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YouTube Creators Hub
Beyond Metrics: Building a YouTube Brand with Leroy Ter Braak
00:41:31
In this episode, Dusty Porter interviews Leroy, a YouTube strategist with extensive experience in helping creators grow their channels. They discuss the day-to-day responsibilities of a strategist, common challenges faced by creators, the importance...
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- [00:00]
A
When it comes to the metrics itself, like the average view duration, ctr, average percentage, viewed, whatever. I know I make myself unpopular with a lot of the maybe old school YouTube educators, but I do not care about these metrics individually at all because they don't tell if they don't paint a fair story. The only thing CTR tells me is in the first 24 hours, if we have a fan base of 100,000 people and it's 2 or 3% lower than normal in the first 24, like oh, less of our poor fans vibe with this idea.
- [00:31]
B
Welcome back to another episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Dusty here as always and today I'm just going to tell you really quickly. We're brought to you by the fine folks over at Tubebuddy. If you're looking for a YouTube coach, I believe I can be the perfect person for you. We also have a place called Creator Communities over on our Discord server. For five bucks you get access to that community plus you get access to the Mastermind calls. The February Mastermind call is happening on the 26th, so go ahead and lock in your spot now. To be a part of that would really appreciate you guys doing that, supporting the show and you're going to get tenfold what you put into it. It's a great community over there with some wonderful people. I really love what this show is becoming. I love talking with creators every week. So let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Hello everyone and welcome back to the conversation portion of today's show. I'm joined today by Leroy, who is a YouTube strategist. He's been doing YouTube since 2009, had his first success in 2012 and stopped focusing on his own channel full time in 2019. By accident he built a creative production agency off the back of the channel and worked with some amazing brands around the world. He came back to YouTube in 2022 as a strategist when he saw that it became an actual role and said goodbye to his business fully. And since then he's helped creators of all sizes monetize their channels with just one video, tripled subscriber counts in a matter of months and garnered millions of views in the process. Now he works with established creators and entrepreneurs and full time clients and thinks about YouTube every single day. Leroy, how you doing today?
- [02:06]
A
Crave Dusty. What an introduction man. Thank you so much.
- [02:09]
B
Listen, I try but you provide the words, I just provide the enthusiasm.
- [02:13]
A
You have a voice for this. Oh, I can tell.
- [02:16]
B
Appreciate it. With YouTube, you've decided to be someone who instead of day to day in your own channel, you've decided to be a strategist and kind of help other creators achieve their goals and their dreams. Can you let my audience know a little bit about what you do in the day to day?
- [02:34]
A
Yeah, of course. So my day to day is pretty eventful and it goes all places. That's what I love about my job, is that I get to work with creators in all different types of niches. So in the morning, I could be focusing on the story structure of a new video in the golf market for a golf client of mine. And an hour later I'm thinking about how can we make this video about this rescue dog more endearing and longer and have more substance. So day to day, I would say depending on the creator that I'm working with that day or the creators that I'm working with that day, it's very different every day. And that's what I love about my job. Sometimes it's ideation, sometimes I'm focusing on the business aspect of a creator's channel more. It's just the culmination of my 15 years of experience doing business and doing YouTube together in just one role. It's like the ideal role for me.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah. Is what I say about this podcast, too. One week I can be interviewing a Santa Claus on YouTube and next week I'm talking to a farmer who's grown their channel to over a million subscribers. It's, it's the beauty of YouTube is that it's so diverse. There's so many different niches and sub niches within that. And it's so cool to talk to someone who's in the weeds a bit with the YouTube stuff. Give me a, give me an example of someone reaches out to you. What does the inbound call look like? What does that look like when they reach out to you and they say, okay, I know I want to put some money into this. I'm going to invest some money into this, hire someone who knows what they're doing. What does that kind of first call and meeting look like?
- [04:04]
A
Yeah, so one of a question. I get a lot from strategists or young creators wanting to turn strategists. Question I get a lot from those types of people is, yeah, so how do you get leads? First and foremost, I never do outreach myself. I never reach out to creators like, hey, do you want to work with me? Because I think it's a really bad premise to start a collaboration. I'm very thankful and lucky Although it's also a lot of hard work that I'm in a position where people come to me, they reach out and ask me like, hey, I'm struggling with my channel. Or I want to start entrepreneurs who have a lot of money to burn capital they like, okay, I want to start a channel. And they have the creators who are normal, like I'm hitting a plateau or I'm going to feel like I'm going backwards. What I do, honestly Dusty, is I say, okay, let's get on an intro call if I think it's an interesting case for me and if I think I can help them. And that first call for me is really about could I see myself having a beer with this person in real life. And that is my main thing on that first call is am I going to loathe seeing their name in my calendar. And if that's the case, I will happily redirect them to someone else that I think is very capable. But for me, that first call is really about figuring out do I like you? Do I think we you would take feedback from you. Can I be honest with you? Because I am Dutch, I am from Europe. We people tend to say that we're too blunt and too direct. I think it's just being honest and being straight because you're paying me to be to do that for you. So for me it's more about it's a vibe call, it's figuring out, okay, do I really think I can help this person and do I see myself? This is what I do once a year I fly around the world to my clients, just hang out with them for a weekend and go get deep in their channel and just do something fun. That's what that first call is for. Just figuring out like, hey, do I like you? Do you like me? Can we see work together for six months plus if yes, let's get to work.
- [05:54]
B
What is the maybe it's not one thing, but what are some of the most common things that when you you'd had that initial call, they say they're going to invest in you and hire you to work with them on their channels. What are some of the most common things that you see that are the low hanging fruit that as a strategist you're just like, oh man, we can tackle this and we can see some big results. So here's some of the most common things that you see creators doing that when you're deep diving their channels you can say, oh, we can really turn this thing around.
- [06:24]
A
It depends a little bit what stage the creator is in. So I, I see common things depending on what stage are in. So if we're beginner creators, beginner creators tend to overthink the wrong things. They tend to overthink like I did that really weird thing with my nose in that video or I scratched my nose twice. Nobody gives a crap. Nobody sees you like you see yourself. I work with channels that have 5 million 10 million plus subscribers where they struggle more with. I've gotten to this point doing this trick, this one trick, and I feel like I'm a one trick pony. But I want to have more of a brand where people recognize me and not so much my videos. So depending on what states they're in, I would say that answer differs a little bit. But when it, what it comes down to a lot of times is that this is where I sell. A plumber's roof always leaks. It's so hard sometimes to keep an overview over your own creative process, over your own videos. And me, I'm just a bird. I fly above the trenches. I look where you're digging and I can have the overview. Listen, you're digging that way, but you want to go the other way. So let's redirect you. They're like, wow, if you say it, it sounds so simple. But why can't I figure that out? That's what you pay me for. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective ones.
- [07:36]
B
That's so hard too as a creator, to not invest and worry about things that at the end of the day, when you look at them, they just don't matter. I think of things that I've worried about on this podcast and on my YouTube channel. And when I left those things go and started focusing on the actual meat and potatoes of the channel, the content, the strategy, how I'm going to roll things out and stop worrying about the color, specific color of the font on my thumb, the things that, that really don't matter. And so focusing on the actual day to day, I just, I love that as a strategist, I also assume that you see some things that. And hear some very negative talk of. I have so many creators reach out to me and they say, dusty, it's impossible to grow on YouTube. But I assume that you work with small YouTube creators and people who are not 5 to 10 million channels. You work with, obviously a very diverse group. Is it still possible, I'm asking you as the strategist, for someone to grow a channel in 2025 and beyond?
- [08:32]
A
Oh, so yeah, short answer, Absolutely. Game is Changing, Right? So if we go back when I started on YouTube back in 2009, I had the same start as most young guys back then. I thought the whole world wanted to see my Call of Duty clips. No one really wanted to see that. I didn't know that. But that's where my love for making YouTube videos started. But back then, if I knew back then what I know now, I would have been the biggest Call of Duty creator now ever. Why? Because most people were just trying, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what happens. So now what is different is that you need to have a plan. Like, you need to understand. Like, yes, you can just upload and see what happens. But a lot of times I. My DMs are so full of people who are like, I've made five videos and none of them got more than 100 views. I think I'm going to quit. It's okay then. YouTube is not for you. If you think five videos is enough to go from an absolute beginner to someone who understands the intricacies of storytelling, pacing, all that kind of stuff, ideation, then it's just, you're not passionate about this. So can you still. Can you become the next superstar? Yes, because we see new Superstars emerge on YouTube every single year. Not like it's never been different. It's always been the same. Now for the younger generation, you have kids like Ishowspeed who came out of nowhere and blew up. And people said, like, entertainment is saturated. No, people change, dynamics change. And as long as you have a plan and you're willing to stick with that plan for at least a year and upload at least once a week, yes, you can. But most people want the outcome, but they don't want the work that you need to do for that outcome.
- [10:14]
B
Yeah, we went through the phase many years ago where people were just talking about passive income. Passive income. You're gonna listen. I get it. You want to be able to invest and then get the fruits of your labor for years to come. Look, I'm the biggest fan of that type of thing. But when it comes to passive income and being able to not do the work and see the result, you're just not going to get it. I'm very fortunate that 99% of the clients that I work with on their YouTube channels, they're ready to go. They're not looking for instant results. They're not looking for, I've uploaded 10 videos. What they want to do is upload 10, 20 videos, then work with me and we can say oh, what are we doing? Are we following our plan? Are we being consistent? Are we doing the things that we should do? I love that. So when someone signs up to work with you and you've done the initial call and you're now working with them on a regular basis, let's talk about the things that you do. So when you work with them, you do a deep dive of their channel. You obviously cover every aspect from scripting, ideation all the way to monetization. So where do you start? Like, where is your home base of just. Okay, Leroy, this is where we're going to begin today, working with this client. How do you decide that? And where does that kind of start from?
- [11:23]
A
Yeah, so I always like. So I'm an avid kickboxer. I love kickboxing. I love martial arts in general. And I always take analogies and, like, examples from that, because that's what I know. I see myself as, okay, I work with this new creator. Let's see what they do in the ring. Let's just see, like, what they already put out there. Okay, I see this. We can immediately change this. That will give them 20% better strength or speed or whatever. It depends on the client. So I think the best thing that I can do is give you a recent example of someone I started working with and that I had very good success with Fast. So I started working with this channel called the golden. The Golden Kobe Family. And JJ is the owner of this channel. And JJ rescues dogs. That's pretty much what it comes down to. So their videos is all about how they transform a rescue dog, Foster them, Foster the dog, and make the dog ready to go to their forever home. And there's a really sad cases. Dogs that eat rocks to survive and have it so super sad, but also really cool to watch because they're such pure people. And he came to me. He did. Patty Galloway's cohort learned a lot there, had his first viral videos, and he was like, okay, now I'm at a point where I'm making $10,000 a month from YouTube. I want to scale that, but I also want to figure out how can I increase my few floor. So for the people that don't know your few floors, hey, in a bad month or a bad video, our videos get 10,000 views. How do we get that to 20,000 instead of going, like, for the viral video every time, it's like, how do we ensure that a bad video gets 20,000 views instead of 10? So JJ came to me with these problems. I looked at his videos okay, first and foremost, you tell me you want to do more revenue from your channel. You either have to go the donation route. I know that feels icky for a lot of people. I wouldn't want to do it myself either. So you want to give your audience something that they would enjoy as well. You want to build a brand of the back of your channel at some point. And he was like, yes, I would love to have a brand that, for example, a slow feeder or something for dogs that really aligns with my channel. And that is very natural for me to sell to an audience that wants to support me. Okay, great. First and foremost, in his videos, they weren't really characters in their own videos. It was all the dogs. Like, he was the voiceover. That was it. We're going to change that. So what we're going to do. What I want to do is I want to see more of you and Ella, his girlfriend, on camera, because you guys are fostering these dogs. And now we can take formats that already did well on your channel. We're going to focus a lot more on storytelling because your stories are pretty good, but they're basic. There are a lot of this happened, and then that happened, and then that happened, and then that happened. You already get bored if I say it like, but if we say this happened, but then that happened, therefore this happened, and now this is happening. If you go that structure, people will tend to stay longer. So we took all these little things together, started improving them in the first two to three months, and after two months, I think we went from. I think they were, like, at 50,000 subscribers, and now they're at 140,000 in a matter of three or four months. So it was insane growth. They blew past their revenue goals that they set for the year already. And we're really focusing with them on, okay, the brand part of it. If you want to sell something to someone, people need to be able to love you and people need to be able to hate you. But if you're not on camera, they can't do either or. So we're going to have to make you more of a character on the channel. If you want to have that warm Walmart display of the slow feeder with you and the dogs and Ella as a cutout, get the golden Kobe slow feeder. You want to have people like, hey, I watch them all the time. Let's get that one. That's when. That's what I'm working on with them right now. So for them, it was a lot more refinement with some Others, and this is mostly entrepreneurs I've worked, for example, can name names from all of them. But I've worked with, for example, a Shark and Shark Tank. They have capital to burn, but they don't understand anything about YouTube. So with them I say from the get go, listen, it's going to take at least three to four months before I get the fundamentals of YouTube in your head. But once you have them in your head and you can actually make something that gets successful, this is one of the most valuable skills you'll learn in your life. I know you're a shark from Shark Tank, but believe me, if you can do this in your channel, you can do this anywhere. So it depends a bit on what stage the creator is in. But I hope that example gives you a little bit of an idea of what I do.
- [15:35]
B
So I love that you mentioned at the beginning of that interview or the answer of that question, you mentioned that you're talking about storytelling. I am a big proponent of storytelling. Can you talk about your thoughts on storytelling and how important it is? I do tutorial how to videos on my channel. And even with educational content, I feel that storytelling, when I started getting better at it and I've started really focusing and investing money into getting better at it, that it really helped not just my YouTube channel, but the podcast and the conversations that I was having. Can you just talk about where and when you're working with clients? Like the things that you're teaching them about storytelling?
- [16:11]
A
Yeah. So one of the first things that I do with any client I work with any creator, doesn't matter to me what stage they're in is figure out, so how do you approach your stories? So how do you write them out? And some of them say if they do more tutorial like stuff. So for example, I work with a Fitness influencers like 5 million or 7 million plus subscribers, more how to's and more science based stuff is, okay, how do you come up with the idea and how do you structure it? So I try to do in a way where this is the problem. Now I'm going to get you on a journey to how to solve it. It's like, okay, we can refine it a little bit more. So let's say for example, I don't know, you have a dumbbell and instead of starting the video with here are the five secret ways that you can burn belly fat faster. You take a dumbbell, hold it up to the camera. This is what's really holding you back from actually burning fat. And let me explain why? Now we have a visual anchor. We have something that we take the viewer by the hand and. And we take them on a journey through the video. That's what I really like to do. My favorite storytelling framework for any channel is the but therefore and framework. Because it just works. It works for tutorials, it works for storytelling, entertainment, for sad stories, documentaries. I don't care what. It works.
- [17:22]
B
Can you say that again? The theory that you're the one that. The framework that you like to use. Can you say that again?
- [17:26]
A
Yeah, of course. So it's the but therefore and framework. South park is renowned for using this, and all of their stories are in the but therefore and framework. So it's Jimmy wants to go to just top of my head, Jimmy wants to go to the store, but he forgot his keys. Therefore, he has to go back home and now he has to do the whole journey again. We could also have said Jimmy forgot his. Jimmy went. Wanted to go to the store and he forgot his keys and he had to go back home and now he has to go to the store again. It's immediately sounds like it's a drag to get to the store. He's like, just, okay, and then what? So when it comes to tutorials, you can do the same thing. Instead of giving people like just the basic dry. Okay, step one, step two, make it a puzzle structure. Give them little checkpoints throughout the story where they understand a little bit more of the overall equation. It's like, oh, okay, so if I do this, then that is the outcome. Nice. Okay, now I have this part. I want to get the full picture and I focus on storytelling. I think 60% of my YouTube work is focused on that. Just focusing on, okay, what are the story beats? Let's go through the story beats of this story. Something I do with JJ as well. I really, I told him, like, listen, when you're rescuing a dog, what I want you to do is every time something happens, a story beat happens. Also can also say an event. So I don't know, dog comes in outside for the first time. Write that in your notes. Just the phone. Just note, dog went outside. First time was scared dog. First interaction with other dog. Give me all those notes. And now together we're going to try and put that in a but therefore framework for them. Their average view duration went almost doubled in a matter of two months, while the views went up from like a 2 million to now, I think 7 million a month.
- [19:16]
B
As a viewer and consumer, people have been doing this for years with TV and consuming they've been they. You put yourself as the viewer into the story. Right. People back in comic book movies, when they first started, you put yourself in the role of the hero or whatever it is. And so by storytelling and doing it by what you're talking about, by giving them kind of what you call checkpoints or wherever it may be, you're putting yourself as the viewer in there and you're just like, oh man, I want to know what happens next. And it can really be applicable to any niche or it doesn't really matter. Now I want to talk about. You mentioned viewer retention and watch time and people get tired of hearing that. The buzzwords that people YouTube educators throw around all the time. So when it comes to keeping people longer on on videos, storytelling is obviously a big aspect of that. But what are the other intricacies that you've learned along the way that you now teach with your clients? As far as, okay, Leroy, you can look at my analytics. People are bouncing. I talk about cutting those boring intros. Don't go on and drag things on so long. So what have you learned and found to be really a good way to keep people invested in the video?
- [20:28]
A
Yeah. So first and foremost, when it comes to the metrics itself, like the, the average view duration, ctr, average percentage viewed, whatever, I make myself unpopular with a lot of the maybe old school YouTube educators, but I do not care about these metrics individually at all because they don't tell if they don' paint a fair story. The only thing CTR tells me is in the first 24 hours, if we have a fan base of 100,000 people and it's 2 or 3% lower than normal in the first 24, like, oh, less of our poor fans vibe with this idea. Okay, good. Doesn't mean the video still can go viral. It says absolutely nothing. I think one of the big things that I always focus on is fewer satisfaction. The metric that is not measurable, but it's the metric that the YouTube neural networks is, are really focusing on. Hey, did this video give strong signals that Bob liked this? Bob really did like this, I think. Okay, so we have 700,000 more kind of viewers like Bob. Let's push this video to those guys as well, see if they respond the same way.
- [21:35]
B
And you're talking about like the home feed. That's what people don't understand about the algorithm. The way YouTube works. A lot of people now are living on their home feed where 10 years ago it was your subscriptions, people would subscribe. That's why I don't really care about subscriber numbers. Like, for me, particularly on YouTube, it's a vanity metric. It's great. People use it like a like button. I want to see that go up. I want to see it grow. It's a great number, a great metric. But also with that being said, the home feed is like you said, okay, Bob, you know, is this way. Bob likes these types of videos. We found out that, like you said, there's maybe a million other people like Bob. Let's present that to him. So that's how the home feed works. So maybe you can go into even more detail on that.
- [22:12]
A
Yeah. So for me, I know my ideal viewer is Bob. I want to know what makes Bob tick, What does he like, what doesn't he like? What does he like about my storytelling? The basics and the fundamentals of storytelling do not change. But the way we present it might, because Bob might be someone who hates. This is a funny experiment that we. That I did with a very big creator some time ago, where if they started talking about just certain jokes, so more, for example, politically leaning jokes, people would like, we would have a 5% retention dip. So we knew, okay, your viewers didn't. They don't know politics. Just keep politics off the channel. Just don't do it. And when we stopped doing that, we saw that it actually flattened out more around those points where we took out the whole politics joke section. So you need to know, understand the viewer. Fundamentals don't change. Like the fundamentals of YouTube. So that's why a lot of creators that start working with me. Do you have experience in set niche? Just know. But it doesn't matter because the fundamentals of YouTube do not change. The only thing that I need to do now is figure out that, for example, when I started working in the golf niche is like what five over par means. I have no idea what that means. I need to get educated on golf, not on YouTube. Like YouTube. I understand. So if we go into the algorithm part of things, if Bob likes videos about, I don't know, pottery, why not pottery? Nice niche. I think there's a really cool niche, actually could make really good money there if you do something. Well, Bob likes pottery, and Bob really enjoys pottery. Videos that are more like asmr. There's not a lot of talking. It's just like someone making a really cool vase and it's 30 minutes of just handcrafted excellent shit. If Bob likes that, then YouTube will start understanding, like, oh, Bob likes to watch longer videos at night when he's on his phone. Why? Because that's how Bob likes to fall asleep. The algorithm now is very different than what it was back when you and I started like the back then, sorry, Google, love you. But back then it was stupid. It was really stupid because I even had that when I started with my short film channel where I had my like my first real success. We were in the Netherlands, but we made content in English, but we didn't get pushed in the U.S. why? Because we were in the Netherlands, so we got pushed to a Dutch audience. The Dutch audience was like, just talk Dutch. Why are you guys making English content? It's cringe. We don't want to make content for you, we want to make it for them. Nowadays you can upload content from anywhere in the world and YouTube will find the viewer. They're like, oh, Bob loves that. It doesn't care if you're in Russia, if you're in the UAE or if you're in China or if you're in wherever. It just wants to make sure that the viewer is satisfied because a satisfied viewer stays on the platform longer, sees more ads, therefore makes YouTube and Google more money. Once you start getting, taking a step back and be like, okay, I'm not getting views right now. YouTube hates me. I'm shadow banned. Okay, no, let's take one step back more. Are you making videos that will satisfy a viewer and satisfy a viewer group that is big enough for you to make make a living out of this thing? And that is where a lot of people go wrong about the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't care about you. The algorithm just cares about the viewer. That's what it's designed to do.
- [25:34]
B
Would you say a lot of your clients hire you and when they hire you or get on that initial call, they don't really know or haven't identified who they're viewer is? I call them a target audience, whatever you want to call it. Would you say that there, there's a lot of people even that have grown channels that you see and you're like, man, if we can just, if you can figure out who this person is, we can really take this thing to the next level.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah. So especially beginners. Yes. And with more established creators, we, I find that we refine them more. So we refine more who the ideal for your profile is like, they had a good idea, but a lot of times they're like, oh, wait, I've never gone that deep. Never gone that deep. Okay, why do we have 50 million long form views a month but only 0.002% convert into using your app or there is a mismatch there. There's something that's not clicking. We need to do some more market research, audience research, figure that out. I think it really depends the creator. Every three months, I try to do a week where I take free calls of an hour with beginners. It's just like, first comes, first serve. I open my calendar. No, no, I stack. I just like to, like, get to know beginner creators and figure out, like, what are you struggling with? A lot of these people make the mistake that they're like, oh, I like this video. So there must be more people that like this video, right? Yeah, probably. But also, this is a very weird video like this. Very niche, what you're doing here. There's probably 100,000 people more in the world that love this. But how many of Those are on YouTube and how many of those are specifically finding your video is. We're talking minuscule amounts of chance that this does well. And I think that's the biggest problem that beginners have. They don't. They think, I like this. And I think I'm a pretty normal person. So this must work. You're doing guesswork now. There's better ways to go about this and increase your percentage chance that a video does well.
- [27:28]
B
Let's talk about branding for a second. So as far as branding a channel, what are the mistakes that you see there? Let's talk about. I. I call it packaging. You may call it something else. I think about thumbnails, titles, descriptions, even the channel branding of everything from the banner, the profile image, and even how they streamline their thumbnails and keep them in line with their branding. What are the common mistakes there? And where do you live as far as helping people find out where they need to be on their channel?
- [27:54]
A
Yeah. So for me, I call it packaging as well, by the way. I think that's the easiest way to go about it. But we can go one layer deeper and be like, let's say you're a faceless creator. My answer is a little bit different versus a personality creator. And a great example of this is, for example, a channel, faceless channel like Fern Fern makes high quality documentaries. You can. Because of the style of thumbnail that they do, you can, on a glance, almost guess, oh, that's probably a Fern video. And nine out of 10 times, you're right. It's the same as how Sonny V2 is, like in the creator drama niche, that whole cartoony stuff, he popularized that. And therefore people started seeing that As a part of his brand. Same you can say for matnates media. Some of these bigger channels, they took a format and ran with it. Right. Like they took it. This is going to be my style. Just need to make sure that the ideas are really good and then it will probably catch on. I'm a huge fan of that, especially for faceless creators. Now for personality creators, one of the problems I see happening a lot, and I don't want to call out anyone specifically, but I have to make an example here is let's say, for example, Ryan Trahan is an anomaly in terms of how good he is at the subtleties of YouTube, how good he is at making the intricacies of his personality come out on camera and amplify that in the edit. Like the synergy between him and the editor that he works with is insane. Great. Now you see guys like, for example, I love his content. What's his name? Jack Pembroke. Came onto the scene pretty fast growth, did really well. But in a lot of ways, he is doing the same thing as Ryan Trahan is doing. But it misses the personality that Ryan Trahan has. So for me, I always tend to go, okay, we can model the thumbnails after working concepts. And that's what I would always do in the beginning for a personality creator. Don't try to reinvent the wheel in the beginning. You just want to get traction. And then over time, we are going to find out what your voice is, what your style is, what we want the thumbnails to be, because we need to first get traction. Problem is that a lot of these personality creators stay stuck in that first phase where they're like, okay, I want to do like the Ryan Trahan thing. But they never really branch out to a point where people are like, hey, I'm watching this video because of Jack, not because of the concept. And that is where a lot of it comes back to personality. Branding. I don't really care as much about. We need to do red always, like a red text on a thumbnail, because that is your branding. I don't care. Especially in the beginning. I do not care. I just want to model it after what works, make very interesting videos and sell people on you in the video. Yeah. And that's it for me.
- [30:35]
B
That's really where I'm at right now too. I feel like proof of concept is already there with what's working.
- [30:42]
A
Yeah.
- [30:43]
B
And it's interesting that you mentioned Ryan's channel. Ryan Trahan's channel. He's growing at A crazy rate. And it's all warranted. My daughter and I both enjoy watching his content. I. I'm just. Just so intrigued by how he takes a concept of. And people think, oh, he's just doing what Mr. Mr. Beast does, but he's not doing that. He's doing completely different things. You think about the Penny Challenge, and then he branched off and. And he does. Where. One of the things he does so well is he takes his interactions with others in his videos and he uses them to bring out his personality of who he is as a person, and he's really good at that. And I think that if you're listening to this, one thing that you can take away from what Leroy and I are saying is that, yes, there's things that are working that can get you on the road, but you need to then branch off and figure out what makes you. What.
- [31:31]
A
Who.
- [31:31]
B
Who are you as a creator? Who is Dusty? Who is Leroy? Who are. What person are you speaking to? Because it may be similar to who Ryan's speaking to, but it's probably going to be a different subset of that audience. And so I love that. And I tell my clients all the time, I was working with a finance creator the other day, and he was talking about some things that were working for him, but things that were not. And I said, I can prove it to you. And I went to another channel that I had already researched that was very similar to his, and I said, look, here's his thumbnails, here's his descriptions, here's what he's doing. And you and he in the actual video are doing very similar things. And you're better than he is, but he's getting more traction than you. Why is that? His packaging. He's figured that thing out. We got to figure that out. And as soon as we do, I feel like you're going to succeed. Let's talk about monetization now, because people are not going to pay you, Leroy, the. The fees that you charge if they're not making double, triple, way more than that.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah.
- [32:23]
B
So how. What is your main sticking point as far as monetization? And I know it, it's dependent on the creator. Like with. With the dog creator you were mentioning earlier, they. Building physical products that they want to market and build their brand around to sell. For me, it's pointing people to the podcast and my sponsors and my coaching stuff that I'm doing. So what are your main core values when it comes to making money as a creator?
- [32:49]
A
Yeah. So for me, the most important thing Is that a lot of creators that come to me that are somewhat in the early stages of their creator career, they just want to monetize whatever way works. And I always say, don't work with me if you expect an immediate return of investment. And also if you want to make money, there's easier ways to do make money than YouTube. Way easier and also way less time intensive ways to make money, especially online. So for me it depends really on the creator. For example, I have a client who is a real estate investment expert in Dubai, one of the biggest, fastest growing cities in the world. Now he came to me with, with no channel, with nothing. He was like, I want to make a channel. And the only reason why we want to do this channel is because it will probably get us leads of people who want to invest in properties in Dubai and then we can make. There's a fee in between. Not even a client pays. That is like some, I don't know how it works over there, but it's like there's some deal then with the developer that they make a fee of that within a month of working together. We figured out, okay, so the monetization strategy here is you make video, potential clients, these video things, you're very credible, makes sense. They contact you and within a few months you have a deal done for them. Right? They're happy, you're happy. The market there was insanely underserved in, in terms of quality. I looked at all the competitors, they had the part of my French, but content was crap, was just bad, but overall bad packaging. I was like, okay, this is going to be a home run, this is going to be easy. And I was right. It was a home run, it was easy. And now I think they're in month three or four and they're projecting that they were going to make a hundred thousand dollars worth of revenue this month just from the channel. And that's the only thing they're doing right now, just a YouTube channel for them. They don't have to have a million views. They got, I think 45,000 views this month and they're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars of that. I want you as a creator. Think about that. A lot of creators, they, a lot of, especially beginners, think I need to get hundreds of millions of views and then I'll be rich. No, if you have an offer and if you have something that someone wants and you have good video market fit. So in this case, for Dusty, for this podcast, if I'm a creator, I'm listening to this dang Dusty is smart. Like, he knows YouTube. Well, I want to work with Dusty. Great. Oh, that's a working funnel when it comes to an entertainment creator like Ryan Trahan, for example. That's what we see now more and more. These big entertainment creators, they understand, hey, I'm getting hundreds of millions of views each month. I make a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand a month from that, from sponsorships, from adsense, everything combined. And, and then I have a channel, does 50,000 views, and they get a hundred thousand dollars. I'm doing something wrong. Yes, you're not productizing yourself. So that's why you see, guys like Ryan now, they start their own candy brand, Feast Us Feastables, and all the other stuff that he did in the past. That is where monetization is for a creator. It depends on who you are, what type of channel you are. But you can quite literally make $50,000 a month if you start a channel on pottery. You just need to figure out a. Of the 50,000 people that watch me each month, how many of those would be interested in a video course on the crash course on pottery? How to go from donut to making your first flower vase in seven days. There can be a lot of money to be made there. A lot. And I've seen it happen. See, I've worked with creators who, like, wait, what do you sell? Explain that again. And they make so much money from it. Going back to, what are you making on YouTube and what can you fix? What can you solve for your viewer? And if there's nothing you can solve, make sure that you become big enough to at some point say, hey, of the hundreds of millions of people that watch me every month, here's my new company. This is my mission with the company. You guys are my fans, support me.
- [36:48]
B
You sound like me. Because I've, I've been on this podcast before, and I'll never forget, a few years back, it was this, this lady, and she was selling courses on something. I can't remember if it was knitting or sewing. And I, I asked her the question live on the podcast. I said, if you don't mind, just share your, could you share your numbers of how much you're making? She said something along the lines of $56,000 last month. And I, I, I just remember in my mind, I visibly, my eyes got big and I thought, but you've only got 17,000 subscribers. But I realized, and I've learned since then, that really, if you have a big ticket offer, it's not about finding the masses. It's about finding the right people. And you've got an audience base of 5,000 people who are your core audience. If you have a big offer, it only takes 25 of those to make you really good money. And those percentages are very low. And so as a creator, that should encourage those listening to this, right? Hey, I just got to find my people. And it's not really all about. I think that you would agree with me on this. If you start your journey with the money being the tip of the spear, being what? The only motivator, the only carrot on the stick, the only thing you're going and driving from, you're never going to make it.
- [38:03]
A
No, absolutely no. I 1000% agree with you, Dusty. I think that is the biggest mistake that I see. Like when I open my calendar for beginners every few months, sometimes they're like, I just want to make $100,000 a month and then I'll be good. Let me tell you this from personal experience, you won't because there's always something bigger, always something better to. You'll never be satisfied. But if you do not even enjoy making videos, you will not even get to 10,000amonth, I guarantee you that. Because you're going to burn out before you get to a point where you start understanding the intricacies of oh, this is what my audience likes. But if you are, I think the most awesome stories to me are the ones, the creators that are the 50 or 60 year old stay at home mom that is trying to get back into baking. I just want to like share with the world my passion for baking. Those like, those creators, they I will help. I've done this before. Like I will help them for free. I do not care about the money simply because I just know if I can get that out of you onto a YouTube channel that works, you can at some point just start selling a course. It can be PDFs, it can be cheat sheets. And you know what? It's great because the audience wants it, you have it, just give it to them. And like these kinds of people, they start because they have a passion for something and they want to show that passion to the world and share it with the world. I had a guy who painted model trains. Not even like assembling, just the painting part of it. He made $15,000 a month selling a PDF on color schemes. I was like, how is this even possible? And I think he had, he got like 20 to 30,000 views a month or something. Is like, how is this even possible?
- [39:44]
B
Yeah, it's the power of YouTube. It's the beauty of what we do. And I just. Man, I could talk to you forever, Leroy. We. We gotta wrap it up here today. I'm going to leave in the show notes a link to where you can connect and reach out to Leroy. I know he has. You can just tell by talking to you, you have so much knowledge and experience of working with people and what you're doing. And so I just absolutely loved speaking with you today. Hopefully we can stay in touch and, and keep chatting behind the scenes, but I really appreciate you giving me your time. Again, it's Leroy. Can you say your full name? Because I know I will butcher it.
- [40:18]
A
Leroy Ter Brack.
- [40:20]
B
But I will share Leroy's X account as well as his website where you can reach out to him. He's got his community over there as well. And Leroy, thanks again and we'll talk to you next time.
- [40:29]
A
Thank you, Dusty.
- [40:30]
B
And that's a wrap on this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. If you would leave us a review. It really does help the show out. So wherever and however you listen to your podcast, just leave us a review. It really does help us within the algorithm. And if you're a podcaster, you know exactly what I mean. Also listen, I've talked about it before, but our Discord server, the Creator Communities group, is growing and I believe that you're missing out if you're not joining that group. Five bucks gets you in. Get you access to the Creator Communities group as well as our monthly mastermind calls that I host on Zoom. I promise you will not regret doing that. And if you want to go even farther than that, I do offer one on one YouTube coaching. I've actually opened up my services and I'm offering longer calls as well as a monthly retainer where you can set up a six call onboarding. And then we get into the analytics and then we go through a process of what I believe you can do to be more efficient on your channel. But with all that said, thank you again for listening to this week's episode. See you next week.