yeah. I think. And by the way, that's probably nearly impossible because short form is so cracked out, you know, in terms of how much, how many hits you can get. But nevertheless, that's what you're aspiring for. That's why a lot of people are stuck in there. I mean, because I can just, if I'm not getting it, that I'm gone. Like, okay. Oh, that one's pretty good. Even if it's good halfway through, you swipe again.
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Yes.
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Yeah. So that's at least what you're competing for. Now. The intent of the leanback experience is it doesn't have to be of the same, if you will, format. I think that would almost. Well, some of the AI slop stuff and some of the kids optimized content literally is trying to just, like, crush their brains by, like, not letting their eyes leave the television. But I think you need to have that in your. In your mind. You know, like, as an educational podcaster, I think about. I think about it like this. I don't want to waste people's time, so how much preparation can I do? How much fluff can we trim from the conversation? You know, is there any point where this really craters that story? It went too long. All of us have been in social situations where sometimes individuals are decent storytellers about, you know, I got to tell you about what happened to me last night. Oh, really? What happened? And if they're a good storyteller, you're on the edge of your seat. We've also all been in situations where someone's like, you know, how was work? They start talking. You're like, shoot, dude, how do I get out of this conversation? I'm really stuck in this conversation. You know, I would be interested if you just told it different. Like, you can with good storytelling. You can make an uninteresting day interesting. All of a sudden, you won't believe what happened to me at the water cooler. Okay? So I think it's about kind of just thinking about trimming the fluff and honoring the viewer. Like, what. What is it that we want them to experience? And that's why, in long form, if you Switch the scene if there is editing. I mean, again, with Dan's talk coming up and thinking about what they're doing at like, Deep Pocket Monster, they're at like the peak storytelling level of thinking about all of the above. It's like our new open loops happening and different segments and different moments happening. And again, we've all. In today's world, we can just leave content as soon as the value per minute goes down too low.
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Yeah.
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In some cases we'll wait through, like, I'll give it five minutes. Like, I don't know where this story is going, but like, the beginning was great, but there's, there's a certain point where we're like, I, I'm out of here, like, and we, we have so many choices, we can just leave.
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Let me, let me take that for a second. Because when I asked the, the room here about their desire to treat long form more seriously, I think that one of the common things that I hear last night when we're at the event, whenever I'm talking to creators, is that the reason they're not doing long form is because when they hear you say, hey, the value per minute has got to be competitive here, but also, you're never going to reach it. But, well, the only way to stack it is to like, try and at least get as close to that value per minute as you can and do it every single segment for the entire time that you're doing long form video, which of course is exponentially more work. Now, I think the storytelling thing there must be key. And again, I'm just going to give a shout out to Dan's talk because he'll talk a lot about it there. For the creators who want to make that jump but are concerned about the daunting proposition, where does that fit in? And I think maybe I'll give you a direction here because one of the things you sent me was this, this lo fi counter trend. Yeah. So tell me more about that.
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I mean, I can understand it could feel stressful if we feel like we're competing with, again, short form. That's like so gripping. Let's like break down, you know, five to 10 things that make a long form video interesting. You've got, of course, you know what you're saying. So the storyline itself, if we speak to vlogging, you know, where's this start? What's the hook? What's the, what's the order of things? Then you also have, how's it being filmed? And even if it's just on a smartphone, you could say, you know, hi guys, you know, it's Tuesday and you could do it in your hotel room with all the blinds closed and there's not good lighting and it's dark. Or you could start the show outside where of course it's. It's cooler and there's maybe something behind you. So you have, you like if assuming we're personal brands, but however, you know, you've got the person, you've got the like shot locations or the actual videography itself, then you've got the editing itself, you know, Shout out to Judy Travis, one of not just the legendary vloggers of all time, but I don't think people realize actually how world class of a storyteller she is. Yeah. And both her and Benji's minds have now been completely transformed into. It comes naturally. Like you, you know, you can be. And a lot of people in this room, it's the same thing on the way to. You wake up, you start drinking your coffee or your green tea and you're like thinking about your shot. Where does it start today? What can I make it interesting? You know, is there anything. And you're thinking about maybe characters or the characters today. Even if it's a family vlog, who are the characters in this? So yeah, if you go down there, those are all types of things. And you mentioned that shows have consistent characters. How's it edited? What are the scenes that are seen? Is there, music, is there. And the combination of all those elements is what's going to lead to the value per minute. So when shots change again. There's plenty of viral videos on YouTube that someone is just a talking head video the entire time. But there's a reason for that. It's worth studying. But at the same time, for a lot of us, if you're assembling something, that's. That's why you guys, even on your dji, set up switch camera angles. Just switching the camera angle is kind of a level of a reset of attention. But there's a there. I would say if you want views in 2026, you do got to up your game. Yeah, there's more competition than ever before. And that would be thinking about again, how well are you communicating your thoughts and ideas? How much fluff are you trimming? If you're an entrepreneur or a creator that wants to scale their online business. That's why we created the Think Media Mastermind. I have so much more clarity as
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B
to my ideal target audience now, which means my content is about to be so much better and more targeted.
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Towards the exact person I'm trying to reach. Super intimate, high level strategy.
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B
I had the skills that I already knew sharpened.
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A
I feel like I went to my next level. For entrepreneurs and creators that want to scale with YouTube, this was the first time that I was able to get in a room with a lot of other serious youtubers and talk with other people who love creating content and love YouTube. Usually I don't get to do that. So this is really special. You can check it out@thinkmediamastermind.com yeah, I
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B
mean one of the ways that you can up your game, right, Is by utilizing the right tools, right? Being strategic and things like that. I know you're big on AI and thinking through the way that you can utilize AI to meet that quality level. You know, it's sort of a two sided coin in the creator economy is the way that I see it. One is a generative piece where people are creating content with the AI, right? And that's the stuff that's actually showing up on these feeds. Then on the other side there's the perspective that it's a tool. It's something that should be used to amplify the existing content that you have. Now maybe you touch AI here and there, but that it's really undergirding as a tool rather than the center stage. Tell me about what you're seeing in the AI space there in terms of how it leads to increased competition that you were talking about, but also in terms of how a creator might utilize it to reach that value per minute that they're hitting.
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I mean, I think we did this three report thing. I did this. If you want to do YouTube, you actually can grab it. It's@ytreport.com if you want it. We talked about the shifts because a lot of things have shifted in the crater economy. And then we talked about like what to do in terms of responding to those. And so let's yt report support.com we talked about how personal brand is the only differentiator left.
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Yeah.
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We talked about how subscribers no longer guarantee views. And one of the other big shifts is AI is separating winners and losers. And I, I completely believe that. So Even for just EV100 of creators in here and anybody watching this on your replay, on your channel or wherever this goes, AI is separating winners and losers. And so I mean, here's what I mean is I know probably a lot of people in here are using AI, but it's like you really should be using AI for your titles, your hooks, even entertainment. I would Say for helping you improve storytelling and your outlines.
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Definitely.
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So if I'm a Seattle vlogger then, or you know, kind of more entertainment creator, I'm going to go on do not disturb here. I'm going to open up Claude, because I was just going to call. It'll mess up my audio. And Claude says, how can I help you this morning? Hey. So I'm planning out my vlog today. I am a Seattle creator. I do short form content. I usually do three things a day. I'm going to this event called Seattle Creator Summit. I'm downtown Seattle and I. I'm starting at the Grand Hyatt. So I can go outside this morning and I'm gonna do three uploads of like some reels and let's just work on the first one. I wanna really grab attention and I wanna think about this piece of content being as brat broad appeal as possible. So I'm a Seattle creator, but I am wondering if I could try to algorithmically get more reach by the text headline that I put on top of the opening scene and then what I might say and let the verbal hook for the morning. What do you have for me? Not my niche, but there's a 60 second prompt, Claude. Let's see what comes out to it. Retry your connection. No, I got it. Whoa. Has that ever happened to anybody? It actually did work. It's. It's searching the web here. Okay, good context. Here's what I've got for you. I'm in the Seattle and the creator economy just changed forever. Text headline of the opening scene. Now what I'm thinking, so I got me started. I'm talking about my daily idea. I might say the creator economy just changed for at forever cut Seattle because that narrowed it down. Even though I am in Seattle. That could come later. And then it says this line is algorithmic appeal. It appeals to the creator economy. And then you might say, if you make content for a living or you want to, Seattle just became the most important city in America right now. And I'm about to show you why. Come on. Seattle Greater Summit. Wow.
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B
Claude, can we get a round of applause for Sean.
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A
That's pretty good. Hey, if you make content for a living. So now, by the way, like, I think sometimes my. Some people might think like, am I outsourcing my thinking to AI? No, it's a partner. Yeah, you use, you know, are you going to be inauthentic? I think you're going to be inauthentic if you just do whatever AI tells you.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But I want to have a strategic conversation about the hook, about the opening. So that I hope is an illustration of how I think every creator should be using AI. And then if that was to turn into a long form video, you're planning the outline, you're planning the hook and then you're also really going to be working on titles. You know what is a. Let's do one more and here's like a good title prompt. Okay, great. I also want to do a long form video. So I'm all day long. I'm going to be vlogging and I'll probably end with about a 12 minute final upload. But I want to have a really powerful YouTube title for that. Try to keep it under 80 characters. The fewer the words the better. But I want enough context and use some unique words. Can you give me your five strongest options? So we pivoted mid conversation here, but okay. Inside the reshaping of the creator economy. Seattle. Horrible. I Spent a day with Seattle's most ambitious creators. Not my favorite, but I Spent a day is interesting. And as far as you know, the creator summit changed how I think about content. Seattle's creator economy just leveled up. I was there. That, that one's kind of cool too. So now you're making strategic decisions. Are we doing kind of a local search thing? Do we want to build it up or are we going to go a direction? What is, what's the whole vision of this piece? And as much as possible. And this is worth writing down. Research before you press record. Yeah, definitely research before you even press record. That's your morning. You know, alkaline water or green tea or coffee routine is like open it up and you could start planning your day with AI.
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B
Yeah. Kind of marinated it a little bit. Yeah.
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A
And. And you start, you'll get better at it and the prompts can get better. And then eventually you're creating your own custom GPT and stuff. So like one of I. I use my custom title GPT every day. It has 40 psychological triggers in there. It's got the five levels of awareness, it's got the ladder of abstraction all baked into the GPT to process ideas. And spending that much more time on the title. The positioning of the content because by the way that's completely changes the opening.
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B
Yeah.
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It like what you. How the day starts is and you also might hit a dead end. No big deal. Your content was going to suck that day anyways. You just were uninspired and like AI couldn't, you know, it just wasn't your day, you didn't feel like we all are going to. You're going to have ups and downs, but you also might know what, what comes out of there. And you're one little tweak away like that. What are those small tweaks, these cheesy cliches. But small tweaks lead to giant peaks.
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B
Austin, I've heard you say it once.
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Yeah, they really. People always meme like what I say. Like, Sean's the guy who says, like, you just need to be you times two. I'm going to be me times three. So cheesy. Well, I mean, embarrassing.
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B
What is doing there, though, is that you're taking that. I mean, even just what you did there with that prompt. Right. And you're kind of. It's almost like collage. You're cutting out the things that are really speaking to you and then putting them together or adding your own twist. And that's kind of what you're saying.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So I think being an event like this and having your own strong opinions and developing, that's where AI is overrated.
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B
Yes.
- [29:02]
A
I think you still need to understand the psychology. You still need to filter it all. But AI, as your thought partner again, can get your packaging title topic thumbnail for long form and short form, way more dialed and then even more so when you. Because let's land the plane. We could go. We could talk forever on this. But you said, how could creators be using AI? Let me speak directly to YouTube. Go into your YouTube analytics. You go into advanced analytics and then you're able to now say, I want to see. It'll show you all your content, shorts, live streams and regular videos. Filter it down to just your regular videos. If you want to talk about long form, you can do the same for shorts. And it says there's 50 results on the page. This is your YouTube studio, but if you export it, it's 500 results. Length of time last year, you could do as much length of time as you want, last three months. So in summary, YouTube analytics, advanced analytics videos only long form videos. Length of time last year. Export Google Sheet. Take Google Sheet file you just exported, drop it into your favorite LLM, ChatGPT or Claude and then say, hey, so based on this, this is a year's look at my YouTube channel and what it sees in that spreadsheet. And you can make sure these fields are there. But it's got watch time, click through, rate, length of video titles, view count, impressions. It's all in there. What trends and themes do you See, so I can strategically plan my next videos. But then here's the extended prompt. What adjacent strategic conclusions can you make for me not just making a part two of these videos, but expanding this into, you know, related arenas that my audience might be interested in for. And can you search the web and look at title formats and types of videos that have popped off? But then other trending things right now that I might be able to cover related to videos that have performed well in the past. And you could click the little deep research button if you want with that whole thing to let it go even deeper for you. Let that cook. And then the results are wild. And I recently, there seems to be an edge with Claude lately. But I recently did that in Claude and I was shocked. There's a lot of promising content tools that promise you viral ideas or people go like, hey, chatgpt, like one or ten good video ideas. That's, that's. You're gonna lose at that level. Yeah. So you're not gonna get that. AI. AI is separating winners and losers. It's not people who are generically using chat gbt, it's people who are coming to events like this and going psycho deep. It's turning you into it. Like you have access to super intelligence like the IQ level and there's also a lack of emotional intelligence, but the IQ level is crazy and how much data it can crunch. So it's that level. I know, I'm sorry if we went long on that, but that's the level of strategic execution and detailed execution I think creators should be tapping into.
- [32:18]
B
I mean, it deserves the time because AI is making that big of a change. Right. You talked about the positive side of the coin there. I kind of want to go in the other direction because it puts us kind of at the center of the discussion here at this event, which is long form content. You know, on the other side of things, you know, what Benji and I tend to talk about is the competitiveness because of the sort of AI sloth that comes up on YouTube shorts on potentially some other things like that. And you actually, in your research sent me a article that was talking about how like 20% of the first 500 videos that they swipe through on a new account were all AI slot. That's a huge amount of videos that are not being shown from other creators. Now that's just one piece of the picture because also in the broader creator economy, there's more creators than ever before. There's more competition. Now, of course, we also talked about the monetization side of things being better than ever before. So there's tensions and pushing and pulling all over the creator economy. And I want to ask about the opportunity. You're familiar with the term opportunity cost?
- [33:16]
A
Yes.
- [33:16]
B
Yeah. So for those who don't know, opportunity cost is like, okay, it comes from, I think, economics. If I'm doing one thing, I can't
- [33:22]
A
be doing another thing.
- [33:23]
B
Right. So even if I'm doing something that's valuable, is there something even more valuable that I could be doing, doing right now? So one versus the other, the opportunity cost. So if you're doing long form content, you can't necessarily be doing short form content at the same, or at least there's a small cost to do it between the two. I want, I want your perspective on this. Do you see one as being more competitive than the other? Harder to break into, maybe is another way of thinking about it.
- [33:48]
A
I think that it's fair to say that long form seems harder to break into than short form. Yeah, I think actually, you know, I think you could almost make a fully defensible statement that long form is of course harder than short form. It's harder. It's. I mean, just last night at dinner we were talking about like, man, if I'm gonna sit down and edit some shorts, it's easy and it's low stress. Fair. Right. You're at the table and then it's like, but if I, if I'm looking at the long form video and all the footage I gotta work through and whatnot, I might just like not even edit and just play video games. Yeah, I'm going to procrastinate the long format. I'll get the short. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, it's harder by. By. And there are exceptions to that. Let's say you were to live stream that comes with a whole nother skill set, but doesn't come with editing. You know, it's real time. And so it's like a real time video that's published. So I think I would say, and what all of us have probably experienced is that net. Net long form is harder to get views on and that short form gives us a lot more, I would actually say kind of a dopamine feedback loop of, you know, I've got a couple hundred thousand view videos or a couple million viewed videos and man, my shorts are going great and I'm putting out long form and I'm getting 3,000 views and my best was 30,000 views.
- [35:07]
B
Yeah.
- [35:08]
A
And now I'm also getting a lot of three hundreds. But I Think you gotta zoom out and say not all views are created equal. And I think the biggest question is just what are you trying to achieve? Yeah, like what's your end goal? What do you want to happen? Like what, what is, what are you solving for and what's the long term vision for this? I think for a lot of us as creators, we're kind of, it makes sense. You get into the cycle of just trying to pay the rent in the next month, maybe try to get a brand deal and you're asking yourself like, where is this all going? And so, and I think the life cycle of a creator can be interesting. There is something that sometimes a trend works for a while. All kinds of different things you could weigh and think about. But I would say yes, long form is harder. And then I would also say I think long form is worth the challenge and the return on investment of overcoming that challenge is worth it.
- [36:01]
B
And I'm imagining some of the folks that we spoke to, right. Who already have pre existing channels on or I guess I should say counts on these short form platforms and they're prioritizing that already. I mean, to what degree would. I mean, I know it's gonna be different for everybody but like how, how would you suggest that they go about that? You know, I know it's gonna be different for every single person, but what are some of the strategies that you've seen work for folks who start on short form, have an existing kind of thing, but maybe are sort of stuck in the hamster wheel a little bit.
- [36:28]
A
By the way, one more point on why short form. I think across the world more people have gotten silver play buttons and gold play buttons on YouTube with shorts channels by an exponential amount. Gotta be then long form in the shorter window of time.
- [36:42]
B
Yeah.
- [36:42]
A
In the last couple of years. So that would, that would just tell me it is easier not diminishing the work. It is, it is easier to do that. And those who have done so though have sometimes tried to pivot on the same channel in most cases and they're like, why? I got 550,000 views as a, on a low day on a short and my long form is getting 5,000 views. And so the crossover of those audiences can be hard. So your question is interesting because I mean, I don't, I don't know, I would just ask a bunch of questions. Yeah. Are you going to start on the same channel? Are you. How do you want to re. Divert your energy? Do you? I mean, maybe I would, I'll tell a story instead of asking A question and Dan can talk more to this. But what's fascinating to me is that Pat Flynn from Deep Pocket Monster, if you're into Pokemon, built up a massively influential ultra long form channel. And by ultra long form, the typical video is an hour long on Deep Pocket Monster or longer or longer. And some of their compilations are over four hours. Like a four hour documentary following the journey of getting cards and doing all kinds of things and a couple million subscribers or whatever it is. Massive audience. And here's what's fascinating because people say, should I start a separate long form channel or a separate shorts channel? And actually I usually would say, I don't know, keep it on. Like if it's a video podcast, like your guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Upload shorts there, clips there. It all makes sense. It's all the same thing. It's education. True. I still think that's best practice. But for him, he started a Pokemon shorts show called Should I Open it or Seal it or whatever it is, right. That channel is a couple million subscribers and he separated them because of the. And it's the same niche. So that's why that's kind of blew my mind because it's. You would say, well, but both audiences want Pokemon and both audience. But to get the algorithm perfectly conditioned, he created one simple shorts show that had a simple format. It totally reinforces your whole talk format of should I open it or should I keep it sealed? He made a little jingle and he made this show by himself, even though he's the type of guy that has hired people and whatnot, like shoots it and a sustainable format that scaled to the moon. So your question was like, yeah, how do you go either direction? He actually went in this case from long form to two shorts and started a separate show and now does both. But how do you go from shorts to long form? I don't know. I just got questions. Do you do it on the same channel? Do you want to start something new? How do you want to leverage your brand? What do you want to build? Is there some kind of business or monetization opportunity that you want to build that's maybe completely unrelated? You know, what is it and maybe the difficulty, Are you trying though to get this short form audience that you've built converted over that I don't like? Some are certainly going to go, yeah, but that's kind of two different things. So maybe the takeaway is really get clear on your plan and have a mindset of resilience, like of have the humility to kind of even Think that even if you're super influential that you're starting from scratch and a willingness to do what it takes to get liftoff. But I think it's a smart play to do.
- [40:00]
B
Can I ask it to you this way? If you were going to begin today, what would your strategy be?
- [40:05]
A
If I was to start something from scratch?
- [40:07]
B
From scratch? Total zero. Just yourself.
- [40:09]
A
What would you do and what would I be starting? It's up to you.
- [40:12]
B
I'm curious.
- [40:14]
A
I mean like if when you ask me, I think personally I am a, I'm very, I am incredibly driven by. I mean I have seven core values at our company. One of them is purpose driven. So I like to say what's, you know, what's the higher purpose or what purpose is behind us as content creators or in our business? And I would say that money is not my number one value, but money is on the list of values. I think if you don't value money, you won't have money for the mission. So even if you're purpose driven and you're mission driven, this and this, I mean, I'm sure everybody in here wants to monetize and you know, maybe we don't have money mindsets, but I think we all wrestle with that. It's like am I selling out or am I trying to sell something to my audience or what am I trying to do? Our whole, my whole brand would over emphasize on creating content with business in mind. That's what I would lean to. So maybe that's a better way to put it. You say if I started from scratch today, I would start with a business mindset personally. Yeah. And that's why I say what are we doing? If I love my job or have something else I'm doing, is it a creative outlet? Could it turn into anything? Do I just want to express my, like, what's the point? I would go into it with the business mindset. And so if I go into it with the business mindset, then even though I am asking myself what am I passionate about, what do I love, what am I convicted about, what do I really care about, what am I curious about and what do I love talking about? There's also going to be an intersection with is there a market for it and what is the economic engine? And I would define that from day one personally. So to go a little bit deeper in that, I'm asking questions like what's the total addressable market? What is even possible to what business models exist for this? So it's like sometimes like I'm A big fan of my original way of starting as going full time as a creator was realizing. I started doing video for my local church back in 2007, an hour north from here in Marysville, Washington and the youth pastor handed me a video camera and Adobe Premiere Pro which I used a Canon HV30 camera with mini DVD tape and captured FireWire minute, minute for minute the footage and then edited. And when I first opened up my video editing software I had to like select the frame rate and I remember it said NTSC and it said pal. And I was like what does that even mean? And PAL sounded more friendly. I'm not even kidding, it sounded more friendly. So I selected pal. And for like months of editing these church video announcements, things were so janky because I'm using the 25 frames a second which like my frame rate was jacked in the whole thing because I would shoot in different frame rates, I didn't know anything. So I started that in 2007 and by the time I, you know, I meet Benji in Marysville and I'm more of a videographer and even he's encouraging me to like start building a personal brand. I start think media, I start reviewing cameras and I start talking about video itself because I have this background in video production and I was able to build a six figure a year income basically just ranking YouTube videos, talking about tech and then linking to Amazon links and was able, it was not overnight and there was also lots of side quests. But once I got focused on it, I was able to grow relatively quickly because I really knew how to create good content that was, you know, around the intent of what people were looking for and present the video well and then and say hey, if you want to check out the gear, put it, you know, links in the YouTube description on Long form content. And then what's fascinating though is the model itself necessitates is a. Is very connected to business because people searching for this camera versus that camera have a credit card in hand and are just trying to decide and if the information's good. Oh, thank you so much for the help. You know, you get some link clicks and that scaled to a big income. What can happen is when you think about the different ways of making money, when I'll talk to more entertainment leaning creators or somebody that's vlogging, they'll be like yeah, affiliate, I got actually pretty good views. But like nobody clicks my affiliate links.
- [44:27]
B
Yeah.
- [44:27]
A
And it's like well yeah, but why are they watching? Of course not, because why are they watching your Video, they're watching it for entertainment. They didn't click on that video. The person looking for should I buy the Canon ZV E10 or the Osmo Pocket 3 is narrowed it down to like I'm probably buying a camera today and I found your video and I'm like ready to make a purchase so that the, the business flow there is super smooth and then the person that's watching and that's that speaks to the person scrolling on Instagram at night. Besides the fact that you get hit with a ad on TikTok shop and now you just bought a rug and like a sweater. And so you know, of course there's a lot of commerce happening in vertical and there could be brand deals and stuff but I'm just there looking for entertainment.
- [45:07]
B
Yeah.
- [45:08]
A
And so that was a long answer to say personally I, if I was to start from scratch today I would be asking myself and if I get really geeky and this is just super online business minded. But if you look at the three biggest niches for most lucrative niches to be in online it's always been health, wealth and relationships. So I would be aware of that. And that's it's, it's why fitness does well you know, make lose weight and health is, could be like you know, lose weight, gain muscle, skin care. Like you actually think of what's the economic. Even if it could be white label as skin. I might be sitting down as an entertainment creator today at 42 years old and be thinking about I'm going to grow my audience but could I partner with a skincare brand anti aging or could I even white label something? That's what I think about day one. And then the entertainment thing I build is connected to anti aging maybe and, and this is we had already said but really write this down. This might be the biggest takeaway from this is like start with who? Simon Sinek said start with why? Which is the purpose driven question. But I would say even more than start with why, you should start with who.
- [46:23]
B
I agree.
- [46:23]
A
Because who cares why you're doing it. I think that's important. That's your intermission. But who? So in answer to your question, I'm going a different direction than tech. I'm going to start a channel for men in their 40s and 50s. That's about health. And there's my whole and so then I'm now I'm thinking okay, they might want to do anti aging. I have been, I actually have been thinking a lot about the boom total addressable market by doing Market research of peptides and TRT and stuff for men. That's a massive wave. And that industry is, is going like this. And so knowing what I know about content and being an influencer and then being able to be the guinea pig myself, as an aging dad of a three and five year old, I see my like, so that's at the intersection of literally who I am.
- [47:18]
B
Yeah.
- [47:18]
A
What I know what's happening in the market. And that would then be how I brainstorm where I go next. But I would be thinking about, am I gonna partner with somebody? And whether it's affiliate JV or whatever, now we're shipping TRT to dudes. I'm not on TRT though. Nobody asked. Like, it's just half the room doesn't even know what it is. Like, I mean, it's getting awkward on stage during the talk, but that, yeah, that's what I think. Does that make sense?
- [47:45]
B
That does make sense.
- [47:46]
A
I would just go.
- [47:46]
B
I have one takeaway from that. I'm not telling you what it is. I think it's very profound that you talk about that business model thing, because one of the things that Benji and I talk about all the time is that creators, they often begin the other way around, right? Of course, we, I think many of us fell in love with this business because we got to do the creative piece first, we got to do the content that we create, right? But the thing that happens is that creators fall backwards into that entrepreneurship, right? And the problem with that is that then you're kind of chained to whatever you happen to fall into at that point, and you can get locked in, right? So being mindful about the way you're running your business because you have to get real with yourself. You're running a business if you're a creator is such an important reversal in terms of the way that you might approach a piece of content. And that makes a lot of sense to me. I know we're low on time, but I want to make sure I ask one question here because a big piece of that that I see is that when creators do end up falling backwards in that way, times can get tough, right? And I know you've, you've been in the business for as long as anyone here, right? And you've seen all the ups and downs, both in terms of the economy, the creator economy, but also individuals. And I just want to know what you have to say to the folks who are, you know, working to struggle through what it means to be a creator right now. What word of advice do you have for them.
- [49:01]
A
Yeah. I think my encouragement for anybody that's, you know, feeling the struggle of a creator is, number one, you're not alone. I mean, especially because you're here. So I think this is just a really good event to, you know, not just get tactics, but get. Build relationships. And I think. I mean, actually to that point, relationships and community is the engine of, I think, longevity in the creator economy. I think that content creation is a team sport and don't do this alone. I think that I'm incredibly blessed, you know, Benji, and my friendship, as you bring up. It brings up nostalgia for me. As you bring up, like, the highs and the lows and the ups and the downs. It makes me think of there's been seasons where it's the Adpocalypse on YouTube.
- [49:47]
B
Yeah.
- [49:47]
A
There's seasons where things are so divisive politically and you feel, as an influencer, pressure to post something or not post something. And maybe you get critics at any level. You might get canceled in a small room or on a bigger platform, and then. And brand deals could go up or down. And so that's. That's not just the creator economy. That is life, and that is business. I would. I would encourage individuals that there's something, I think we all feel something in our heart that inspires you to do this. You could just. There's enough fire that you just don't want to do a job the way everybody else does it. You are rebels. You're, you know, bucking the system. You're trying to create your own path, and it comes with untold benefits, and it also comes with the challenges of that. You are not guaranteed a paycheck. You probably don't have health care. Right. You certainly don't unless you get it yourself. Right? And some of us, as we side hustle, we're also sometimes thinking about, when do we actually make the leap? When do we jump? So that's why I'd say you're not alone. It's what you've signed up for. I would say, you know, buckle down for the long haul, realizing there's going to be good seasons and hard seasons. And I think my two takeaways would be one really practical one. Just personal opinion. I know we're talking about creativity, but I think, like, be really smart and conservative in terms of knowing that it's uncertain. Like, save money for a rainy day.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah.
- [51:19]
A
A lot of people, they're like, I don't have any money to save. You know, like, I can't. But. But, like, eventually it's funny. Benji and I have talked a lot of some people have reached really high successes as in creator economy and have bought cars and houses that and things like that that were way above. Like I think I would just be so even in good times be thinking about diversification because you want that stability. So don't be surprised when hard times come or ups and downs come in the creator economy, prepare for it.
- [51:47]
B
Yeah.
- [51:48]
A
And so in terms of how you handle your finances, your personal finances and making smart moves. But then the lastly I would say, you know, it's amazing that everybody's here but like really go deep in the community, like really link arms because that's what'll. It's going to be hard and I think having people you could talk to and relate with is going to be. It already was last night and will continue to build today the absolute power of this event. Yeah, having community people who can understand you, encourage you, just relate to you or you can both just share really painful stories together. You know, like sucks for both of us right now. And yeah, outside of this room, most of us are misunderstood. And there's. It's actually could feel very lonely because this is such a geeky place to have conversations like this. And a lot of times you're misunderstood by your family or even your friends. And so yeah, create those alliances, you know, link up with these guys. And the company you guys are launching is incredible too. I believe content creation is a team sport. You shouldn't do it alone. And it's priceless to have coaching, support, friends, you know, get as many phone numbers as you can today, you know, especially if you're single because that could lead to something. And I mean, right? Yeah. Can you imagine like that one time. Dude, thank you, Benji and Austin, that's where I met my future spouse. I hope you've been getting value out of this conversation. A few things you need to know about before we land the plane today. Number one, we're hosting a two day event in Las Vegas. If you're thinking about starting or growing a YouTube channel, but you want to get into a room of a whole nother level of strategy. Proximity is power. The problem with AI and even just videos and podcasts is the conversation is one way. So you're getting notes, but you're not getting feedback. And so the power of this event is our coaches are there, I'm there. We can open up your analytics in the lobby in between sessions. And so if you're interested in that, the Think Media Mastermind link will be in the description down below, you could apply or just go to thinkmediamastermind.com now if you're also a creator that's in the Pacific Northwest region region anywhere near Seattle, maybe Vancouver, B.C. we're going to be doing future events right now. I didn't get a wait list set up or anything, but head over to the YouTube video if you're listening on audio or drop me a comment. Lastly, if you have been getting any value from the Think Media podcast, it means the world. If you like, rate review wherever you watch or listen. No, I'm serious. Like if you've been listening to Think Media podcast for weeks, months, maybe years, and you've never left us a review on Apple, shame on you, Sean. I don't even listen on Apple. Okay, well then don't do that. But if you're like on an audio right now and you haven't just given the star rating on Spotify, you know how easy that is to do? I don't even think you could do text ratings on Spotify. The star rating on Spotify, okay, you're like, relax. And so anyways, again, no pressure, but if you do get value from the show, it helps if you share it. Rate review and and massive love and gratitude and appreciation. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. This is the Think Media podcast and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.