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- [00:00]
A
If you're more active with it, then you can sell your own, offer your own product, your own service and you can charge whatever the market will pay. And so I've mentioned this in some of my videos that I think the quickest on ramp to full time income on YouTube is one to one coaching because it's easy to set up pretty low friction.
- [00:19]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode, episode 500 of the Creators Hub podcast. Man, I cannot believe I've been doing this Show now almost 16 years. Years. That is just nuts to me. Our guest today is Ty Myers. A bit about Ty. Ty left a 20 year corporate career in late 2024 to go full time on YouTube at 44 years old. In 21 months, less than 2 years, he's grown to 33,000 plus subscribers I believe now looking at his channel. Yep, right at 33,000 subscribers. And he's built a coaching business around helping midlife creators start grow and monetize on YouTub without burning out chasing the hustle culture. Ty, how are you doing today?
- [01:08]
A
I'm doing well. And first of all, congratulations on 500 episodes. That's an amazing milestone. So it's good to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [01:16]
B
Yep, I appreciate that. Means a lot. So on your YouTube channel, it says on the banner, it says clarity, confidence and community. Join our growing community of Midlife 40+ content creators and entrepreneurs. I love that tagline. I love the mission of your channel. And speaking of mission, if you haven't already and you're listening to this, subscribe to the podcast that way you know when we go live with new episodes. Also, we have a ton of offerings for creators of all shapes and sizes. Check those links in the show notes. Everything from coaching creator communities, exclusive podcast recordings. We have a free email newsletter. All of that will be in the show notes. So Ty, tell me the origin story of the channel 2024 gets here. You leave the nine to five. Maybe that's happening after you've started the channel. Give us the full timeline of how this whole thing went.
- [02:06]
A
Yeah, so started in July of 2024. That's when I posted my first video. And I had been thinking about making a YouTube channel for probably since COVID So I've been sitting on this idea for several years, but I didn't have the courage or really the inclination or even know what topics I would be talking about. So it was the summer of 2024. I decided I'm just gonna pull the trigger. Yeah, it took a camera confidence bootcamp to Kind of work up the nerve and the courage to actually film. And. And then I decided, you know what, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to rip the band aid off, I'm going to post my first video. I didn't even have an idea for my second and third video at that point, but I just knew I had to get going. And then four months later, 25 videos deep, I was starting to get some validation that what I was doing was starting to work. I felt a lot more comfortable with it and I could start to see the very beginning stages of what monetization could look like as a creator coach. And at that point, I'd been with my company for nearly 20 years and there was some organizational changes that were happening and I felt like, hey, I'm 44, I have a bit of a financial cushion. If I'm gonna take a risk and do something crazy, now is the time to do it. So I put in my two weeks in November. By the end of the month I was full time on YouTube and I wasn't making any money. But I had a vision and I had an idea that this thing could work. And I told myself, I'm gonna do, I'm going to try this thing out for like 18 months, just see what happens. What can I build in 18 months? And if I can reach a full time income in 18 months, then I will, I will have officially declared that I'm retired from corporate life and I will never have to go back to working for an employer and I can just work for myself from that point on. And so that's what I've been marching towards this whole time. And I feel fortunate because I've been able to get to that full time income just about 12 months after I left my nine to five in total, 16 months of my time on YouTube. So that's kind of where, you know, how it all started for me.
- [04:10]
B
If you were to attribute maybe one thing or two things as far as the growth of the channel and the success you had, you know, being able to do this full time thing under the two year mark, what would be a couple things that you would mention for creators listening to this that maybe they haven't even thought of?
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think so. There's a lot of ways to make money on YouTube and some are quicker and some are longer than others. There's what I consider the active side of it and the passive side of it. Passive would be adsense and maybe like affiliate marketing, merchandise, fan funding, some of those things can actually ramp up and make good money, but it requires a lot of scale and a lot of volume and that takes years to develop. I think on the quicker side, if you're more active with it, then you can sell your own, offer your own product, your own service and you can charge whatever, where the market will pay. And so I've mentioned this in some of my videos that I think the quickest on ramp to full time income on YouTube is one to one coaching, because it's easy to set up, pretty low friction and really you just need to be able to help people with a specific problem that they might be having or specific outcome that they might be chasing. And you know, when I got started on YouTube, I wasn't really sure what I would be making content about. But I decided in doing all of this research on how to grow a YouTube channel, I really just got immersed into all of the YouTube growth advice that was out there. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not a terrible teacher. I could probably just learn a few things and then teach that in my videos and just see how far that takes me. And that's basically what my mission has been this whole time. Because when I started again, I had no experience, I didn't know how to grow a YouTube channel. I didn't have any previous experience with video or public speaking or editing or anything. I'm just like, I'm going to learn one or two things each week and I'll make a video about that. And that's basically what I did for the better part of, you know, two years. And what I found in working with another guest that you've had on the podcast, Alexa Saranoia, she was my coach actually very early on, just a few months in, I hired her. And one of the things I learned from her, and this might be useful to newer folks, is like, you don't need to be an expert in a field in order to sell a coaching offer. Really you just need to be a few steps ahead of the people who need help. And what I would come to learn four months in is that there are people who are just stuck at the starting gate. And the fact that I pulled the trigger and posted my first video was enough for people to want to talk to me, to work with me, to pay me money for my support and advice. And you know, four months in I had four months of experience, 25 videos. I think I was nearing a thousand subscribers. So I had, I had that early stage milestone under my belt and there were a lot of People that were months behind me that would benefit from my help. And so that's basically how I positioned my coaching offers. Hey, I'm not a guru, I'm not an expert, but I'm here to help you if you need it, and here's how you can engage with me. And sure enough, people were clicking and that was the very beginning stages of my coaching offer. And that's evolved over the last 12, 16 months. But yeah, I mean, it can get you to a full time income so long as you're diligent, you stay consistent, you show up, you continuously learn and get better at the thing that people need help with. I just think it's possible on YouTube and a lot of people, I think they think of these passive income sources and they kind of love that. They want to like wake up to money coming in to their bank account. But what they don't realize is that takes years and years to develop. And so the quicker way to do it is with a more active offer.
- [07:45]
B
So you're promoting, you know, big ticket offers. As far as coaching. Talk, talk about, speak a little bit about the numbers. And what I mean by that is that a lot of folks think, well, you have to have this amount before you can become an authority. You have to have this amount in order to start having a coaching program. And obviously what you're talking about is YouTube, but what you're really referring to is if you're wanting to do your model, you can do this with any niche, right? Whether it be podcasting or spreadsheets or the most obscure topics that you can think of, you can apply your model, is that correct?
- [08:22]
A
Absolutely. And here's an example that I've bumped into on YouTube that shows up in my home screen. It's sort of, it's unrelated to coaching, but it just goes to show you that you can build in public and you will attract people. So the example is there's this 23 year old kid who hasn't been on YouTube all that long. He is basically live streaming on YouTube every single day for about four to six hours. And all he's doing is he's vibe coding, building an application. And his goal is to make a million dollars. And all of his titles say that vibe coding until I make a million dollars. And when you see that as a casual viewer on YouTube, you're like, what is this kid up to? You click the video, you watch, you see him building this thing in real time. He's talking to his chat, he's got music playing, he does push ups. Every now and then. And he's just keeping it fun, keeping it light, but he's also building a serious business. And he's been at this for 170 days now, every day. So, like, I tell you this story because there's something interesting about watching somebody build something in public with no experience and just watching them get incrementally better. It's like the hero's journey. Right? And so for, for NEWER Folks on YouTube, there's something there, there's something valuable by sharing that experience with the rest of the world who kind of wants to follow in your footsteps. And so, you know, I think it's, it's one of those things where we just have to get out of our own way and tell ourselves, yeah, we don't need to be the expert. We just need to show people that we're willing to put in the work, learn the thing, and then teach the thing in real time.
- [09:53]
B
Yeah, it's, it's what I did early on. You know, my YouTube channel 16 years ago might have had, I don't know, 30 something thousand subscribers, but I was still learning. I'm still learning today. But it's amazing that, you know, I'm able to. Let's talk about the format for a minute. You're putting out the freebies on YouTube. And by freebies, I mean the videos that you're uploading on your YouTube channel. Right. Like if I were to go to the Ty Meyers YouTube channel right now you have playlists on your home feed called how to grow your YouTube channel into a 5k per month creator business. Then it says everything you need to get started on on YouTube. And so you're giving them a landing page of all of these free videos of like, they can watch and watch hours of your content and then eventually say to themselves, okay, I do want to do this. I want to take it to the next level. And you're giving them the on ramp to your coaching page. Right. And so with that being the case, can you talk about how you've positioned yourself as an authority, as a brand that is trustworthy by doing the YouTube channel, by doing the consistency thing. Talk about that and building that and what other creators would need to do to do the same thing?
- [10:56]
A
Yeah, I think there's multiple angles that I've taken. The first angle is not pretending to be something that I'm not. And in a lot of my earlier videos, I would say something like, you know, if you're getting going on YouTube and you know, you want to connect with other people, Fumbling through it, like, join my community. Or if you want support from someone a few months ahead of you, book a call. Like, that's, that's how simple the offer was made. And the other angle was showing the ugly side of it, the messy side of it, the emotional side of it, and just letting people connect to you personally. You know, talking a little bit about how YouTube is affecting your life, the stresses that come with it, you know, the lack of clarity, sometimes the, the, you know, the urge to want to quit. Sometimes when you talk about the good and the bad, you come off as more relatable and people connect with that more and then you build more trust. And then they want to work with you because they feel like they know you and they understand your work ethic. And then the other side of it has been, what can I tactically just teach people? Like, what have I learned that would be useful for other people? And what I have found, surprisingly, and I've noticed this obviously with your channel, the tech reviews, tutorials, by the way, 15 years is amazing. Congratulations. But, like, there's just so much value and utility in giving people short quick hits of how to do something. And I know people, you know, want to go viral and how to. Videos are not sexy. Search is not sexy, but it is a strategy and it can work. And I had made some videos very early on, how to find a YouTube transcript, how to record your face and screen at the same time, because these were things that I had just newly learned. And I was like, well, if it's useful to me, it could be useful to other new creators. And what I would find 12, 18 months later is these videos are getting tens of thousands of views on my channel. And I'm like, wow, that's the compounding nature of YouTube search that a lot of people neglect. And so for newer folks out there, learn something simple, learn something tactical and show it. Make a three to five minute video, call it a day. In 18 months, you're going to thank Dusty, you're going to thank me, because that video will get tens of thousands of views. There's no guarantee, but it could very well help grow your channel. And so be useful, be a utility, create assets, and then also be a normal human and just connect with people and don't pretend to be something you're not. Those are the three things that I've, I think I've done decently well over the last almost two years.
- [13:18]
B
Yeah, the tech tutorials that I do, I love, you know, that I have a different strategy because I can look at it from both perspectives of the search perspective as well as trying to get seen in browse and home. And it's, it's interesting. People would always tell me, they would say, well, aren't you worried that your new videos are only getting a couple hundred views? And I would always say no because I don't really judge them that way. I look at them in 30 day increments and I'll look at them within say 90 days. You know, has it grown any? Do I need to tweak the pattern packaging a bit? And then a lot of my stuff is, you know, getting reached out to by these software companies and them wanting me to do videos around their software. So I'm kind of double dipping in that way. And so modeling my channel that way has really worked for me. And I think that the beauty of YouTube is that there's, there's an endless, an infinite amount of methods that you can use to grow a channel. You talk about the guy that's vibe coding, doing live streaming, trying to make a million dollars. On day 174, I just pulled it up. You know, that's such a cool thing. A few weeks ago I had a guy who basically livestreams himself fixing and repairing bicycles. And people love that kind of while we work, content that's kind of a new niche growing on YouTube. My seven year old, she loves watching ASMR content of these creators eating these like really hot chips. And there's just so many avenues that you can go with on YouTube. Now let's talk about the offer. Let's talk about monetization. You make money through ad revenue through the big ticket offer, from the coaching. Talk about kind of how you're making money as a creator, how you're able, able to do this full time and leave the corporate world and then give us on average what you might can make on a good month.
- [14:53]
A
Yeah, okay. So the transition into full time work, I think as I mentioned earlier, was four months in, but I wasn't making really any money. I had a bit of a financial cushion and I was like, I'm just going to make this work. I'm going to brute force my way into making $5000 a month. If I can make 5k a month through my YouTube channel, all in all sources, then I will feel like I could take a sigh of relief. Okay. Because that was like, that was my initial milestone. Now with a high ticket offer, you know, you can charge really whatever you want to charge. When I first started I was offering a one hour session that was it. And it was $97 and I had a few people book in and that was nice. That was a little bit of validation. One of my initial clients said, hey, can we work together more long term? Can we do like a 90 day program? And then that turned my single one hour offer into a full three month program. My initial pricing on that was $500. And this was probably what, 14 months ago, 15 months ago. And that was the beginning of what I would call like my mentorship program. 90 days, 500 bucks. And then as more and more people booked in and my calendar was starting to fill, you know you have this cap on how much time you can spend, right? And so at that point, you know, your rate, your rates have to go up. By the end of 2025, it was at $3,500 for this. It was a six month mentorship. So I had extended from 90 days to six months. We would meet one on one every three weeks. That's part of the deliverables. They'd get brought into my school community. There'd be like bi weekly group coaching and you know, just other knowledge sharing in school. And yeah, I'm at a full roster right now, 10 clients. So like I really can't take on more people right now. But the current offer's at 3,500. It's probably going to go up. But If I get one client a month plus AdSense, plus some affiliates, plus some of my old memberships in my school, that easily clears 5K. And so I've, I've done that every month since November of last year. Right. So I'm now on month six or seven. And now I'm finally feeling like, hey, okay, this is cool, like I have a new baseline. I'm feeling like a full time creator, but you know, it's just going to increase I think as we go forward. Now again, high ticket is the vast majority of what I make. Like I said 3,500 per client. If I can get one or two of those a month, I'm good. But AdSense has been averaging, let's just say, I don't know, between 500 and like a thousand bucks. It peaked in November last year, like 1300. Obviously. Q4 people are spending more, advertisers are spending more. So it's a good, it's a good quarter of the year for ads. But I haven't put a ton of energy and effort into other income streams like ad affiliates. I did have a paid membership for a short while, but I really, I turned that down to focus exclusively on my coaching offer because it just, the ROI wasn't there. But I think affiliates could be a nice residual secondary income stream. But I haven't put a lot of time and effort into it. Plus sponsors I know are something that a lot of people like to explore. I have found though, and I'm not like proactive in reaching out to sponsors, but what I found is all the inbound, a lot of it is junk and I'm very skeptical and I'm very like protective of what I would put in front of my audience. So I, I haven't done a single sponsor and I don't think I will unless it's like. So I'm cool with like some affiliate programs like one of 10 bit IQ. I like, I love some of these tools. So sometimes I'll talk about that in my content, but I don't make that much money in affiliates. It's mostly my high ticket coaching.
- [18:17]
B
Yeah. And I think that for you, you are on the bottom end of where you could be right. Like all you're, you're, you have a lot of meat left on the table. There's still things you can do. You still can dive deeper into the affiliates and as you grow your, your cost of your big tickets only going to go up. Right. And so, and you're learning. Right. You're becoming better at what you're doing. And so I love to hear that. I want to talk about just the growth of the channel and what it takes to grow a YouTube channel right now. If you were to talk to someone and you were to sit down with a creator right now on a coaching call, which you do weekly. What are the top three things that you see creators getting wrong right now?
- [18:55]
A
I think the first one is misallocating where they're spending their time. If you think about, if you think about in a given week, imagine for the average creator, they have 15 hours per week to make a video from ideation into posting. I would say most people are spending that time completely backwards. They're spending 10 minutes on title and thumbnail and eight hours on editing. I would say flip it, spend eight hours on ideation, title, thumbnail, and don't edit. Or like spend two hours editing because you know there's no amount of editing that's gonna fix or get views for just a bad idea. And for the better part of, you know, 18 months, that was what I was doing. I was putting in all of this time in the edit because I felt like that was the thing you needed to do in order to look and feel the part on YouTube, but that's absolutely not it. I mean, we see these videos in our home screen all the time that have a half a million views and it's just a guy in his backyard talking about what it's like to retire. People don't care about the edit. They care about the message and the meaning and how it makes them feel. So that's the first thing is spend your time the right way. Given you have a finite amount of time per week, put it all on the front end. Pre production is the most important thing. I tell everybody 80% of what makes a video successful on YouTube is topic, title and thumbnail. The other 20% is the, the delivery and the edit. That's my humble take on that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is having a clear, having a clear avatar, like knowing who you're speaking to and why you're speaking to them. What do you, what do you believe to be true for this person? What do you, what do you want them to like, what's the transformation or the outcome you're helping them with? Right. And a lot of people I think that I interact with, I interact with a lot of midlife folks, people a little bit older, people who are pre retiring or retiring, and they have all this great life and they want to share that, but it's very convoluted and their messaging isn't dialed in. And so they'll get some views on some content and then other content doesn't really move the needle. And I try to help them narrow their focus a little bit and just like figure out who it is that you're speaking to, who's your avatar, what problems are they having and how do you tackle those problems in every single video, but from a different way? So I think it's just getting really clear on that. So I think those are the two things that newer people often struggle with the most. At least in my experience.
- [21:16]
B
I interrupt the show just, just for a few seconds to remind you that we have a ton of different offerings for creators. Everything from $5, which gets you in our mastermind group, you get access to our exclusive podcast that I record for that group each and every Friday. We also have channel reviews and audits where I record a screencast video talking over where I think you should be spending your time on your channel. And then we have one on one coaching where I sit down with you for 30 minutes, all the way up to 90 minutes where we can go over strategy. We can talk about specific Questions that you may, whatever it may be, just check the show notes, and I think we have something that might fit your needs. With that said, back to the show. Yeah. As far as, like, figuring out who you're speaking to. Do a lot of your clients, when they come to you in those first couple of calls, are you having to kind of, I guess, lasso them in a bit? Kind of get them more focused on. Okay, you're kind of throwing a lot out there. And right now on YouTube, if you want to be successful in a niche, in a space, and to see that growth you're wanting, you can't confuse not only the viewers, but the algorithm as well. Is there conversations like that happening? Because I know when I'm working with clients, a lot of that first call for the first 30 minutes is just me trying to tell them, hey, listen, I think you're onto something. I think you have what it takes. But, like, you're all over the place. What. What about intentionality? Are you. Is that. Is it something that I'm only dealing with, or do you deal with it as well?
- [22:41]
A
No, I mean, spot on. I'll have those same conversations, and in some cases, too, I'll have a consultation or a discovery call with a prospect. And, you know, I might not take them on as a client if they don't really have a clear idea of what problem they're trying to solve or if they're trying to marry two disparate ideas together. I hate to say it, but I don't feel like I can really help those people, you know, especially if their goal is to monetize. Right. Because if you're going to try and monetize, you got to have a really clear message. Now, if you're just making content because you love making videos and it's for legacy and you, like, I don't know, you just want to throw stuff out there. And really there are no rules. Just do whatever feels right. But if you really want to make money, then you gotta. You gotta understand the market that you're trying to sell into. I think sometimes we, you know, our intuition or our judgment has to be challenged. Even me, almost two years in, I'm constantly thinking, you know, who is my avatar? Has it changed? Am I still speaking to the same people? Because obviously, you know, this. Your interests change over time. The kind of content that you want to make changes over time. You know, I started out making videos about beginners growing on YouTube, but now I'm like, man, I really. I'm enjoying watching a lot of AI Related content. So how can I marry AI for content creators? Maybe that becomes potentially a new niche I explore. But you have to evaluate, is there a market for that? Do people care? Can you sell something on the back end of that? And these are all questions that people might not have put a lot of energy and effort into on the, on the front end. But also at the same time, sometimes you just don't get this clarity for a while. You have to do the work to understand more about your viewer and the kind of content that you want to make and the format and the delivery and all that stuff. So I tell people who, who call in, if, if they're. If they're kind of all over the place, I say, hey, listen, make videos for three months, make them in all these different categories that you want, and then come back to me in three months and figure out, okay, what did you enjoy making the most? What did you get the most signal from? And maybe that's the direction we push forward in. And at that point, we'll work together. So that's kind of like the homework I give people to try and figure out.
- [24:49]
B
What are you seeing in terms of packaging? Like, I can see how your packaging has evolved over time. And you talk about. Early on in this conversation, you talked about, you know, topic and title and thumbnail speak on. On that. And if you were coaching someone, what. What would you tell them as far as where they need to focus their time, as far as the packaging of their videos?
- [25:09]
A
Yeah. So I can't. It cannot be overstated how important packaging is. It is the lifeblood of any YouTube video. Doesn't matter how great the video is. I think I heard Patty Galloway talk to. I forget the. They were. He was on a podcast that I saw the other day, said something of the effect. It's like people think YouTube is a video streaming platform, but it's really. It's really just like a thumbnail platform. I mean, we're all competing for the click at the end of the day. And it kind of really puts it in perspective when you think of it in that way. And I, you know, I liken it to a billboard on the freeway. Like, if you're cruising down the freeway 75 miles per hour and there's a billboard coming up on your left, if you can't make it out in a split second, you're not going to stop and see that ad. You're just going to cruise right by it. And so your thumbnail has to do the exact same thing. For the viewer on YouTube who's just scrolling. And so, yeah, it's among the most important thing to focus on. It's also like the most challenging thing to get right because thumbnail taste and titling formats, it's an evolution, you know, people, you'll see like a new viral title framework that comes out. Everyone starts to steal and adopt it for their own niche and then people get bored of it and it stops working. So it's just one of those things where like, in order to be successful on YouTube, you can't just be good at the subject matter that you're speaking about. You actually have to become a student of the platform. Right? You see if the study what makes YouTube work. And that means looking outside of your niche and getting inspiration on titles and thumbnails that may have done well in something completely unrelated. So for me, I look at personal finance channels all the time because like, how are they doing their titles? And I'm borrow some of that from my own niche, even being part of a mentorship program. Like I. Tin Tin Smith is my current business coach and he's got like a group cohort and I'm constantly seeing what my peers are working on and I'm like, wow, that video took off. And I have a peer who makes art videos. And he just did an amazing job on one of his recent videos. And I'm like, I'm stealing his title but for my own niche. And I've done that with sound engineer, I've done that with an art channel, done it with finance channels. And so it's just being observant, looking for those patterns and. But again, a lot of this is stuff that you don't just get good at on day one. It's stuff that you have to acclimate to. It's like it's getting good at YouTube, like packaging and ideation is a skill
- [27:35]
B
in of itself and it evolves over time. Right? Like, you know, we may go through a phase where thumbnails that are like the comparison thumbnails, you know, day one, day 100, those are big. Then we'll go through a phase of another type of style that works well. And a lot of it's pushed down from the larger creators. But it's like I tell people on these, the coaching calls and in our mastermind group, you know, look at people out outside your niche and figure out what's working for them and then how can that be applicable to your topic, your thing and your audience and how you can play the YouTube game in a way that allows you to get seen because that's the whole thing. If your videos are wonderful, the what's inside of them are fantastic. It doesn't matter if no one clicks. So figuring out what works and what doesn't, and then leaning into to what does.
- [28:20]
A
Yeah, and there's this notion of, like, perceived value. Right. If you. If you see a thumbnail in your home screen, and it looks very well polished and dialed and professional, and there's a really good headshot, and the text is very stylized, we're making these subconscious decisions about the quality of the video itself based on the quality of the thumbnail. And so sometimes we'll have really good videos, like, well done lighting, scripted delivery, editing. But the thumbnail looks like, you know, a third grader made it in Canva. It's gonna get passed up because there's no perceived value there. And people are gonna just make a subconscious decision that the video itself, it's probably made by a third grader. Like, despite our best efforts, we still have to get out of our own way and level up and polish the thumbnails. And then the thumbnails, too, also have to convey the vibe. And I think depending on, like, what the vibe of the video is, that should also be portrayed in the thumbnail itself. Going back to the example from earlier. You know, the gentleman outside in his back patio talking about retirement, he's just holding his phone up to his face, and then it's a still image for his thumbnail. And that's a perfect example of, like, that's the vibe of the video. So we try to match that in the thumbnail to give people a good understanding of what they're getting into when they click. But, yeah, you're right.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, I had that conversation a lot too, of don't false advertise, because that only hurts your channel more. Because if people are clicking, for one thing, and then the vibes are different from what they're getting from the thumbnail that, you know, whatever you. YouTube calls that metric of when people click off, right. And it obviously hurts retention and watch time. And, you know, the impressions of that video will only, you know, go down because now YouTube's seeing from the back end. Okay? People are clicking, but when they're getting into the video, they're hopping off really fast. The bounce rate is. Goes up. So completely agree with that. All right, so if. If I were to ask you now, what is one thing you wish you would have known sooner, now that you're in this, you're doing this full time, what would be the one thing you Would say to yourself, man, I wish I would have known that sooner.
- [30:22]
A
I think maybe the importance of writing because early on I didn't really script my videos. I would just create outlines. And then also I didn't start a newsletter until maybe just over a year ago. So maybe about eight, nine months in. Writing is, is an important skill. You wouldn't necessarily connect the dots between being a good writer and creating good videos. But I mean, really everything is downstream from writing. When you think about like validating your idea to make sure, hey, is this video even worth making? You really need to kind of brain dump, I think pen to paper or just type out in some sort of Google Doc all of the different ideas or the angles of the idea to see which one stands out to you, right? And then you go out and research and make sure it's worth pursuing. But then beyond that, it's writing out titles. A habit that I'm in right now is for each video, I'm probably writing out 10 different titles for, you know, for each one. And then I'm kind of like just giving it a scan test, maybe putting it into Vidiq's thumbnail preview to see how it looks in a mock home screen and from there kind of whittling it down to like my top two or three. Same thing with thumbnail text, especially if you're doing the classic face plus text in your thumbnails, which is what I exclusively do. Having really interesting, compelling, curiosity inducing thumbnail text is really important. Something that plays well off of the title, that creates more intrigue or more mystery or more FOMO or fear or desire, whatever the click trigger is. So writing is super important then obviously with scripting, hooks are super important for anyone who wants to make money on YouTube. Writing in your calls to action, whether it's for a lead magnet or your, your primary offer, or even if you're doing like an ad read or an integration, you still need to be able to write well so that, you know, so that you're doing a smooth transition from the video into the integration back to the video. All of these things are just so important. You know, a lot of people just want to make content and they kind of want to just like riff and like go off the cuff or maybe have a rough outline and that's cool and you can get far doing that, that. But when you get more tactical and more strategic, especially if the goal is to make money, I think writing all of these things into the videos is going to be a really important skill to get good at.
- [32:24]
B
Yeah, I think writing is only going to be a skill that is more valued as AI continues to become more prevalent because you're going to see these young, these kids and these students, you know, coming up out of school, out of high school that don't know how to write. All they've done their entire lives is put their phone to their mouth and ask ChatGPT or Claude to write something for them on one way. It's exciting. You know, AI is wonderful and I think there's some great use cases for it. But on the other hand, it's kind of sad in, in knowing that we're going to have generations of people who don't know, which I believe it's going to make it easier for folks to stand out. If you are willing to write and willing to put in the work what you're talking about, I think you're going to be able to stand out as a creator and in general in life, much easier going forward. Now, speaking of AI, the last question I want to ask you is what tools are you using? Like what, what do you use to run your business? I've watched a bunch of your videos. It looks like you're a big Google Sheets person kind of to track data and things of that nature. What are the tools of the trade for Ty Meyers and the channel that you're running?
- [33:26]
A
Okay, my primary large language model is Claude and I use that to help with building out tools and resources and like landing pages for example, but also ideation. Right. So it'll help me validate an idea. I have also asked Claude to like basically interview me whenever I have a video idea so that it captures all of my thoughts, perspectives, opinions, stories, analogies, all of that stuff. And then it helps me to like sort of structure how, how I would do a script. Claude's amazing for that. ChatGPT Images 2.0, it's brand new, I think it's like two weeks old. It's actually a really good thumbnail generator. So if anyone is like, I hate thumbnails and I stink at Canva, check out ChatGPT. They have a brand new image model 2.0 and it can give you either, I think ready to go thumbnails, you have to like kind of massage it and tweak it a little bit or it could just help you with the high level concepts that you can then go shoot yourself or recreate in canva. So that's an amazing visual tool as far as like YouTube growth stuff. I really like Vidiq. I think it's pretty Easy to use. I obviously look at outliers a lot, which has a great database for that. And also inline on the home screen. Those are I think, the big ones. Beyond that, I use a program called Whisper Flow, which is voice dictation. So if you're ever working with AI and you don't want to have to type all the time, I just press a key on my keyboard, I kind of just brain dump and then it formats it nicely and then I can send it off to the LLM.
- [34:54]
B
It's funny you mentioned that. I just started using Whisper Flow a couple of weeks ago and it has been a game changer for me being able just to just brain dump as I'm walking on my phone. You know, I love to walk every day. It's a big, it's a big kind of stress reliever for me. And then I have the, the side button on my mouse where I'll just hit it and then Whisper Flow will pull up and I'll just brain dump into Claude or you know, to a Google Document and it'll kind of reformat it. It's a great tool. I love that one.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah, I think that's the future of interacting with our computers honestly. And I also think that at some point the LLMs will talk back to us, you know, and it'll be more of a two way conversation. Like right now on your, on our phones we can have that, that two way voice conversation on the computer. I haven't actually tried it. Maybe it's available, I just haven't used it. But I think that's going to be the future of like AI agents being like embedded in our, in our computers essentially that are basically helping us with everything. But you're right, if you look at Whisper Flow, like do you know what your word per minute is? Mine's like 150 and I type at 50. So it's like three times quicker to use whisker flow.
- [35:58]
B
Yeah, my typing speed. I've always been a fast typer but I can say that my, my words per minute using Whisper flow the past month or so is, is way higher.
- [36:07]
A
Yeah. And it's just good because you know when you're speaking, when you're brain dumping, you're not really, you're not really self. What's the term? You're not really like, there's no guardrails. You're just kind of letting it flow. When you're typing you're, you're almost like overthinking what you're typing. And that's why We're a lot slower, plus it's, you know, more mechanical. We make mistakes. So it's just, I think it's just a better way to get ideas out there and to have this like two way conversation with the AIs on, you know, refining the idea.
- [36:37]
B
Yes, absolutely. I love that. Ty, you've been an amazing guest. Again, it's Ty Myers over on YouTube. I'll link his channel as I always do. Don't forget to check out all the offerings that we have for creators and check out Ty services as well. Well, Ty, thanks again for joining us this week.
- [36:54]
A
Dusty. Yeah, thanks man. I appreciate you having me on.
- [36:57]
B
That's a wrap on this week's episode of the Creators Hub show. Again, my name is Dusty. If you haven't already subscribe to the show, whether you're listening to it through your podcast player or over on our YouTube channel, if you'd prefer to watch the video version, as I've mentioned earlier, we have a ton of different offerings for creators. At least go down there and see if there's something that might fit your needs, whether it be joining our Mastermind group to hang out with other creators. The, I mean, 5 doll entry fee is nothing. It's just to keep the bots out. And then we have YouTube channel reviews where I take a look at your channel. And then Lastly, I offer one on one coaching, which is a more in depth 30 to 90 minute session every time where we discuss different needs that you may have different things you're going through on your channel. And it's just a great way to get another set of eyes on your channel. We also have an email newsletter and a running list of tools that are mentioned here on the show. All of those things are down below. And with that said, we'll talk to you guys next week.