A (0:00)

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. Podcast. One well made YouTube video can work for you for years. What if one simple decision could be the difference between your business plateauing at six figures and scaling beyond $1 million? YouTube isn't a content platform anymore. It is the town square of the Internet. A YouTube channel is a business asset. It's not a marketing tactic. YouTube shortens the trust gap faster than anything. But what Google realized that if we actually want to generate a sale and a conversion this year, we need to understand the 7114 rule. It stands for this.

B (1:34)

Welcome to the Think Media podcast, the number one show bringing you unfiltered YouTube tips for building a profitable channel. Man, I gotta tell you what, today was a good day to click on this episode because Sean Cannell, right here, right now, is delivering a private keynote session to a group of highly successful business owners. And we thought, hey, they got to see it first. But we want you to hear it as well. And so make sure you lock in. And a quick note before we jump in, today's episode is sponsored by viral video coach.com, which I'll tell you about in just a little bit. But for now, let's jump into the session.

A (2:03)

Let's get to work. We're going to be talking about why smart business owners are using YouTube to scale faster in 2026. And let me ask you a question. What if one simple decision could be the difference between your business plateauing at six figures and scaling beyond $1 million? I think that's possible, yes. And maybe this is you. Can you relate. You've built an offer offer. You're doing social media, you're getting sales, you probably have some funnels, maybe you're doing some ads, but, you know, maybe you're, you have a list, but you're still manually pushing. You're still fighting for every launch. You're maybe feeling some platform fatigue. Our premise and thesis today is that YouTube is the platform that compounds everything. If we're just meeting, my name is Sean Cannell. It happens to rhyme with YouTube channel, you know, God knew, I guess. Over the years, I've been building multiple YouTube channels myself. Got a few silver play buttons, a gold play button. But I'm most proud of our students, who we've helped generate over 30.8 billion views. And many of them grow channels and subscribers as well as their businesses. And today, though, I want to talk about seven reasons why smart business owners are using YouTube to scale faster in 2026. Number one, YouTube isn't a content platform anymore. It's the town square of the Internet. YouTube isn't a content platform anymore. It is the town square of the Internet. Here's what the YouTube CEO said. Since 2023, the social platform has increased its dominance of the attention economy against considerable competition. And YouTube isn't slowing down. It's not trying to stay relevant. It's actually taking the lead. I'm a huge social media fan, active on the different platforms, but YouTube is the dominant media platform on the Internet. We think about the fact that we go to YouTube for news and politics, cultural events, you know, shout out. I flew to Nashville from Seattle because the Seahawks are in the super bowl, and I just needed to represent over here and YouTube for sports, but also for business. And 2 billion people visit YouTube every single day. 2 billion people visit YouTube every single Day. There's about 3 billion active monthly users on the platform. And I'm sure as we're sitting here, we think, but, man, maybe I haven't started yet. Or what about the competition? Let's just think about that number billion with a B. Y' all are familiar with a thousand true fans. Many of you already have them. If you have 2500, 5000 true fans, the people who've already purchased your courses, your products, you building your brand, you getting your piece of the massive traffic on YouTube is a real opportunity in 2026. And the CEO of YouTube said that they're coming up on three years as the number one streamer in America. I don't know if you knew this. YouTube is watched in American living rooms more than Netflix, more than Disney plus, more than Amazon prime, more than all of them. So YouTube is the dominant media platform, and any of us can plant our flag and get on the platform for free. Over 50% of consumption of YouTube in the US happens on television screens. So YouTube is the town square of the Internet. If I want to be thinking about where do I want my business to be in the next year, three years, five years, I want to bet on a platform that's growing, that has influence. YouTube is the town square of the Internet. But here's the second insight. YouTube. A YouTube channel is a business asset, it's not a marketing tactic. Man, I've got to coach so many incredible entrepreneurs like yourselves and a lot of times in social media we just think about social media. Yeah, we know we want to do marketing, we have these things to do. But you've got, you're recording your courses, you're updating them, you're talking, you're selling, you've got so much to do. And so when we think about social media, sometimes it's a tactic. Oh, I'm going to have my social media manager post some stuff and just repurpose some things on YouTube. I'm going to just kind of use YouTube as you know, one of the marketing channels. Wrong mindset. It's not just a tactic. YouTube itself is a business asset when we do it right. You know, Marcus Sheridan said that there's an argument to be made that in the next five to ten years your company's YouTube channel will be more important than your company's website. Yeah, business asset. And so there's an interesting story from HubSpot. So you know, we all have different CRMs and we're building our email list. Maybe you're on kit, maybe you're on, you know, high level, whatever it is you're using. HubSpot is actually what we use and it's really expensive and so we are running out of money and I should switch to another platform but. Right, but you know, it's pretty powerful. But shout out to HubSpot, you know, one of the like biggest enterprise, you know, email marketing, CRM softwares. Okay, so you think about, well there's a software company, they're doing paid acquisition, they're running ads and things. Well, this is a fascinating story of how big they bet on media and on YouTube their founder and CTO said modern media companies have a software company embedded inside the. That's an interesting side quest to think about the fact that if you're already on social, you have a personal brand. How could we develop our own micro software and use AI for our clients? I'm sure many of you are doing those, you know, maybe doing replit to do some apps and things like that. But modern media companies have a software company embedded inside and next gen software companies will have a media Company inside. I think it's important that we develop the media company mindset. Like we're not just educators or course creators or influencer, we're building media companies and that's what the biggest are doing. But even on a practical smaller business level, we can model this and we think about how much the world has changed. We look at HubSpot's marketing strategy over the years. Phase one, they were doing a lot of SEO and a lot of just ranking blogs, things like that. Phase two, they started to do free software as lead generation. But in phase three, in 2020, they made this massive media company play and they're doing it to this day. And, and what they launched was a podcast network, multiple different YouTube channels. They launched a creators network and then they also did their newsletter and the mindset was this. Their CMO said, we didn't want to dip our toe in the water. We knew that if we were going to do this, we had to go big. So you might not have realized that HubSpot has about 22 different YouTube channels. 22. They acquired the hustle. So they actually purchased a brand and made it part of their business. They have started some internal creator led channels. They have multiple different language that they've started channels in. What have the results been? Well, creator led content became one of the biggest growth drivers in under three years. It's worth writing these down when we do media. It lowered customer acquisition costs, built direct audience relationships, and they built a content flywheel with compounding roi. Now at this moment you might be like, where is this talk going though? Am I supposed to start 22 different YouTube channels? No, no, that's not the point. I'm not saying that we need to acquire a podcast network or build production studios. It's simply this. We can model the masters and realize that smart business owners are seeing media YouTube channels as a business asset. They're putting dollars behind it, strategy behind it. It's not just a tactic, it's a mindset shift. Which brings us to insight number three. YouTube is the best place to get discovered by people actively looking for solutions. And it's such an honor to be talking to you all because you all provide solutions. You already know the problem you solve, what your course solves, your coaching, what you're helping people with. And it's a good question in 2026 though. But like with all the changes on social media and AI disruption and disruption in the market, like how do I get discovered? And you've already reached so many people, but how do I reach new people. YouTube is the best place to get discovered by people actively looking for solutions. Check out the stat. 86% of US viewers say they often use YouTube to learn new things. That's an incredible opportunity for people that teach things like you. 86% of US viewers are going to YouTube looking to solve specific problems. So when you wanna build new audiences, new customers, how do we scale to a million and beyond? We wanna have a strategic presence on YouTube. And YouTube isn't just a video platform. It's becoming the reference layer of the Internet. What does that mean? It means that we wanna have a strategic presence there because people are searching. So how do you get found? Also, AI is training on YouTube and you can be the answer for these LLMs. People are looking for authorities on a topic, individuals asking and answering questions. And so AI trains on it. And trust is built on YouTube. Now, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, but actually 90% of the traffic on YouTube, the views on YouTube comes from YouTube recommending your content with the algorithm. And so this is worth writing down. YouTube search introduces you to the right people, but then recommendations scale it. So as we're thinking about optimizing our videos, Sean, what could that look like? Answering specific questions. Answering specific questions. What are some of the top questions that are the entry point into your world? What are some of the top questions that are the entry point into eventually your course, your program and the transformation you provide. And as you're answering those specific questions and even optimizing your videos for searching, YouTube starts to understand you. AI starts to understand you. The mindset shift is you don't want to just answer one question. You want to become known as the person who answers those types of questions. That builds your authority. And then we're ranking on YouTube, we start to get traffic and discovery from YouTube. We start to even be found in LLMs or be referenced. We start to even rank in Google snippets when people are doing Google searches. But search is the start. And then recommendations is how you scale, meaning that it's a compound effect on YouTube. Your content's being viewed, some search traffic can start a little bit low, but then recommendations start to scale it. Number four, YouTube shortens the trust gap faster than anything else. YouTube shortens the trust gap faster than anybody than anything else. You know, of course, nobody can do business with us until they know us. First we got to get discovered, but then they got to decide if they like us. And then ultimately they end up trusting us and they'll do business with us and so write down 711 4. This is the 7114 rule from Google. So this is fascinating and every single marketer and course creator and professional needs to know this. But what Google realized that if we actually want to generate a sale and a conversion this year, we need to understand the 7114 rule. It stands for this 7 hours 11 touch points, four platforms that if somebody's going to do business with you, they need to spend seven hours with you. Wow. So they've consumed seven hours of your content. Reading one of your emails, watching one of your reels, unfortunately you kind of had like, you were dressed cute and then you like a cool trending song and you put some text on there and you know, you did a thing. There's only six seconds. So you're going to need a lot of those because 7 hours 11 touch points. Now that could be multiple videos. It could be, oh yeah, I watched your YouTube channel and followed you on Instagram. Oh, there she is again. And then four platforms could be YouTube, Instagram, but it's going to probably be down funnel. It's they download your lead magnet, touchpoint, they are getting an email. There's another, you know, distribution. If you have a book or some resource, they consume that free thing. So seven hours 11 touch points and four platforms, that's what it takes to generate sales conversions in 2026. So then we ask ourselves, okay, well how could we amplify that or accelerate that? Man, if I'm going to compound the seven hours, that could take a long time doing short form content. I'm a huge fan. I love Instagram, Instagram reels, meta, you know, Facebook reels, they're great. But YouTube gives us this massive opportunity to have these longer, deeper conversations. Now a lot of you already have podcasts. Amazing. Because that is a longer, deeper conversation, I would argue, just like Amy has done. And I'm so pumped that I was watching her video. Y' all probably saw it of like why I'm going all in on YouTube and talking about how I was doing video podcasting on audio. But man, I needed to turn the camera on. And you turn the camera on, turn it into a video podcast. Now you get this extension of platform distribution and impact. So I actually recently did a live class on YouTube. It was about an hour long. It got 11,000 views. But this is the average view duration of that video, 13 minutes and 24 seconds. Now, of course, what does that mean? Well, it means that a lot of people watched the whole thing, but some people clicked it and jumped off. And what we'll notice is if you've studied your consumption on your audio podcast, you realize that actually a lot of times view duration there or listening duration is longer on a podcast. Some more passive, but that's a lot of time. 13 minutes. You know, how much depth are you getting with the 6 second Instagram reel versus someone really dwelling with you? And how many touch points would you need to get to seven hours? You could get there a lot quicker with a lot more intimacy and connection with you. They're seeing you, they're hearing you. Or a lot of people, I'm sure all of y' all included, are listening to some podcasts on YouTube. You just turn on passively, you start, you see the person, you subscribe, but you're just consuming your audio podcast there as well. The bottom line is YouTube is one of the greatest ways, I believe the greatest way to compound trust so you can accelerate your business. Here's insight number five. Video podcasting is the most leveraged format for busy business owners. Are you a business owner or serious content creator that is struggling to crack the YouTube code? Are you feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or just plain frustrated with slow growth? If so, then our new one on one coaching program@viralvideocoach.com is your premier ticket to YouTube success, becoming the authority in your niche, attracting engaged leads and loyal customers. We offer one to one coaching with our YouTube experts that'll help you get results fast and a supportive community that's cheering you on. So if you're ready to stop wasting time with trial and error and to stop leaving money on the table, then head to viralvideocoach.com to apply to see if you qualify for our coaching program. But heads up, this offer is not for everybody. It's only for serious content creators and entrepreneurs that are ready to take action. So if that's you, head to viral video coach.com to apply or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's jump back into the episode. If there was one thing that I got y' all to do by the time you left here would be that, you know, Sean, I'm going all in on a video podcast. I'm committing to not just keep doing my podcast or to launch my podcast, but I'm going all in on video podcasting. Check out this information. Right now, the YouTube has 1 billion monthly podcast users. So people consuming podcasts on YouTube and YouTube is the biggest podcast casting platform. It's bigger than Apple, it's bigger than Spotify. YouTube is the dominant podcasting platform. And when you upload a video podcast, you have just created the most incredible asset because it's a YouTube video. Yes. But when you check the box and say this is also a podcast, it's distributed on YouTube music as well. And then if you take that audio and do what you might already do and put it out on Libsyn or Buzzsprout, you're now getting distributed to Spotify and everywhere else. And you basically could be everywhere with a video podcast. And so saying all that, if the biggest dominant town square of the Internet, YouTube is the number one podcasting platform, then we gotta be there. And stats have revealed that YouTube videos are now regularly being consumed from 30 to 90 minutes plus. And that includes podcasts, teaching content, DIY mini documentaries. There was actually a recent stat, if you want some very tactical information. A deep study of 52,000 YouTube channels came out and said there's two ideal video lengths on YouTube. There's two ideal video lengths on YouTube. The first is between 15 and 30 minutes, kind of a sweet spot. Between 15 and 30 minutes in length. If you're going to do a talking head video, you know, a solo podcast, a proper YouTube video where you're just, maybe it's not a podcast, but you're making a video, whatever kind of content you do. And then the dead zone, it doesn't mean it's bad, but the dead zone was between 30 and 60. And I think the human psychology there was like, oh man, I don't think I have 44 minutes of time to, you know, watch something, but I could do something that's 28. And so 15 to 30 over indexed. But then it starts to go up after an hour. And content that's 90 minutes, content that's two hours long, two and a half hours long actually over indexes, if you're reaching the right people with deep dive conversations. And I think we're familiar, right? You have like maybe Diary of a CEO or you've got, you know, Lewis Howe School of Greatness or whatever show some of these shows. If Joe Rogan podcast, what are we talking about? About three hours and 33 minute podcasts. Yeah, but people are turning these on. And the reason those longer form episodes, you bring on a good guest, you maybe get somebody even on your team to turn your content into a conversation. And you just take the conversation deep. What matters most on YouTube and write this down is top, top time on platform top. So minutes matter most. What YouTube wants, of course, like any platform, is for people to come onto the platform and stay there. And so that dwell time, that consumption time on YouTube really causes your content to be shared and recommended by the YouTube algorithm. So long form content, it's not fluffed up for no reason. But deep rich conversations on YouTube can also then 7, 11, 4 rule. Somebody listens to a two hour podcast, they only need to listen to three of those. And they've been so they've already got to know you. They're learning content, value your stories, learning about you, learning about your values. And so call it ultra long form content is really performing and over indexing on YouTube right now. And you know, there was a point a few years ago when I realized wanted more time and flexibility in my business. Right around the time when my firstborn Sean Bradley was born. He's five now. And now I've got another son, John, who's three. And like y', all, you don't just want to work in your business all day. You want to have time for your family, for your hobbies, for self care. You don't want to burn out. You're looking for freedom, you're looking for flexibility. And so out of that I saw this video podcasting trend coming and so I went all in and I decided to start and the first episode came out on January 1, 2020 of what's called the Think Media podcast. And I wanted to start a podcast, but I knew I wanted to do it on video. And then as far as audio goes, I just pulled the stats, but pretty cool. We got 3.5 million downloads so far. Awesome. Because our way of doing it on YouTube was audio. In mind that this could be distributed well on audio. But what's wild is the YouTube channel has generated 53 million views. This is in the lifetime about five years, grew 369,000 subscribers. YouTube has paid me a quarter million dollars just from the YouTube ad revenue on the video podcast. But check out this stat. This is fascinating. 3.4 million watch hours. 3.4 million watch hours have been consumed on the podcast. That's actually 388 years of collective attention. Like if someone hit play on my podcast in 1636 during the Renaissance and then just never stopped watching my podcast since then, that's how much time has been spent consuming that content. And so there's a big argument and opportunity for short form YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels. Amazing. And we'll talk about that in just a second. But getting back to this opportunity of depth and real connection and community building. YouTube is a trust platform. And video podcasting is such an incredible way to connect to People. Now here's the stats lifetime of just posting YouTube shorts on the podcast channel that alone has brought in 65,000 subscribers. And the YouTube shorts have generating generated 34.4 million views. And so video podcasting is the ideal format to record the long form but then trickle it down everywhere else. So you've got those longer form conversations, interview or solo round and clips from that logically can then lead to, to your longer form content. And it's an opportunity for discovery. For discovery we're stacking these principles and these insights. And so how do I meet people that I don't know yet by also tapping into YouTube shorts. It's a big opportunity and here's some stats. YouTube is the number one pod place for podcast discovery. This is a percent of podcast consumers who listen to a new podcast in the last six months and where did they listen to it? 32% of them YouTube. 32% of people who listen to a podcast, a new podcast they discovered in the last six months, 32% was YouTube, then Spotify and then Apple. Here's what's fascinating. When you start with YouTube, you get everything else. When you do YouTube first the trickle down is everywhere else. And so I understand the objections. It's like, well, like Amy said, you know, she's like, you know, video is a thing though, it's, you gotta get the makeup on, get your hair ready. That's my routine. And so you know, you gotta, you gotta go through all that stuff. But when you see the ROI and when you see the opportunity of man, if I can get that content on video, the way I could distribute it everywhere else, it's the key that unlocks the kingdom. Alright, number six of seven, number six. One well made YouTube video can work for you for years. One well made strategic YouTube video can work for you for years. So I recently was talking to my friend Caleb Raulston on our show and Caleb Raulston is an awesome brand strategist right now, talking a lot about brand and personal brand. Got to work for Gary Vaynerchuk for years and helped Alex Hormozi launch and grow and scale his content department before he recently launched and has gone independent doing some of his own stuff. What a lot of people don't realize is actually Caleb and I go all the way back 20 years. We met in our small town church in Marysville, Washington, an hour north of Seattle. And so we've both been on this journey and it's wild to see what can happen over a couple decades. Well, he's been growing his YouTube channel. At this point, he's almost to 100,000 subscribers. He's posted less than 20 videos. Yeah, he's almost to a hundred thousand subscribers, but he's posted less than 20 videos. What's his approach been? Quality over quantity. But this proves this principle. One well made video can work for your channel for years and grow your subscribers and grow your influence. Now this next slide might be a little bit disruptive to this room, but I think it's one of the biggest opportunities we have. One of the core strategies and core things that Caleb did to do that was he posted a six hour free online course on YouTube. One well made video can grow your business and your brand for years. Now that video is how to build a personal brand. Full course. Here's the results. 700,000 views on the video. He's gotten 36,487 leads from that one video. He gets 100 new leads a day. How would you like to get 100 new leads a day? Organic, for free, right now in this room. Anybody interested? I think that's the only point we need. Thank you everybody. Have a great night. We'll see you. Like, I mean if all you got. Now that's, that's wild. And you think about 39,000 email subscribers, basically one video built his list, this one video grew his channel. 30,000 subscribers. And then for him, as he's doing branding and consulting, he's gotten 750 client applications. That's in eight months. YouTube is highly leveraged and if you sit down and craft a strategic video, it can make a massive impact. Now clearly in our space there's been the, the quote of moving the free line and like how much free content do I give away? And I think we're really moving into a world and we've been there where there's so much information, where, I mean, I don't know, you give almost everything away because you get those kind of numbers and people discover you, they experience transformation. You're still going to get more business than everybody else else and they get to know you. And you also then start thinking about am I doing communities or cohorts, Am I going deeper? What's my motto going to be? Am I adding AI tools? I think there's a lot of opportunity there to think about how could this apply to you? And now a little bit of the backstory of this video that Caleb did. He wanted to do it really fancy, so he actually rented a warehouse. He got really fancy cinematography, shot multiple different angles. He invested $25,000 in this video, it paid off. But I'm not saying you got to do that. In fact, let me give you a simpler story of how I've seen this in our community. Many of our students have been implementing this. I did a video a year ago called how to start your YouTube channel for beginners parentheses free online course. Now I have an online course and it's called video ranking academy. We've, I don't know, probably done 20,000 units in our lifetime of that course. It's usually around $1,000. And that course sells incredibly well even in a very disruptive environment that we've, you know, been in. But what, what was this video? Now, this video I did, I did not spend $25,000. I did not rent a warehouse. I did not have any fancy cameras. In fact, I actually repurposed some of my best content. And so what I did was going into 2025, I went to my podcast channel. I happen to have two YouTube channels. That is not important or necessary, but I've got my main channel, Think media, where now we have other content creators helping us teach on cameras, lighting gear. And then I show up teaching YouTube strategy there. But what I've been focusing on since 2020 is my podcast. Thinking about leverage, thinking about lifestyle. And so what I did was I went back and I looked in 2024, what were my top viewed video podcasts, which were the ones that resonated the best, that people liked the best. In my stats, I identified four of them. And then I thought about, is there a through line here? Is there a narrative here? And what those episodes taught and how they could all be connected together. So then what I did was just actually an editor that I hired stitched together four podcasts I'd already released to make an extra long video that was repurposed. And so those are the four episodes. And I thought about, okay, how could these be lined up? The editor also maybe took out some language if I mentioned a year or anything, made them a little bit more lean if there was a weaker point. But put together like a four part long form video that I titled a free online course. And then what I did was I just sat down and recorded a new intro and transitions to unify the experience. And so new intro, hey, in this video, a good opening, you could almost call it like a movie trailer in terms of just the language. Really want. I mean, you're about to sit down, it's just two hours long. You're about to sit down and watch a lot. Really want to let people know what's coming up? Tease the beginning. Talk about the through line of what you're about to learn. In fact, is anybody okay if I go off script and give you a formula for opening your. Your videos? So write this down. It's called the 3A formula. Yeah, we'll give a perfect start for the perfect reel. All right, so if you want to open your YouTube videos powerfully, then you want to use what's called the 3A formula. It stands for attention, authority, agenda. Attention, authority, agenda. The first thing is you got to get attention. And so you're opening your video. What does the viewer need to hear that could pique their interest, Open up a curiosity loop and really be thinking about, now that they've clicked on the video, why would I want to keep watching? Now, you also want to establish authority because the next question the viewer would have is, okay, but why should I listen to you? Now? You're not going to take 10 minutes to do this, but I might say something like, you know, after starting multiple different YouTube channels and being frustrated, eventually I got three silver play buttons, a gold play button, and really figured out a system that works for YouTube. So in this video. And so you're just going to quickly establish your authority and whatever that is, you might say, after helping 5,000 students or after writing a book or, you know, when I got my degree in psychology, it really gave me kind of a unique perspective on. So you're saying something because first thing is you got to get their attention. Second, why should I listen to you? Establish your authority. And then third, set the agenda. And this doesn't have to be long either, but this is like. And so in this video, we're going to be covering this and this. And then at the end, I'm actually going to be unpacking this other thing as well. And that was an important thing because you want to give them a reason to watch until the end. And so that's the 3A formula. Grab attention, establish your authority, and set the agenda. And that's exactly what I did when I re intro'd this free online course, which was a repurpose of my four podcasts, is I really wanted to grab attention, took extra, you know, knew some stats, the opportunity, the challenges, the problems, and then why should you listen to me? And here's what we're about to cover. And by the way, if you want to take advantage of time codes and chapters, YouTube allows you to have chapters on your video. So people could skip around or it could be well organized. All of you will be Legends at doing this, because you are correct, course creators, educators, and you're very well structured in how you teach and organize things. YouTube loves that. And so I shot a new intro. Now, this One video got 333,000 views. Now think about this. This content was sitting on my channel and it had already been watched a year previously. And in general, you know, like, it kind of forgotten about. Sometimes you might think, well, wait a minute, if I post something that I've already posted, then Sally, one of my biggest fans, might comment, like, Rebecca, you already posted this video. Why are you number one? Like, Sally is not going to say that. Or if she does, what she'll realize is, I got 7,000 new subscribers, 333,000 views. This video got more views than all of those podcasts did. I've learned a lot of us, we actually don't realize how much we should be repurposing content strategically and repackaging content so that it's more leveraged. And so this video got 333,000 views, grew the channel, 7,000 subscribers, also generated almost five grand just from YouTube paying me. But throughout the video, I gave two call to actions. I did an intro, played that first part, which was a repurposed video podcast. And then I did a little transition. So, hey, here's what we just learned. Now we're about to get in this next section. But by the way, if you actually want to get a free copy of my book, YouTube Secrets, you can go to ytsecrets.com or just click the link in the description. Just pay shipping and I'll mail you a copy of the book, which would be a, you know, free plus shipping book funnel. And that call to action was given after I delivered massive value in part one. And then the second video played and then I'm like, okay, so here's what we've learned. Now we're going to get into part three in just a second. But I actually have a deep dive class a webinar. If you want to go deeper, you can go to thinkmasterclass.com and go deeper within that as well. And then I went into part three. And so those were the two call to actions, doing a two hour video that grew my channel, got views, developed, massive goodwill, free online course, good information, well structured call to actions throughout. And here's what happened. Now, I didn't pull the super specific numbers, but I got the numbers for the year. So in 2025. And we also do paid traffic and a lot of organic traffic. But how many people took advantage of our free plus shipping book offer in 2025, 4634 total book sales. What's kind of cool is on that page, it's just seven bucks and you mail you the book free. But there are a couple order bumps so people can buy a few, you know, digital course upgrades and things like that. So great revenue and even better depth and trust of getting a book mailed to someone's house and getting to connect with them in that way. And then they're in our system. But then Also last year, 52,107 webinar opt ins basically happened. We have a evergreen webinar and then I also do it live usually once a month or, or twice a month and we run a couple different ones. And so that is not all from that one video, but that is all from that strategy. What do we do? We make organic content add massive value and then give clear call to actions to the funnels that you have built. And you get so much compounding ROI from new subscribers you reach and people that meet you. In Slack. We had, we use wicked reports, kind of advanced and expensive also to just track where people came from. And we recently just discovered someone that said, I've been following you and listening to your podcast for six years. I just joined your program today. Now I just think, how much free information have I given away? Incredible amounts. You know, how much value have I given away? A lot. This person's been in the community for six years and hadn't bought yet. But we tracked it all the way back in Wicked reports to watching a YouTube video jumping on a webinar. And so YouTube is a compounding business asset. It's not just a marketing tactic. And the point we're making here is that one video can change, one video can alone, like it did for Caleb, like it did for me, can shift your entire YouTube channel. So this is Carrie. She's a coach in her 50s helping women with money, mindset and movement. And she uploaded her first YouTube video just 10 months ago. But then she got stuck. She's kind of frustrated. Why is it not growing? Why is it not working? And started to fix her strategy, consuming information like this, you know, learning from our team. And she was stuck on YouTube. Channel plateaued most of her days. Her numbers were going backward. But one strategic video changed everything. She did a video called 25 side Hustles for women over 50. And she was stuck on her entire channel. She had 16,000 views, but her views jumped 70,000 views. This video paid her 1400 bucks. And she was able to grow 3500 new subscribers in just 30 days. 3500 subscribers in 30 days. It's very underestimated the power of one good strategic YouTube video. Your next question might be like, well, what does that even mean, Sean? And how do I do that? And part of it, I think is a commitment to excellence and just getting 1% better with each post. And you kind of never know which one will break out. But I think the other part is slowing down a little bit and thinking about what if I didn't just rush out content like a marketing tactic, but made something that, you know, is well researched, well thought out, packaged really well, you could be 3560 subscribers away from starting your channel from scratch with just one video. And it happens constantly in our community. But it's also important to have a long haul mindset on YouTube. Check this out. This is a stat. Across the platform, creators report that 50% or more of their monthly views come from older videos. Content made weeks, months or even years ago. Think about Caleb's six hour course. It's eight months old. Get it? Six still is. Bringing in 100 leads a day. What an asset. So you look back now, it was a risk for him to especially pay big money to film that video. But at the same time, what's the return, Ben? Astronomical. Like the fact that he sat down and crafted a strategic YouTube video. That singular video is that growth asset. And this is just how YouTube works. It's the only platform where your content lives forever. It's the only platform where your content lives forever. These other platforms, they did a study on the half life of Instagram. Two days for your average Instagram post, you post awesome. Meet some people. Cool. Oh, they commented your mini chat word. Good for you. Like, that's awesome. But two days later you got to post again, right? It's the social media hamster wheel. You got to post again. Let's do it. Y' all are doing it. That's awesome. But YouTube, now they said this, the half life of YouTube is 10 days. So it's 5x better even if you don't have a breakout video. In terms of like the, in the. What's the half life mean? It means like how long until it kind of dies out and it keeps getting views. But our mindset towards YouTube is how do we strategically create content called ranked videos that keep getting views for weeks, months and years to come. So then the mindset is what if slowly, at my pace, at the pace of your life, the pace of Your business, the pace of getting out, I would say more quality content, not rushed content. Now what does that also mean? That just means structured in like, you know, good value, good opening your story woven in a little bit more time and outlining it, thinking about what you're going to say, putting it all together. And you build a library of content on YouTube. That's what becomes an asset. Not just random videos, but a strategic strategy built over years. You'd be shocked where you could be with your YouTube channel in the next three months, but you'd be astounded where you could be with your YouTube channel in the next three years as 50% or more of the monthly views you're getting are coming from content that's weeks, months or even years old. Let's land the plane on insight number seven and would love to answer some questions. YouTube rewards businesses willing to invest and not dabble. YouTube rewards businesses willing to invest and not dabble. Let's look at one business owner who went all in and got results. And so a good friend of mine who we've collaborated and worked together and talks a lot about YouTube. I've been telling her to do YouTube for over a decade. I think by this time or probably about 10 years ago when I first met Shalene Johnson. But recently she made a decision like I'm not just going to use YouTube as a tactic, I'm going to go all in on YouTube with a video podcast. And she actually shut down two seven figure businesses to focus all on YouTube because for her she wanted to have more simplicity, like one place where you know, she's really investing, really building and where's her community rallying. And for her she saw that as YouTube. And as she went into that season she invested $10,000 about in her first six months and I will tell you exactly where actually of kind of a thought of what might it cost to get into YouTube now number one, it's a mindset shift. It's deciding to just do it and have the grit. But here's what Chalene Johnson did. She hired a YouTube strategist and a coach and it was about $2,500 a call. And that was helping with weekly strategy critique thumbnails. And basically she said he ripped her a new one weekly in a good way. And so somebody that would just really. And her goal was I'm not looking for like a lifelong coach. I'm looking to absorb all the information that I need to know and get great at this so I can build this over years. She has an overseas Editor budget conscious, not high cost, Fast turnaround. Four hours for a one hour video. Four days. Excuse me, faster around. So four days she gets it shot. One hour video uploads things online. They also handle the long form and the short form content. And this person knows how to add B roll. And this is a video podcast. But one of the things that's incredible about Chalene is she's really good with systems and organization of like lifestyle video that she has really well organized on Dropbox so editors can pull from it and then put that into the videos. So it took her about six, six months to build the system, but now she can sit down and record and the editor can do the B roll, put everything together. The system is built. Now an internal team member is the content manager. There's a thumbnail designer and that can be outsourced. She uses Canva so she can tweak it herself because she knows what her girl actually clicks on. And then they have a contractor B roll organizer actually tags and categorizes clips weekly that supports both YouTube and social media content. I'm not saying you have to do all of that, but you're about to see the results Chalene has gotten. And so she sat down. This is not a dabbling mindset. This is a. I'm gonna treat this like a business and treat this like a system and get these things built and put these things in place. And she still films on her phone. Her editor is overseas. Her system is automated. Well, her lean YouTube model has produced 1.6 million this last year from YouTube ad revenue and actually brand partnerships. She also wanted to rally her community in Patreon. And that doesn't even include, include that. Now Chalene and Brett, they have multiple businesses and you might be familiar with Brock Johnson doing Instagram stuff as well, but she is really focused and on YouTube. She has focused on YouTube and doing a video podcast and just setting up a system that supports her lifestyle and supports the business that she wants to create and a business she loves. Now you might be familiar with some of the entrepreneurs in the space and some of the biggest on YouTube. And what do they invest in YouTube? You look at like an Alex and Layla hermosi anywhere from 70 to $200,000 a month in content. 10 plus team members just for content. 300 pieces of content a week. Cody Sanchez, a team of 10, $100,000 a month. Dan Martell has Martell Media, a media company mindset to invest in content. Of course. Gary Vee, a 30 or more team that if my chat GPT deep research was accurate, says he spends $4 million a year on content, which probably makes sense. And 100, you know, pieces a day. All integration across all, all platforms. I'm not saying you have to do that. What I am saying is if you're modeling those that are crushing on YouTube, they're not dabbling. They're getting some help and so getting a contractor. Here's my question. What would it look like for you to go all in on YouTube your way? What would it look like for you to go all in on YouTube with the overseas editor? Maybe you already have somebody you work with, a personal assistant that could kind of help manage things. You just figure out the system for you. It could be simple. Do you have to post every week? No, I think you should post good videos when you can, because they compound. Do you have to do any of these things? Anybody else says no, you can do it your way. But the mindset is those that are really breaking through, they're investing in it, they're approaching it within a professional mindset. As we land the plane, it's a good question to ask. Okay, Sean, but 2026, like, but is it too late to get started? I mean, I also, you know, I plateaued for. I have a YouTube channel. Many of us might have it. You know, I still have a channel. I haven't really uploaded on it. I haven't changed my banner in a few years. And actually, what's on there is a Backstreet boys concert from 15 years ago just I filmed on my Android. You know, like, I have a channel, but, like, you know, is it too late to get started? Well, the CEO of YouTube has recently interviewed as Time magazine's business person of the Year last year. And he also just did his updated address of their four biggest priorities. But there's a fascinating quote that he said. And this is what he said. This is what he said. He said, the most important creator on YouTube. The most important creator on YouTube in the next five to ten years is probably someone we've never heard of. They might be starting their channel today. And so I always think it's easy to feel like, man, I'm behind and man, like, so many people have a head start. But it's kind of like the proverb that says, when's the best time to plant a tree? Well, best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. When's the second best time to plant a tree? Today. And so I really believe that YouTube is a massive opportunity for you and your business. And this is a fact. They have a staff for this. YouTube is still built to surface new creators and new channels, not just reward the old ones because they believe the next breakout creator hasn't shown up. And their economy, the way they run their channel is with ads. So they realize that if you can't start a channel and get success and break through, then they are going to be cutting off their future. So they actually have to program the algorithm to give new creators a chance. And it happens all the time. New creators are being recommended. The question is, when you get that chance, when YouTube gives you an impression and they see your title, they see your thumbnail, they see the topic you're talking about, do you get that click. And what happens when you have that opportunity of YouTube recommending you? And so YouTube is still built to surface new creators. And this next stat is not. It's not about your business and whatever vertical or whatever market you're in, it's about what's called the creator economy. And the creator economy would be people starting businesses and YouTube channels or being influencers as well as all the software and the income and the money that's all around this YouTube social media thing itself. And here's the graph of where we're about to go next. It shows that from 2025 to 2032, the global creator economy. The global creator economy market growth is going nowhere. But, but up. And here's the stat. No worries. The subscribe to that channel, I think they'd help you hit thumbs up. I don't know if it was a YouTube video. So check this out. The creator economy right now is worth $200 billion. That's the total addressable market. And it's estimated to go to 848 billion in the next seven years. That's 4x growth. And so I think what's fascinating is what's waiting for you on the other side of building your brand and your personal brand on YouTube besides just more leads or more core sales. You know, Chalene Johnson has been selling products and programs for years, but she has tapped into something that maybe has been kind of surprising, that brands are paying her brand deals are coming to her channel for the influence that she has. Patreon, these other models, other communities you could build. And that's the creator economy. That's the 4x increase that's coming over the next seven years. So if one simple decision could be the difference, it's this. Betting on YouTube isn't just smart. It very well could be the next level, level multiplier for your business this year and in the years to come. Thank you.