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YouTube Creators Hub
From Travel Vlogs to Family Life: Lloyd & Mandy’s YouTube Evolution
00:39:43
In this week’s episode, Dusty is joined once again by Lloyd from the Lloyd & Mandy YouTube channel — and a lot has changed since their last appearance! From full-time travel vlogging across Southeast Asia and the U.S. to settling down in...
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- [00:00]
Lloyd
Go from having a dream of doing YouTube full time to actually achieving that goal. That would make us super, super happy. Because the whole point of our content, I feel is, okay, we just had a dream to do this for a living and we achieved it. And it's not like a brag or anything like that. It's just that we visualized something, we achieved it.
- [00:24]
Dusty
Welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where we do a deep dive with a content creator and we talk with them about their journey, we break down their fail, we talk about their different tactics as a creator. So if you're looking to start, grow or monetize your YouTube channel, this is the place for you. We don't have any sponsors, but what we do have is we have our own Creators Corner group. Five bucks a month gets you in that group. You go over to the link in the show notes, you get access to hundreds of creators where you can share your channel. I offer an exclusive podcast episode every single week for those members and it's just five bucks less than like a Starbucks coffee. And it helps us kind of keep doing what we're doing here on the show. Also, I offer one on one YouTube coaching. So if you're interested in that or a channel audit or wanting to launch a podcast, I do all of those things. You can check out the link in the description as well. And then lastly, I do want to mention our Entrepreneurs Minute newsletter. You're looking to grow a brand or wanting a behind the scenes look of what it's like on my side of things as far as running a business, YouTube channel, a podcast website, things that I do. Then definitely go over there and just put your email address in. I'm not going to spam you. It's once a week on Fridays as I release these new episodes of the podcast and I promise you will not regret it. Also, if you would leave us a review wherever you consume your podcast, I would appreciate it and hit subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. That way every Friday morning when we go live with a new conversation. And speaking of that, let's go ahead and jump into our conversation with Lloyd. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Today I am joined by Lloyd from the Lloyd and Mandy YouTube channel. You may recognize their name as I did have them on over two years ago and a lot has changed. And so I like to have these comeback episodes where the creators come back after years of being off the show and they talk about their progress and what they've learned and different Things of that nature. They started full time travel vlogging in November 2021, traveling all through Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, Mexico. Six months of the RV life in the US fast forward three and a half years and a ton has changed. They've now settled in Thailand, welcomed their new baby daughter. All of this since they were last on the show, continued growing their YouTube channel, which has now reached 120,000 thousand subscribers. Not quite 120,000, but right underneath that. So we'll round up, Lloyd, we'll round up, but they've got a ton of stuff going on. They got a school community that they're monetizing with their thumbnails. I have to say, my friend, your thumbnail game has improved dramatically since the last time you were on the podcast. I looked at when you were on and the different videos during that time and now, and you guys have upped your game tremendously. So, Lloyd, it's so good to talk to you again and have you back on the podcast.
- [03:18]
Lloyd
Yeah, cheers, man. It's great to see you again and talk to you again. Yeah. As you mentioned about the thumbnails, I think honestly, everything has improved over the last two years. We've just kept plugging away and our motto is get 1% better with every video. And I think we've put out over 320 videos now. So every time we put out a video, we go and look back and see what we can improve from like an editing standpoint. And then obviously thumbnails are a huge thing, as you would know. And I think, yeah, I think everything's gotten a bit better.
- [03:52]
Dusty
For someone who's never seen your channel or consumed your content before. How would you describe your channel?
- [03:59]
Lloyd
As you mentioned, we were travel vlogging full time for two years. We started out in Bali. The whole plan of our channel was to document us moving from Australia to Bali in November 2021. This was right at the end of the pandemic because no one was really traveling to Bali at that time. But we had already wanted to move there a couple of years earlier, but obviously Covid happened and that sort of held everything up and we started documenting the move and ended up just traveling around Bali and got a real taste for the travel vlog lifestyle. And it turned into us just going from one place to another for two years. Our channel has really been focused on travel and showing different places, but we incorporate a lot of business stuff into it as well. So, like, we've always looked at our YouTube channel as a business, as a full time job and we cover a lot of digital nomad stuff, how to monetize your YouTube channel through other avenues apart from just AdSense and sponsorships and stuff like that. And yeah, now we obviously, we have a home here in Thailand, we have a baby. So we've pivoted a little bit where it's still a travel focused channel in that we're living in Thailand, which is a very unique place to be living with a family. But it's also a lot of lifestyle, a lot of sort of advice on people wanting to live in another country and with their family or have a baby in another country. So I think the three pillars of our channel is really like, it's travel and adventure, it's family, and then there's the business side of it as well. We've got three main niches that we focus on.
- [05:51]
Dusty
When was the first time that you and Mandy maybe looked at each other and said or had a discussion that, hey, this thing may be more than just a hobby. This may be something that we can really lean into and do full time?
- [06:08]
Lloyd
Dude, honestly, pretty early on. I actually remember sitting down at a digital nomad hostel in Bali and our channel, like, grew pretty quick in the beginning. And I think the reason for that was we were one of the, like, few people that were traveling during that time. And we got monetized within like about six weeks. And one thing about when you get monetized is you see your first few dollars coming in and it's $2 a day. And you're like, okay, this is disappointing. But I looked at it like, okay, if it's $2 now and we've only just started, this could be $200. And this is per day. This could be $200 per day in a year's time. That's. If you're making that every single day, that's pretty good money. That's better money than what we were making working full time jobs in Australia. So that was about. That was probably January or February 2022. I said to Mandy, look, because we had other stuff going on. We were doing E. Com and Mandy was creating digital products and stuff, but the YouTube was like so much more fun than anything else. And we had been watching people like Cara and Nade and lost LeBlanc. And we said, you know what, let's spend the next. Let's spend the rest of this year traveling and doing travel vlogging and let's like put everything into this and just see where it takes us. And yeah, after six months, it was a full time job. It was a full time job from the beginning, but as far as from a money standpoint, within six months we were making a full time income and it's been our full time business ever since.
- [07:49]
Dusty
That's awesome. I love to hear creators talk about just that journey of, I love that light bulb moment of just like you said, where you're thinking to yourself, man, this could be something. We could really do this thing. And taking that leap of faith, what's one change or strategic change that you've made recently that has really moved the needle for the channel?
- [08:11]
Lloyd
Yeah, I think interjecting a bit more of our personalities. From the beginning we were aware that our channel was a personal brand. That's why it's called Lloyd and Mandy. We were very purposeful about that and. But when we had the baby and we knew we were going to be going from traveling to more lifestyle orientated content, we were going to have to make it more personal and more tell our story and share a lot more about ourselves personally. Like whether it be our lifestyle choices even just health stuff and personal preferences. And like we, we haven't left Thailand since July of last year and we haven't really traveled so we've had to pivot. And I think that's actually helped our channel because the focus is no longer really on the places that we're going like traveling to. It's more about the lifestyle. And we're trying to, I guess we're trying to encourage people that whether you, I mean we, I don't know if you know this, but we've traveled with our dog for the whole time as well. He's, he followed us to Mexico and then he came with us in the RV through the US and he's living with us here in Thailand. One thing is we, we don't think any of that should stop you. I know it's scary for people like, who have dogs and they want to travel and they think they can't because they have a dog and then also wanting to have a baby and settle down, a lot of people think that's just not an option, but it really is like it's up to you. And I think we look at our content as how can we provide as much value and help to people who are in the same position as us? And the reason is because we get emails and DMs every single day from people saying, hey, we've been thinking about moving to Thailand, for example, but we have a dog and we're worried about such and such or we've been Thinking about bringing our kids over. Is it okay. And so that's what we try and project into all of our content.
- [10:14]
Dusty
How do you think differently about titles and thumbnails than you did a couple of years ago when you were on the podcast in early 2023, late 2022? What. What has changed in your mentality? And just walk us through that full process.
- [10:30]
Lloyd
Okay, so there's a couple of things. Like, I think in the beginning, first of all, you have to experiment with these sorts of things. You have to get a lot of data. So we were putting out two to three videos every single week for pretty much two years. That's how we got so many videos out. And we tried a lot of different things. I think early on, we were, like, focused on trying to get people just to click on the videos. I don't like using the term clickbait, because it sounds like you're trying to trick people, but in a way, that is what we were doing. We were trying to make, like, our thumbnails and our titles really clickbaity so that people would click on them. But that can actually hurt your content, because if you. If you promise somebody something in a title or a thumbnail and then you're not delivering on that, they're going to click off your video and your retention is going to be way down. So we've backed off that a little bit, and now it's more like we focus a lot on SEO search engines. So a lot of our videos perform well over time. And we try not to go too extreme with the thumbnails with, like, being over the top and just trying to get people to click on them. We try to really deliver on what we're putting on our thumbnails and our titles, because, yeah, you can get a lot of views, but if your audio retention, if your audience retention is low, there's no point even getting those views, because YouTube's gonna stop showing your videos because they know that you're not delivering on what your thumbnail and title is saying.
- [12:04]
Dusty
Do you design the thumbnails yourself? Is this as far as. Has that stayed the same? Can you talk about your workflow, a bit of how you design them?
- [12:14]
Lloyd
Yeah, man. So, look, Mandy was the designer of the team. She designed all of our thumbnails. I was, to be honest, too scared to even try because I'm not really an artistic person by nature. At least I thought I wasn't. And now it's. We both take turns in designing thumbnails, but the process is pretty simple. And the best way to describe it is like we try not to overcrowd our thumbnails. We try and stick to three elements, and those three elements are a clear face. Whether it be just me or just Mandy or both of us, your face has to be the forefront of the thumbnail because we are the channel. We want people to know whose content they're watching. And then the background picture, it's got to be. It can't be too noisy. It's got to be like, you might have a beach with some palm trees and a blue sky and maybe a boat or something. But if there's too much going on in that background picture, it's going to distract people and really take away. We also try and make our thumbnails rather bright because I can't remember the exact number, but there was. Mandy knows it. And there's a certain percentage of people who watch YouTube in dark mode. So that means, like, your whole screen's black. Like when you open your phone, if you open up your phone on YouTube and the background's all black, then a bright thumbnail is really going to stand out more than a dark thumbnail. And then obviously, we have the text. So the text has to be very small, not too many words, and really clear, really stand out from the background. So those three elements, your face, a simple background, and then some text. But sometimes we put videos out without text. But generally we put text in our videos. So the thumbnail is usually. We've usually got the thumbnail sort of in our head when we're filming the video or when we're planning it. And we know what the title and the thumbnail is roughly going to be.
- [14:15]
Dusty
I love that. And a lot of the images and backgrounds in your thumbnails, as I was scrolling through this week, just taking notes on a few things, are beautiful. You guys do a great job of the landscape photos that you're using as the background with your image on top of it. I highly encourage you, if you're listening or watching this, go to Lloyd and Mandy's YouTube channel and just browse and take some notes on the branding and the thumbnail design.
- [14:38]
Lloyd
I just.
- [14:38]
Dusty
I absolutely love it. You mentioned you. You transitioned somewhat from a travel. You're still doing a lot of travel and things within Thailand around your surrounding areas where you live now. But you had to make a pivot from doing the travel stuff, and you even did the RV stuff for a while and made a pivot then. What kind of advice would you give folks listening to this that feel like they're stuck in their niche. You know, oftentimes a lot of YouTube educators, myself included, at times have told people, hey, you just need to start a new channel, whatever it may be. What are your thoughts on this coming from your perspective of having changed kind of visions and trajectories with the channel a few times?
- [15:19]
Lloyd
Yeah, it's really terrifying actually, to begin with. So when we jumped into the rv, life was probably the biggest change, and we were really worried that people wouldn't follow us over. And to be honest, we did see a dip in views at the beginning, but it just takes time for people to catch up because you are capturing a new audience. And we, we figured this out pretty early on because when your trav vlogging, like we were doing one month in each country, and every time we went to another country, our views would drop. But then after 10 days, they would start to pick up again because YouTube figuring out, okay, the people who are watching the barley content aren't interested in the Vietnam content, but there's this new audience that is interested in the Vietnam content. But the biggest piece of advice for me would be try to personally brand yourself from the start. So the reason we named our channel Lloyd and Mandy is because we wanted it to be a personal brand. And I think that's really helped us. And along the way, we have tried to interject our personalities so that people may not just be watching for the travel, they may actually be watching to follow our story. And we've had a storyline the whole time. When we started, the storyline was, we're moving to Bali full time. And then it changed to, we're trying to find somewhere to live full time as digital nomads. And that was our travel series. And then the RV was like, okay, this is, we found a home, but we can still travel in our home with our dog. So we can still, like, travel around and do content, but we have a home on wheels. So along the way, the story has changed a little bit. But I think just giving people just being upfront and honest, like, this is what we're doing. This is our life that you're following. And we could have probably just kept travel vlogging for the next five years or so. But, like, deep down, we didn't really see ourselves doing that. I'm 39 years old and I didn't see myself waiting to well into my 40s to have children. And I think if you let your YouTube channel control the way you're living your life too much, you're really doing yourself a disservice. So Just I think being authentic to yourself and yeah, not being too afraid to change niches. Look, you might lose some people along the way. We've seen dips, we've seen peaks in our views, but it's been a steady growth and I think that steady growth has actually like in the long term been a lot better for our channel.
- [17:53]
Dusty
It's certainly one of the most terrifying things as a creator and I have had many of them on calls where I'm getting them on coaching calls and they say to me I'm just whether it be a gamer trying to transition from one game to another, whether it be like you transitioning from full time travel to more business like family type stuff, whether it be a kids creator family as their kids age out of the demographic or the demographic that kind of they're used to, there's so many ways that it can go wrong. But if you're willing to stay true to yourself, brand the channel around who you are, you're always going to be you. Yes, you're going to have different seasons of your life but if they fall in love with you, the creator, your different hobbies and things that you go through and different seasons of your life, they'll want to follow along with that journey. And so I think that all of those things you just mentioned, Lloyd, are extremely important. Let's transition a bit into monetization and how you guys make money. I assume the economy and things cost different over in Thailand as they do in the United States. So I think that's something to keep in the back of our head as we have this conversation. First question, what are your two to three biggest sources of income from the channel and the brand?
- [19:04]
Lloyd
The biggest one is sponsorships. So brand deals that accounts for probably about 50% of our revenue. And then obviously YouTube Adsense, that's probably around I would say 30% of our revenue total. And then the other 20% comes from either affiliate marketing or like our school community where we help other people to create profitable YouTube channels. So yeah, yeah, brand deals, talk. Brand deals are the biggest out of anything.
- [19:38]
Dusty
Talk about the school community for a minute. I didn't mean to interrupt you there, but it's S K O O L is the school communities over there. A lot of people are doing that. It's just a premium membership where people can go and it's a platform that allows you to do that. So talk about that and how that has progressed.
- [19:55]
Lloyd
So this is actually pretty new for us. We started this in November so it's been going for about four Months now. And it's a free community. So we hold Weekly Q&As and there's just a discussion board where people can ask other people questions and give advice and look, the whole goal of this is when we started out, we had no idea what we were doing and we really had no one to ask either because we didn't know any other creators. Along the way we've managed to meet quite a few other creators and we WhatsApp them and DM them back and forth to get ideas and stuff. But we wanted to create a place where people who were in our shoes maybe three years ago could have a bunch of other people to ask questions and bounce ideas off. And then obviously like we're mentoring these people as well. So the community itself is on the school platform, but it is actually changing. We're bringing it over to our own personal platform actually in the next couple of weeks. But then from that we do one on one coaching calls and we like audit people's channels for them. And so yeah, that's a process at the moment. So the new community will have a free section and then there's going to be a paid section where you'll get access to all of our courses and like webinars and stuff like that. And the goal really, like if we could just help 5 to 10 people go from having a dream of doing YouTube full time to actually achieving that goal, that would make us super, super happy. Because the whole point of our content I feel like is okay, we just had a dream to do this for a living and we achieved it. And it's not like a brag or anything like that. It's just that we visualized something, we achieved it, we got there and we know that other people can do it too. They just need the right guidance. And there's a lot of mistakes that we made along the way where if we had that guidance in the beginning, we could have got there in half the amount of time and without all those headaches. And hopefully we can help other people.
- [22:01]
Dusty
Do that in total. As far as how much money you guys make, you don't have to tell me an exact number, but what are the numbers that you're bringing in now? You know that obviously we talked to you a few years ago, but how much money are you able to make from the channel now?
- [22:19]
Lloyd
Yeah, so like from a total revenue standpoint, on average it's about $10,000 per month and that's across all of our revenue streams. Obviously some months are slower, like towards the fourth quarter ADVERTISERS are paying a lot more money for ads, and everything goes up and there's a lot more opportunities. Like, you get so many more brand deals in October, November, December, and then January, February, even into March. It quietens down a little bit. But generally speaking, if you average it out, like, it's. It's around about $10,000 per month. And that's from sponsorships, ad revenue, affiliate marketing, and then obviously our school community as well.
- [23:03]
Dusty
I love that. I'm so happy for you guys that you're able to do that and have that new little baby and get to experience all of this with her, which is a super cool thing. Is your daily routine as a creator, what does it look like? Like you get up in the morning and talk about the different things, your habits, the things that you put into place to make all this happen.
- [23:23]
Lloyd
I'm laughing because since our baby came along, she's six months now, there really isn't a daily routine. It changes from day to day, I think. You've got kids, right, Dusty?
- [23:33]
Dusty
I got two little girls, yes.
- [23:34]
Lloyd
Yes. Okay. So you'd probably know. It depends. So I guess Mandy's obviously spending much more time with the baby than I am. So depending on how she's going, if she's tired and she needs a break, I'll get up with the baby in the morning, spend some really quality time with her, like two to three hours. And then I'd really honestly just try to get into work as quick as possible and get whatever needs to be done. So it's really more like a weekly routine for me. Now. I'll set out tasks that I want to do throughout the week, and that'll be filming X amount of videos, scripting whatever videos I need to script, filming ads. And then we have our weekly school community, which is at the same time every week. So that's something that I do show up to at the same time. But I feel like as long as I'm balancing spending time with my daughter and my wife, keeping on top of my health. So I used to be a bit of a gym rat. I would train jiu jitsu like three, four times a week and then go to the gym, I've cut back on that a little bit so that I'm doing just enough to make myself feel good. I bought an ice bath. So if I'm got a really busy day ahead and all I can do that day is jump in the ice bath and have a bit of a stretch, and then I can get my work done, then that's Great. But to be honest, having a baby really threw a spanner in the works as far as a daily routine. I watch some of those morning routine videos now and I'm like, man, I just, I think back to before having a baby and I could have a very regimented schedule and it's just so different now. But yeah, I just set out tasks that need to be done throughout the week and it's more of a weekly routine for us.
- [25:18]
Dusty
Yeah, one of, one of the greatest blessings in life is becoming a parent for sure. But man, it throws a loop in everything. My oldest turned 10 in December this year and my, my, my younger daughter Millie is just turned six. And so they're in different phases of life. But I will. That I sometimes think back of. I can't even really imagine what life was like before that time where I had the time to just basically do whatever I wanted to do. And people who don't have kids are listening to this and they're like, oh, you don't know. No, I do know. Went from not having kids to having them. So I do can compare both of those and some people are able to balance it better than others. There were times early on in my kids lives that I was doing a very poor job of balancing work and life and parenting and being a husband and being able to juggle. All of that is a learning process. And as a creator, it takes time to learn your new routine. A question I want to ask you though, and this is a question that I get asked a lot, whether it's in our creators community group, our creators corner group, or over on socials, whatever it may be, people ask me all the time, how do you handle days where you have creative ruts or when the growth on the channel is slow and then in opposite of that, when things are booming and you're just, it's exploding and you're seeing some sudden growth. How do you manage those emotions? As far as, are you looking at the YouTube Studio app all the time? Are you obsessing over it? How do you handle those kind of various emotions?
- [26:54]
Lloyd
Yeah, I think after doing this for three years, we've realized not to get too high and not to get too low. Yeah, you, whenever you put out a video, you want it to be ranked number one out of your last 10 videos. You want it to get heaps of views straight off the bat and that gives you that real big dopamine hit. But we actually now when we post a video, we try not to really look at it for the first 12 hours. So like, we usually post at night here because that's when most of our audience is online, and then I'll look at it in the morning. But we've been through so many highs and lows. And, like, we've had periods where, like, we're putting out five, six videos and none of them really got traction. And then all of a sudden, one will get traction and we're back. And we've been through that so many times that I think we just have a conversation with each other and it definitely affects your mood, but it's okay. We've been through this lull before. It's gonna come back. Like, our next video will probably do great. And, yeah, we try not to ride the lows and the highs too much, and we don't really. It sounds crazy, but we actually try not to fixate on the views too much anymore. All we can control is putting out content that we feel is valuable to other people and that is true to ourself, and then doing all the right things, like creating a great thumbnail, doing SEO, and then whatever the YouTube gods decide is what happens. And you would know this, but sometimes you put out a video that you think is your best, best work ever and no one watches it. And then sometimes you'll record something and think, man, that was an absolute disaster. But it'll get hundreds of thousands of views. Like, one of our best performing video to this day. We sat in a hotel room in Vietnam and we were exhausted, but we wanted to film this video before we left Vietnam as a travel guide. And we were arguing with each other because we were like, the camera wasn't working or something like that. I can't remember what the exact situation was, but we put that out thinking it was just no one was going to watch it. And it's got 1.2 million views, and it gets like a thousand views every single day. And it's insane. So you never know. And I think fixating on the amount of views and the ups and downs is just like a recipe for disaster. You got to just. You got to just do the work the best of your ability and then be happy with what you've put out and whatever the result is. What the result is.
- [29:22]
Dusty
Yeah, I just started reading a book by Seth Godin. It's called the Dip, a little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick. I think that sometimes the reason why I was reading a statistic the other day about podcasts, but it's very relative to YouTube. Only 10% of podcasts that start ever make it past episode 5 and only 7 or right at 5 to 7%. Ever make it past episode 20? And if your episode reaches above a hundred, as a podcast, you're in the top 1% of podcasts. And I'm not talking about viewer and listenership and things like that, but being able to get through the valleys as a creator is one of the most difficult things. Because what you don't understand and what this book is basically teaching is that when you're going through that lull or that rut, like you said, you're just, you're going to have one that takes off. It may just be video six or seven in progression, right? And so if you quit in video three or four, what this book saying that you missed out on the mountaintop, so you don't know, is that people quit way before they probably should. And I remember this podcast. I did it for 11 or so episodes and I quit for two years because no one was listening except my mother and my grandma. And now this is one of the top, you know, creator centric podcasts on the Internet. And I'm so thankful that I was able to get back on, on the wagon and really put in the time and effort that it takes to grow something. It's really cool to hear you talk about that journey and getting through the doldrums. So let's talk about this. What is one piece of advice that you would give to a new creator, or even not even a new creator, just someone who's looking to grow their channel on YouTube right now in 2025.
- [31:07]
Lloyd
So there's a couple of things I think people get caught up in in a lot of the minute details. And I think the only way to learn how to get better at creating content is by creating content. Perfectionism is really a big downfall for a lot of people. So they'll spend hours and hours, if not days, editing a video because they want every video to be perfect, especially in the beginning. But the more content you can create, the more you're going to learn about how to create better content. And it's tough because when you put out content, obviously you want it to be great and you want people to love it, but you are. This sounds harsh, but you are gonna suck at the beginning. And somebody had a great quote, which is, if your first product doesn't suck, you waited too long to make your first product. Put out as much content as you can. Get those reps in. And don't worry too much about the views. Just keep making content and don't don't overcomplicate it either. I think a lot of people, they try little hacks like putting out content on TikTok and Instagram and all these different platforms and then posting their content to Facebook and Reddit forums and Twitter trying to gain traction. And all of that time that you're spending trying to game the system, you could just be making content. So like the only thing you need to do is do the thing and that's make content. So if you want to, if you want to make long form YouTube videos and you want that to be your thing and you want to have a full time income doing that, make long form content as much as you can. And every time you make a video, go back or when you're editing it, if you notice that there's some mistakes you made, maybe the audio wasn't great, maybe there was some bad lighting, make a note of it and improve on it next time and just get 1% better with every single video.
- [33:00]
Dusty
Love that. Where do you see your channel in 12 months?
- [33:04]
Lloyd
In 12 months, our channel, to be honest, we are just happy with steady growth at the moment. I think we hit 100,000 subscribers late last year, so we're up to like almost 120,000 now. We're still going to be in Thailand. We are obviously creating content about raising a young family here in Thailand as expats. I don't think the style of content is going to change too much and hopefully it just continues growing and I think this is something we're going to be doing for a long time. But obviously now we are branching out more into other business projects like our community. We're trying to really build that and build a strong community. We're going to do like meetups and big webinars and stuff like that. So helping other people out and then. Yeah, I just, I think the channel hopefully will continue on the path that it's growing in. And I looked on, I took a look on Social Blade and put our own channel in there, which is maybe a bit weird to do, but it projected that in five years we would have a million subscribers. And I thought, wow, that's like pretty cool. If we keep on this trajectory, we would actually be a million subscriber channel in five years. And I think that'll happen.
- [34:19]
Dusty
Yeah, I think it'll happen too. And I think it might happen even before the five year estimate from Social Blade. And don't worry, I think we've all probably plugged our channels in a tool like that at some point along the Line. All right, we're going into our lightning round, which is basically just quick hitting questions that are fun creator centric questions. And if you're ready, Lloyd, we're going to go ahead and jump into it.
- [34:41]
Lloyd
Let's do it, man.
- [34:42]
Dusty
All right, creator that you're currently obsessed with.
- [34:46]
Lloyd
Oh, Dry Creek Wrangler. Have you heard of him?
- [34:49]
Dusty
Never. All right, check it out. I will link amazing in the. In the show notes every time we do these lightning rounds. Now I'm going to be linking to all these channels. Favorite YouTube tool or plugin that you're using right now?
- [35:00]
Lloyd
Vidiq.
- [35:01]
Dusty
Vidiq. Good. One short form, long form.
- [35:04]
Lloyd
Pick one long form every day of the week. Okay.
- [35:10]
Dusty
Guilty pleasure that you consume that maybe you're a little bit embarrassed about consuming.
- [35:16]
Lloyd
Okay, so we only watch YouTube. Guilty pleasure that I'm embarrassed about consuming.
- [35:23]
Dusty
Maybe not embarrassed, but my guilty pleasure is Bluey, because that's my girls love bluey. And it's like the greatest show on earth. And so that's my guilty pleasure.
- [35:32]
Lloyd
I watch a lot of times watching Theo Vaughan podcasts and it's.
- [35:37]
Dusty
I watched the. I watched one yesterday where he was interviewing Morgan Wallen.
- [35:41]
Lloyd
Yeah, that's probably where I waste most of my time because I spent a lot of time doing serious stuff and working and family time and I just like to have a laugh sometimes.
- [35:52]
Dusty
Me too. If YouTube shut down tomorrow and you could no longer be a creator, what would you do?
- [35:59]
Lloyd
I think I would do something in the creative space, but it would be more like maybe digital marketing or something like that. I was Digital marketing before YouTube. I love entrepreneurship and business. So growing brands. I would love to grow a product based brand if I had the time.
- [36:18]
Dusty
What is the best or funniest comment that you remember ever receiving on the channel?
- [36:24]
Lloyd
So far I've got two for you. So somebody told me that Mandy is way too pretty for me. And somebody also told me that I don't smile enough on channel, on. On video.
- [36:41]
Dusty
I love it. We didn't talk about how you handle trolls, but we all receive those types of comments. There are so many times where receive comments and sometimes I'm like, touche, you're right, you're right. That's something I missed in the video or something I said just didn't sound quite right and I'm like agreeing with them. And then other times I say to myself, what? We had a comment on the podcast actually two weeks ago on Spotify where someone commented and said, this is the only podcast where the host promotes his own Stuff over sponsors. And I thought for a minute and I said, in the past few weeks, I haven't really had a sponsor on the show just because I want to promote what I got going on. But I listened to other podcasts like the Tim Ferriss show, which is very popular, and some of these other podcasts are spending like 7 to 10 minutes on sponsors where they talk about their sponsor. And I only spend like under two minutes. So comments are wonderful.
- [37:35]
Lloyd
Man, I would take that as a compliment. That seems like a good thing that you're promoting yourself instead of sponsors.
- [37:40]
Dusty
I thought, great, you thought that. But hey, listen, sometimes I get comments. Like when I was younger, I got a comment one time that cracked me up. The guy said he's a Walmart version of Justin Bieber on YouTube trying to do, trying to do tutorials. People are so hurtful. I tell my family, don't go in the comment section. But hey, listen, this has been.
- [37:58]
Lloyd
We try to, we try to avoid the comment section as much as possible, but it does help engagement.
- [38:04]
Dusty
It does, it really does. I welcome all even negative comments. Lloyd, you have been an amazing guest and when you do reach that 1 million subscriber mark, you remember us little people and you email me and say, hey, I just reached a million subscribers. I want to come on the show for a third time and talk about what I've learned up from that point. I'd love to have you on again. Their YouTube channel is Lloyd and Mandy. Wonderful Family style, travel style, creators, business creators. I'll have all their links in the show notes and until next time, we'll talk to you later. That is a wrap on this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. Lloyd and Mandy are really killing it right now on their channel. And that was such a fun conversation to have. Again, I would like to remind you three different things. Number one, if you would check out our Creators Corner group. It's a Discord server as well as an exclusive podcast and a monthly Mastermind call. You get all of that in that package for five bucks. That's it. Second, if you're looking for a more in depth conversation with me, hire me to be your coach. If you're looking for someone to do an audit for your YouTube channel. If you're looking to launch and grow a podcast, I can do all of that with you alongside your journey. Check the link below. And then lastly, the Entrepreneur's minute is probably my fastest growing thing that I have going right now. It is a newsletter where I send out once a week on Fridays where I talk about what's going on in my life. An entrepreneur, I give you a behind the scenes look of what it's like to run a business. I also share tools, books, resources, things that I'm finding and discovering along the way that I think might help you, my audience. So with all that said, have a great day. We'll talk to you next time.