Dusty (2:23)

Doing great. Super excited about this conversation. We've been trying to make this happen for about a month now. Your schedule is super hectic, as I know mine is as well. So it's just great to connect and, and do this conversation. So let's just go ahead and open with this. You are doing, I believe you're calling it on your channel right now, YouTube Workshop. You're doing 12 weeks of where you've basically scheduled live streams for 12 weeks and you're doing these live streams. You did one last night to the wee hours of the night. Give me the thought process behind why you're doing this, the benefits that you've seen, and would you do it again?

Roberto Blake (2:58)

Night school for content creators, especially those creators that are working class content creators under 20,000 subscribers, is what this workshop is really geared toward. What I love about this is, you know, in our space we see people all the time who say they are confused by all the information. In the YouTube education space, they don't know where to start, they don't know who to trust. They feel left behind as absolute, absolute beginners. They are like, I'm overwhelmed. I just need a starting point because they're coming into. Almost every YouTube educator worthwhile while has been doing this for over like 3 years, 5 years, 8 years, 10 years in some cases. I've been doing it for a very long time. And the trick is, at this point, there are so many things that a lot of us would take for granted and don't have the mindset of a beginner or haven't started a new channel again, et cetera, et cetera, gone through those going pains of getting monetized again and everything like that. I mean, I always secretly start a new channel from scratch every year just to go through the signup process again. And I help new creators all the time, so I spend a lot of time with those beginners. So I feel like I'm not out of touch. But I wanted to do something where I could just literally point to a complete, definitive series that leaves kind of no stone unturned for that absolute beginner and give them a formal education in YouTube because if you were learning something and you took a community college course on it, you usually go through a nine week course in community college, usually are doing a night school session where, where you're going one or two times a week to that class and the professor is giving you work and assignments and lecture and teaching you principles and theory and giving you some materials. So what I'm doing is I'm doing basically night school on Wednesdays. And every week for these 12 weeks we've been meeting, focusing on that YouTube beginner, under a thousand, under 10,000, under 20,000. So that we have kind of a range for beginners. So there are people who are stagnant. There are people who had a video pop off and they got their thousand subscribers, but they don't know anything. They just had a video pop off. So they need to know, well, what comes next. So we've, we went through this process. I make slide presentations for every single one of these streams and people can download it for free. They can go to awesome Creator Academy and they can go to whatever week it is and then they download the slides for free. I give the slide presentation and then beyond the slide presentation, I do Q and A. Just like if you were in night, you could ask your professor, you could raise your hand and say, hey, I have a question. I don't understand this. Can you talk about a little bit more? And so I do that. They get some Q and A. And also there's practical things that I do hands on to demonstrate things to them. Like a week ago I literally did a live editing workflow session where I opened up Premiere Pro and I showed them in real time the AI tools in Premiere Pro that cut all of your pauses, your ums and your filler words like with a click of a button and the text based editing workflow. I showed them the quick version of color correction. I showed them my green screen workflow and why I built a preset for it so I don't have to agonize over green screen when I want to do it, and how to do motion graphics, background music, sound effects, transition timing, and polishing, those finishing touches on your video. And so they were able to see a workflow where they don't have to spend 10 hours to edit a basic talking head video or four hours even to where, oh, they could get this done in maybe 90 minutes or two hours tops, even if they wanted to agonize over adding B roll and I show them how to do that, etc. Etc. So we did a Practical hands on demonstration that's very rarely been done in a live stream where you get to see someone edit a video more or less and their workflow in a live stream and see how it can be efficient for you and then have someone also answer your questions about why they make the editing decisions they do or where this feature or this menu. So yeah, it's been a very fruitful experience. The students have gotten a lot of it. Would I do it again? Absolutely. It's been great for me also for the coaching side of my business and it's not been a bunch of coaching calls with people under a thousand. There are people watching the workshops that are monetized, are making some money from their channel, could make their money back and it's led to some one on one coaching calls. If I get even one one on one coaching call from a thousand people watching the replay of this dusty, it would literally mean that I have a $300rpm instead of worrying about AdSense just off of one lead and that's within and that usually happens within a couple of days of every if not outright on the stream. Someone will sign up either to the Austin Creator Academy Pro group to say all right, I want more access to Robert what he's doing or they'll sign up for a one on one coaching call.

Dusty (7:47)

Yeah, a lot there. I kind of want to unpack first. I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about the coaching side of your business and how you can think of it differently because it's completely what I've done here since the partnership with TubeBuddy ended here on the podcast and we were together for a decade. Not going to get into that whole message, but I re I realized that my coaching business and you know what I charge and the things that I can do there will make it much more lucrative for me on a business side of things when I'm producing these podcasts and having to ramble on about a company. Now I do have some brands and partners that are have approached me and I'm working with them to hopefully bring them on the show in the summer and into the fall. But you're right when you look at it that way and you say with one stream, if I can get a coaching client that may not be just a one off, it may be something that is a relationship that brings you thousands of dollars as a consultant, then the stream was worth it just for that one person. But it could bring two or three clients and you just have to look at it differently. And so I completely agree with that point, I did want to concur with you there and then secondly, I just wanted to talk to you about kind of getting in the mindset of a new creator. I, with my coaching clients, have a lot of people with this frustration. So I want to toss you the ball and see if I'm kind of giving them some good advice. They come to me and we may have a call or two, and they upload a video and they don't see a dramatic increase instantly. Right? It's just kind of a slow burn. It's a slow curve. How do you encourage those people? And how do you kind of walk them off the ledge of, you know, hey, maybe you're not a beginner creator, maybe you are an intermediate creator, but you are thinking to yourself, it's time to quit. Because I'm not really seeing that rapid or, you know, quick growth that I should see. What do you tell these people?

Roberto Blake (9:35)

I tell them that it's an investment and that it's like, do you want to, like, have fun and go viral? Because that's gambling on crypto. So it's like, do you want to buy meme coins, or do you want to build an actual business? And I remind them that real businesses are built slow because trust is built slow and lost fast. And so I tell them, you're asking strangers, sight unseen, to make you a priority in their life. They have to watch your video for five or 10 minutes instead, play with their kid, you know, sit on the couch and kiss their significant other, or work on their own ventures and everything like that. And you're stealing that time from them. How are you proving upfront and how difficult is the challenge of proving up front that five to ten minutes is better spent with you than all the people right in front of them and all the things that the world has to offer, let alone all the other content that exists. It's like, do you think it should be easy? Did you think it should be easy? Like, so there's. When I give them that perspective, they go, you know, I never thought of it that way. I'm like, your viewer has to contend with that every day. They think about what is and isn't a priority. Saying yes to something is saying no to something else. And so the thing is, don't be so upset and frustrated that the answer is no. Maybe for where that person is, it should be, what about all the people who did say yes? Do they not matter? So you're sitting here getting frustrated about what you perceive as completely, by the way, probably completely justified Rejections of a commitment of time and you don't appreciate the people who did make you a priority. And how do you maximize that? Because I'm asking, what is the goal here? Are you upset that you didn't get enough attention? Or is it that you are upset because the attention you feel is required to reach escape velocity to make a certain amount of money is not there? Because I can fix the money. Let's fix the money by making bigger, better offers. Let's fix the money by partnering with companies and brands and making UGC content. Because then UGC content doesn't require attention, it requires a good portfolio money. Let's go ahead and do something with your portfolio if you're on the entertainment side. And let's get you being the right face, the right model, the right spokesperson for brands on their social media accounts or use your editing savvy to do that. If you're in the information broker business and you're a thought leader, let's go ahead and get you some affiliate marketing or some SaaS, businesses, company or let's get you some speaking engagements. Let's get you paid for your thoughts and your reputation and not the amount of attention you can get. Let's go on higher value instead of higher volume when it comes to attention. If you're worried about not reaching escape velocity by not getting views. So like, because I asked them, is it the issue that you want attention or you want money? And they go, well, I want through. I feel I need attention to get money. It's like, oh no, no, no. We can get less attention and more money. Because most if we get attention, it's going to be people who don't have money. That's the biggest market of attention is broke people that don't have money. Let's be honest about that.

Dusty (12:17)

Those are the people that are watching the most. Right? People who had the time.

Roberto Blake (12:20)

Yeah, they don't have money, so they got time to spend. So, okay. The inverse is also true. People with money have less time and you have to prove more value to them for the time that they're committing. So we can just go to people with money and one person with enough money can make up the difference of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views. If you were a gaming channel and you got 100,000 views, you're only going to get $200. We could find one person that'll give us $200 if we create enough value for them, you know.

Dusty (12:50)

Yeah, it really is about creating the value. I've used a couple of tools before I've gotten on the call with you. I did this a couple of weeks ago when I thought we were going to hop on the call. So I've had some time to kind of marinate it a little bit and I've curated a couple of questions. That was one of them. And here, here's the second one that I get a ton, whether it be in my creators corner group or whatever it may be. The second question is how come I upload a video, Roberto, and it does well for maybe a few hours and I see that spike in the. In the graph in my analytics and then YouTube just completely drops it. It looks like it completely gets removed from the algo.

Roberto Blake (13:24)

What.

Dusty (13:24)

What am I doing wrong?

Roberto Blake (13:26)

You're not necessarily doing anything. Well, let me ask you when that happens, are you making an evergreen video or are you making a topical video?

Dusty (13:32)

Yeah, that's exactly what I tell my clients. I exactly that. I was just texting someone that yesterday. So go. Let's. Let's flesh this out a little bit. Explain what you mean by that.

Roberto Blake (13:42)

If you're making a video that pops off right away. Like when I made a video about the TikTok ban, it got. It was a one out of 10 video for like two or three days and then it died. Because guess what? The attention died. No one cared after two or three days when it was breaking news, it got views. When it was old news and people moved on and they had something else they wanted to pay attention to, it was over. And that was that. And that's fair. Meanwhile, a video that I made, like my green screen tutorial, or even more recently, my video about how to use copyright music, my video about how to make use copyright music. I don't know if it even got a thousand views its first day that I uploaded it. And now it's steadily getting 150, 200views per day. In fact, I think I can look at it here in analytics right now. So the first day I uploaded this video, it's almost to 20,000 views right now. The first day I uploaded it. I have 600,000 subscribers. This video people. Oh my God. How embarrassing for you. It did 1500 views the first day I uploaded it. But the thing is, it's been steadily getting between 100 to 200 new views every single day since January. It's now April. It is at about 19,000 views. It's almost a 20,000 views. This will end up being clearly at a rate of 200 a day. And there's no reason for it to Slow down. There's no lack of people who don't want a video that tells them in three minutes exactly how to use copyright music legally in YouTube. It's pretty much the shortest video of its kind without being a YouTube short. It uses a Linkin park song the entire time through the video to illustrate the point that it's making. And it's done in green screen. So the quality is excellent and the audio is excellent. I did everything as perfectly as possible for this video. It has great retention on is ranked in Google search and YouTube search as the first result to the point where dusty 53% of its traffic is from YouTube search, 35% is external. That 35% is Google. So literally 90% of all of the traffic for this video is from search and the searches for this topic are not going away anytime soon. I did the same thing with my green screen video that had 1600 views its first day, 300,000 views today, two years later. So what I know about this is if you are making evergreen video, an evergreen video for which there is a tension long tail, sure, the initial surge of its views will probably be people familiar with you and who are interested in the topic immediately because YouTube has the most opportunity for distribution at upload initially for those things. Now then after that it's a matter of is this something people are interesting? If it's a. If it's for example a celebrity scandal, it can last longer than the initial three day news cycle. If that celebrity keeps getting in the news and keeps getting things or new people keep because that celebrity has a target market as an audience has a total addressable market of tens of millions of people around the world. So there are going to be people like what happened to this? Or if it scrolls in their feed, they'll make it a priority. There's familiarity bias and then there's all the intrigue behind it. But if you're making videos that are informational. Sorry, if you're making videos that are either informational or you're making something that's even more personal, it has a much lower shelf life if there's not something to add energy and fuel and momentum to that thing. For those of us who are thought leaders, we need to make content. And it's not about optimizing for SEO, it's about optimizing for search intent. It's about leading with a problem that is a priority for people and understanding when it will be a priority, how long it can be a priority, and why it's a priority. And so all of this is down to human behavior and psychology. Keep thinking algorithm. And everyone keeps saying here, trying to pander to robots instead of anticipating real human beings, needs, wants, desires, and knowing, hey, here are your preferences, here are your prejudices, here are your priorities, and here are the problems that you have. And those things dictate how you watch content. A bloody algorithm can give you all the exposure at once. But you keep throwing something in front of me 12 times. Doesn't mean I'll make it a priority.

Dusty (18:00)

Yeah, having to think like the viewer is important. You're right, because it is. It is humans at the end of the day. Yeah. The algorithm is, is trying to curate it to whom it shows it to. But as far as who clicks on the packaging, that's. That's the, the person behind the screen. So understanding all the things that you just mentioned is certainly pivotal. You and I may be in the YouTube educator space, may be the biggest proponents for Evergreen Tent Pole Typ. You know, my YouTube channel, Think Tutorial, almost at 400,000 subscribers. I do tech tutorials, have been doing them for over a decade now. And my YouTube, you know, main YouTube channel has been built upon that for years. And I've seen it ebb and flow and I've seen things change and something cool that's happening where, you know, now, you know, a lot of my traffic came from external, which was Google or a search engine, you know, now a lot of that external is AI tools. Now you can see, you know, OpenAI or chat GPT showing up of people who are finding your videos that way. And I think we're going to see a trend that direction as well with, with that, you know, at the end of the day, what I always tell my clients is if they see that peak and then the really hard fall off, a lot of that is probably having to do with packaging as well. Because if your thumbnail or title is not good, if the visuals or the COVID to your book is just not what people are wanting, then it doesn't matter if you have 5,000 impressions. If it's not good, then they're not going to click into that. Has anything changed in the way that you think about packaging in the past couple of years? As far as you and I have talked about this before, but if you are a creator right now and you're thinking to yourself, oh, this is me, this is me. I feel like I get a lot of impressions, but then no one clicks into it, what are some things that these people could be doing differently to help improve that problem? Great.

Roberto Blake (19:41)

That's a great question. Everything is topic, title, thumbnail and timing. The packaging on the thumbnail side, for example, is, you know, there's. The thumbnail inherently has to be visually attractive at a glance to begin with. And most people struggle with that because they just lack the technical ability and expertise. Some of it is taste. Some people, they know what looks good because they know what they would click on. And most people, if they were honest with themselves, they would not click on that video if it wasn't something that they. They would never click on a video with the quality of thumbnail that they made. And they're just limited by their abilities, which is why you see a lot of people trying to figure out not how to even work with and manipulate and use AI tools as like a foundation to help them overcome one aspect of that failure, but they're trying to get it to do the whole bloody thing for them because they just do not feel either one that they can develop that school skill. That's why I've done like my three hour Photoshop thumbnail workshops like on YouTube is like, no, there's some basic things. Like a big one is most people are terrible with typography. If they have to put text in the thumbnail, they're going to make the thumbnail worse than it already is. And it was bad enough, they're terrible with it. A lot of people, they don't bother. Their thumbnail is also an afterthought. You know what people's problem is with packaging, Dusty? The problem is, and I'll call big YouTubers on this, big YouTubers, people with 10 million subscribers, they lie to the creator community so badly, Dusty. And I'm really frankly disgusted by it. I'm tired of hearing about luck. I'm tired of people who are rich telling everyone else that they are lucky or got lucky. Because these same people who are rich and telling you they got lucky have dedicated photo shoots for their thumbnail. Because that was the thing that was the difference between them, like arbitrarily getting 100,000 views and then getting a million views. You can literally watch the jump in people's thumbnail quality and see when they stop getting 100,000 views an upload and start getting 2 million views an upload. And you can see it was the difference in their thumbnail quality. Well, what they do, they hired people like Dil Toma, they've hired these great thumbnail artists and they also got feedback from these thumbnail artists as creative directors that told them, I can't, I'm not a Magician, your photo sucks. Get our photo. Do some lighting, the shadows under your eyes, do this, do that. And, and so they got instruction, they got knowledge on how to give somebody what they need. So they're not trying to turn lead into gold or polish a turd. They're polishing an uncut gem and taking out the blemishes, which is fantastic. It's the same thing with the video editing. A lot of people went from struggling to be consistent with content. Sorry if there's background noise. There's, there's the law and care people. I got the tie big and I picked the worst tie possible. Try not to interrupt my thought here. But like they go and they got video editors that make their quality of content better so they can focus on the production. So now they're, they, these people have focused teams. These people are small media companies and they're gonna tell a working class content creator who has to do this all by themselves. After working a 40, 50 hour week job and wrangling their kids, when they come home and still finding the energy to cook for themselves, let alone then the little scraps of energy and time left to now sit down, record a video, make a thumbnail after the fact and do all these things, they're going to sit there and tell that person it's luck and that's stupid. And what about when that person was small? When that person was small, they were a 20 something year old youtuber or a teenage youtuber who didn't have a mortgage, didn't have kids, wasn't married, and was able to obsess over YouTube in a way that you probably can't if you're listening to them. So what I would say is when you make a thumbnail, like it shouldn't be an afterthought of, oh, I already shot and made the video I wanted to make. And now, ah, crap, I need to come up with a thumbnail. I believe you should be coming up with the title and thumbnail before you ever make the video. You should be going into the video thinking about the relationship between this is the thumbnail they're gonna click on and then I'm gonna deliver on that expectation. This is the title that they're gonna click on. And now the hook that I deliver in the first five to eight seconds is gonna reinforce that title. People are not nearly intentional enough dusty about the experience they're creating for the viewer and how they create value for the viewer. It's like, it's like rolling out of bed and then throwing on some clothes and then showing up to the date like that instead of thinking, oh, my God, this person is so wonderful. And you know what? They'd really love this scent on me. When I go in for the hug, they're gonna smell the sandalwood and all this stuff and everything like that. I'm gonna make sure that, you know, I'm energetic. I'm gonna make sure that I got some rest. I'm gonna take the day off before to prepare and get my mind right and just get into a good mental health space. I'm not gonna come here exhausted after work to the date. It's a first impression, right? Or a job interview. Take it out of a date. Take it to a job interview. Oh, you're gonna roll out of bed and go to the job interview? No, I'm going to make sure I picked exactly this outfit or this suit I'm gonna iron and everything, or I'm gonna send it to the dry cleaners and everything like that. You know what? I'm not gonna leave anything to chance with traffic. I'm gonna be in the area all of that day beforehand, and I'm going to make sure that it's this or that. I'm going to bring a backup piece of clothing in case something goes wrong. Like, you know, it would be the preparation. So the lack of preparation and thought into the packaging. For most creators, they make the video they want to make, then they scramble for a thumbnail and title to justify the video. When they should have started with a great idea that the audience will like and enjoy or see value in. They should have obsessed over packaging that idea and to make it as attractive as possible and as interesting as possible at a glance scroll, oh, I got to stop and pay attention to that. And then they should have thought about they, I want to do authentic content. I don't want to do outlines or script. I just want to turn on the camera and be me. And then you're sitting there struggling with your words, or you're rambling or you're yapping. You are disrespecting the person's time, intention, priorities, and have all the people in the world, they gave you a chance. And a lot of times people are just disappointed. And that's the reason. It's a lack of intentionality, it's lack of forethought, it's a lack of preparedness. If you're an entertainer, you should be preparing for a video the way you'd prepare for a date. If you're a information broker, you're a thought Leader, you should be preparing for it. The way to prepare for killing a pitch in the boardroom or going to a job interview.

Dusty (25:55)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I want to start calling you the king of analogies. That's what. That's what I want to start calling you. I feel like every time you come on this podcast, you have some wonderful analogies. So thank you for. For sharing that with the audience, for sure. You mentioned at the end of that answer, Roberto, about the rise of this thought, that authentic of where it's not overly edited, there's not as many, just jump cuts all over the place like what we used to see back in the early days of YouTube, even, you know, seven or eight years ago. What are your thoughts on this? Because I feel. Feel I like that I. I consume a good bit of that content where someone just turns the camera on and they have a bulleted list of things they want to talk about, and it's like we're having a conversation between friends. What are your thoughts on this and where do you see this going?

Roberto Blake (26:43)

People are using the idea of authentic content as a euphemism for something very different because you can. Editing doesn't make you less authentic. Planning and being thoughtful about your words doesn't make you less authentic. They're using authentic as a euphemism due to probably just a limited range of vocabulary, because they're regurgitating YouTubers who have limited range of vocabulary. And what they're actually talking about is they're saying, I want my content to feel more organic. I want my content to feel more unpolished. I want my content to feel more straightforward. Those would be the correct words because here's the thing, Dusty. When you decide to edit out dead space from a podcast or filter the background noise because Roberto's lawn care people came early, is that less authentic? Authentic?

Dusty (27:31)

No. It's just smart.

Roberto Blake (27:33)

It's just smart. It's just creating the best experience possible. When you decide to go into something and you come up with at least some bullet points so that you don't end up just rambling or yapping and wasting people's time. Are you being inauthentic? Are you saying things you don't believe? Because what is authenticity? Authenticity is when you present yourself accurately. It's when you present yourself truly. Do people think that they're not being their true selves because they have to edit or because they have to prepare or because they plan? When you write a script, are you writing something you don't believe in? Because what it says to me or suggests to me is that people think that they themselves or other people, that if they're not just saying every unguarded thought in their head, that they're somehow being less authentic. And I don't think that's true. I think being intentional and thoughtful can still be authentic. And I think it's appropriate to have. Have somewhat of a filter called thoughtfulness or candor or care. Me, you know, me, I'm transparent and I'm radically honest. Almost to a thought, almost to a fault. I am blunt as hell. But that doesn't mean that I just say every intrusive, random thought that comes to my mind without thinking about the consequences or thinking about who I'm speaking to, what their mind, space or mental health is. If I just want to say whatever I want to say and yap, I'm not being authentic. What I'm being is I'm being insensitive and I'm being careless and I'm being thoughtless. I'm not respecting other people's time, other people's space or other people's energy. If I do that, I'm not inauthentic. When I decide not to curse in front of my goddaughter, I'm being polite and respectful and thoughtful and a responsible person.

Dusty (29:16)

Yeah, I think it's a bit of a facade because they see these creators that are doing these what they think to be more authentic videos. And it's really like you said, they're just being more transparent. But I think, I think what people don't realize that behind the camera they're being very intentional with what they're doing. The ones that these people are referring to. Right. You know, like my favorite, one of my favorite creators in the world has always been Peter McKinnon. I love the way that he tells stories. I love the way his cinematography. I love the way that he's able to take something so simple and so what seemingly would be unfun and make it fun. His. His videos are very professional. They're very, you know, it seems like he's all over the place and like sometimes he's just, you know, bouncing off the walls. But to me, I love that. And then you have someone like Simon Sine, who people would point to and say, oh, well, this is what I want to do. I want to do these just, you know, turn on my phone and point it at me in the car and I'm just going to go on these big monologues. He's very intentional about the topics that he covers and the things he knows his audience very well. So I would very much caution the people listening to this to don't use this as an excuse to do less work or to make your stuff less good. For me, with what I want to do on this podcast, I've always been very, like you said, transparent and authentic to the fact that, listen, I want to have creators on this podcast who have almost, you know, 700,000 subscribers like you. And I've had people on with 3 or 4 or 5 million subscribers, but I've also had creators on with 10,000 or 8,000 subscribers because it resonates and it, it's, it's real. And I want people to understand that. And I just want to transition now into. This question is fun for me. And I want to ask you this question. Have you changed your mind on anything in the creator space or creator economy over the past few years that you were really adamant about early on, and now that you've kind of learned more or gained more knowledge, you're like, okay, maybe I can pivot on this and can change my opinion.

Roberto Blake (31:07)

Yes, short form content. I believe that short form content was. I still believe that most of it is. I think my issue with short form content was how much of it was brain rot content. And now I also understand that there's long form brain rot content too. And there always has been. There always has been. And so looking at it and then not romanticizing old YouTube because I've also changed my mind about the romanticism of old YouTube, and now I'm against that romanticism. I'm not saying it had no value. I'm not saying I had its place. But even with this concept that we just talked about with authentic content, what people don't realize that they're saying is they want less produced content because texture feels real. This is a quote from Philip DeFranco that I can never unhear. And he said something and I'll never forget he said, feels real, Polish feels fake. So that's why you see a rebellion against beastification, as we used to call it, the Mr. Beast, hyper editing style. And over optimizing content. You're seeing a longing and nostalgia for old YouTube that you and I came up with. I'm older, so I can't say I grew up with it. I was already in college when YouTube started. The thing is, there's a longing for these days of random people talking about the things they're passionate about and their lives with very little technical ability, very little artistic ability, very little creative ability. Frankly, and being able to get attention and go viral and become famous and become rich and oh, how nice a normal person won. There's a nostalgia and longing for that. The reason it'll never come back back is because the era in which that happened, in that first, let's say 10 years or so of YouTube is that Internet video in the hands of a normal person was a novelty item. YouTube was a novelty gimmick website that the modern public did not understand. It was not a household name and not ubiquitous and not something we all understand and was not something that people grew up with. And is now cable television is basically now cable television. It surpassed cable television in its attention and its reach. It's beyond Netflix now that. But when it started, all of those quirky weird creators, those esoteric creators who could do things off the beaten path that people so desperately want to do because they grew up loving those creators and now they are angry that they can't be the next generation of that creator. And they're forgetting that the conditions under which those people exist existed radically different than today. And so what was once a novelty is now the new normal. So you can never recreate the magic, no matter what you do, of OG YouTube. There was a point during the pandemic and the rise of TikTok where TikTok and short form and vertical video and the virality of that was a novelty item. Also. We so heavily saturated that that we sprinted in five years, I would say, of the same experience that YouTube took 15 to accomplish. We compressed it. So now if you do something else, the span at which you would recreate the buzz of a tick tock will be an even shorter lifespan. So you see what I'm saying? The condensing of this keeps happening. So you can't recreate that novelty. So something I pivoted on was my belief. Belief that one that that can be recaptured. I no longer believe that. I believe there'll be small cycles of it that will have outliers and you will have people like Sam suck. You will have people like that come up, but they will be a minority. There will not be a new wave. There will not be a new wave. This will not be a trend. It will be a microcosm. Okay? And then my belief now on short form, diluting the value of long form. I no longer believe that. It's not that I felt that it algorithmically did it per se, it's that I felt it was conditioning people and attention spans. I now see an inversion happening. And the other thing is I came To a conclusion that's like, would any of us care which format on YouTube between short form and long form is getting us views if they've all paid the same? Because every time I ask creator, would you care about oh, my shorts are getting. I wish my long form videos were getting the views my shorts were. It's like, if they paid the same, would you care? No.

Dusty (35:30)

The answer to that is every time. No, every time. Time.

Roberto Blake (35:33)

So I go, fantastic. So the answer is build a business outside of YouTube where your brand matters. I'm going to say something. Do you mind if I say something slightly polarizing, controversial?

Dusty (35:44)

No, not, not at all.

Roberto Blake (35:46)

I wish that every YouTuber had the marketing savvy of the most successful creators on only fans. Even though I don't necessarily approve of only fans or the business model or the exploitation that happens at all in any way but the marketing, I have to respect the hustle. If you make short form and you're doing that kind of content, all you're doing is promoting a $9 a month subscription. Basically is the business model. Right? Right. If a YouTuber has a membership or a thing and every piece of short form they had got massive attention and views. Oh, but I don't make any, I don't make enough ad revenue off of it. If the notoriety of knowing who you are was a pipeline and a funnel to a recurring membership, that's $9 a month, $99 a year, you wouldn't be worried about what pennies you're not getting off of that ads. Yeah, because your, your RPM value and your lifetime revenue per customer would just be so high that if every 1 in 1,000 people, which is less than a, like, it's a 0.1% conversion rate. If every 1 in 1,000 people was $99 a year, do you really care that Shorts is not. Is paying a tenth or a 100th of what regular long form videos are? When all it is is at the end, hey, sign up for my membership. Hey, sign up for my membership at the end of every video. They got everything they wanted in 55 seconds. And then the last three second seconds is sign up for my membership. Oh, you have a membership. It's like. And they, it's just a funnel at that point. Right. So why not? And again, that's not an endorsement of only fancy, it's just telling you guys, build a private membership website, use the saturation of short form and the reach of it to give exposure to a brand where you can sell things direct to consumer, directly to the audience. A subscription model is ideal because you get the longest tail value out of that and you just have all this opportunity. It's like neutralized. Here's another idea, Dusty. If you get 10,000 views on a regular YouTube video, but you make three YouTube shorts that all get 100,000 and you upload three YouTube shorts that week and they all get 100,000 views, you got one YouTube video and it got 10,000 views. Don't the three YouTube shorts basically add up to enough money to equal the regular long form video at that that point?

Dusty (37:57)

Yeah.

Roberto Blake (37:59)

And aren't the shorts theoretically easier to make and get out than that long form video? So the ratio of short form videos that you can put out in a week compared to the effort for the hours put in to a single long form video, it equals the same amount of money. If you're going that route, you really.

Dusty (38:17)

Bring up a lot of great points. The short form content is a hot topic for me because I think it's something, something that I'm having to pivot on right now in the current day. Think for me and I'll just be honest with everyone listening. I look at the consumption patterns of short form video and what it does to us as humans. And you mentioned it at the beginning of your answer when you referred to it as kind of brain rot content, right? Where it's honestly just junk food type content, right? People, they become zombies like you look at people I hate. And again, this is getting into stuff beyond creator economy and I'm not going to go there because it's not what.

Roberto Blake (38:50)

I'm going to do. I'm fine with it. I'm good with with it.

Dusty (38:52)

At the end of the day, I see what it does and I see what our phones have done to us in that. I see it in my family. I see it with people directly related to me. They'll be out in this beautiful place or at a beach and, and they'll have their phones and they're just stuck to them instead of enjoying what's going on around them. This vertical. And again, this can happen with long form, don't get me wrong. But it's, it's, it's happening more frequently with vertical short form content where people are just looking at their phones and they're not even really consuming. Does that make sense to you? Like what I'm saying, Roberto? Like they're not consuming it, they're not learning anything. Maybe they get a quick laugh out of it, but it's literally just time sucking is what it is.

Roberto Blake (39:26)

So is that on the format or is that on the content? Because Dusty. Because.

Dusty (39:31)

I don't know.

Roberto Blake (39:31)

Because. Watch this. Dusty. What if instead of short form all being sugary snacks, what if someone was only consuming short form and all it is is vitamin supplements and all it is is ashwagandha and vitamin B12? And what if it was. What if all of your short form was supplements? What if you were on the beach and you're. You've got your AirPods in, but instead of it being like Tiger Belly or something like that, what if it's Andrew Huberman? What if it's Tony Robbins? What if it's Roberto Blake? What if it is an AI generated podcast of the collective curated consciousness of Aristotle or Plato? So you know the great thinkers. What if you're listening to an AI generated contrast. Sorry, AI generated podcast of a philosophical debate. Debate between Gary Vee and Karl Marx. There's. There's a way that we have to look at this. The fact is I used to blame the format itself instead of blaming the trend within the format because I no longer believe it's the format. Because I'm going to embrace short form in the sense that what if I literally use short form and I proved my ability to be concise and speak in sound bites, but sound bites that people value. And then people were introduced to me in that way and, and said, here's somebody who's not selling sacral. Here's like. I did not think of online business in that way. I did not think of that when it came to marketing and selling T shirts. Oh my God. I should do that. Or I could go print on demand with that. Oh my God. I did not know the utility of those Feb5 websites. Let me watch this thing again. I need to watch this thing again and write down those FEB websites because those will add to my productivity and I can make money if I use those tools properly. Oh my God. God, he just gave me the perfect chat GPT prompt that's going to make my productivity and my life better. I had no idea I could use chat GPT to build an Alison how matrix and prioritize my life by what's urgent, what's important, and what's urgent but not important. And what's important but not urgent. Oh my God. Never have I known I needed something until I experienced it. If I can deliver so much value in one to three minutes, which I'm capable of. But do people get to see that from me? No, because they see me ramble for three hours. But if I could do that that one, I'm creating real value, I'm impacting their life. And a positive, I might be the only thing in their short form feed that day that's actually vegetables and vitamins to offset all the sugar. So one, I've done, I've done God's work at that point. And then number two, if I am that and I condition that I'm more human than everyone else that's extracting value from them, if I'm giving, if I'm the only experience out of 20 shorts that gave value instead of extracted it and gave more value that I extracted, if they encounter me enough times, there is something in human pattern recognition that will recognize that and see me as value giving versus value extracting. Then they're in my ecosystem and then they want to watch long form for me, or they want to do a one on one coaching call for me, or they want to know more about me. And then when they look me up because I've curated my personal brand and my reputation, they go, who is Roberto Blake? And they either ask an AI Chat, chatbot or Axe, you know, Grok or chatgpt or Claude or whatever who Roberto Blake is, they go into Google and they go, who Roberto Blake is? And then my Google Knowledge panel pops up with my thing, it says American YouTuber and all those things. I've curated my personal brand to a point to where they'll realize he has an author, he has a book, I can read his book or I can listen to his book on audible, or I could watch his YouTube channel, I could listen. Oh, wow. I like his long form, I like his lectures. I put it on in the background. I do this, I do that. Oh, okay. And then they're in my ecosystem system, but they have to have an experience where I create value for them. And if I don't make short form, if I don't make YouTube shorts, if I don't make Instagram reels, I'm invisible to them. I draw the line at TikTok until America owns it. The see, my point is I change my mindset that if the problem is that there's brain rot in that ecosystem, don't I owe it to people to inject some vitamins and some veggies in a place where only sugar exists? What if I can make short form healthy again?

Dusty (43:29)

Yeah, I think that what you know, exactly what I was going to kind of conclude with, with my point is that I've learned exactly what you just said is that I know that this why I'm in the process Right now, hiring a vertical video editor for this podcast because I know the benefits, the ones that I've uploaded myself, which as you said, I could create very high quality shorts and edit them and I enjoy it. But I do have two kids. I have other, I have other entities. I'm married. I'm. I'm very heavily involved in other stuff outside of my business. And so with that being the case, I want to bring in someone who can sol. Solely work on the vertical video for my business for this podcast. And maybe they do see one of those shorts and they've never listened to the podcast and then they do, and then they hire me to be their coach. Then you're kind of seeing where the long tail of this influential thing, of this vertical video, which I might think is just snacking, can turn into, like you said with a great analogy, the vegetables or the vitamins that turn them into a fan of mine, that then get them into the monetary side of my business where I can monetize that viewer or that listen. So I completely agree with you and I just want to say that I believe this conversation is important. I believe there could be a three hour long thing where we really dive into every aspect. We don't have the time for that right now because I do have a question I want to ask you.

Roberto Blake (44:47)

I got 10 more for you.

Dusty (44:49)

I do have a question that's very important that I wanted to get to today.

Roberto Blake (44:52)

Okay.

Dusty (44:53)

How is and how do you foresee AI impacting? And we talked about this last time. But I really want to ask you a condensed question of what is AI going to do to YouTube? Not ne. I mean, yes. What is it going to do creator wise? I mean, I already know how it's impacting my business. I mean, every day I was listening to Mac Break Weekly and Alex Lindsay on that podcast was talking about there's not an hour that goes by in his day that he's not using some form of AI. He's not against it, but he's for regulation, he's for all these things. You being as, as kind of the person. Person who's oftentimes I've seen you ahead of other YouTube educators, kind of ahead of the game as far as certain topics. What would you say right now, people listening to this, you know, 20, 30,000 listeners, what would you say to those people about AI and how it's going to impact the creator economy?

Roberto Blake (45:45)

You need to be thoughtful about what your own ethics around AI are, but they're not a reason to abstain from it or Protest it outright, because you should be working toward countering whatever you fear. And the thing is, you should do that from the place of embracing this thing, understanding it, Become very, very educated about it. See the other side and see where people create value, steer people in a way of using it ethically. So I think all the people that, for example, have real and legitimate fears, concerns and things about AI and want regulation number one, understand that in general, regulation favors corporate sponsorship and corporatism and cronyism there and political optics, very little of it trickles down to favoring the little guy. And we have to figure out how to carve out our vers of how we use it to protect ourselves as the little guy. And so I think that that's very important, to just acknowledge that reality and not be some political idealist, because I think you need to be a realist and an optimist. I'm not saying be cynical, I'm not saying be bitter, saying be realistic and optimistic and say, people are going to use this. Let me make sure they're using it ethically and responsibly and that they can get the results that they want by using it ethically and responsibly. So I think it's for the people to say, hey, we've unleashed this power upon the world. Let it not become a terror. And I won't rely on the powers that be to take on that responsibility. It needs to be done at a cultural level. Because regardless of what they do in Washington, the truth is, and you can see this all around the country, all around the world is the truth is whatever becomes culturally normal or acceptable is the reality, not what they dictate dictated in Washington. They will fall. Even the people in Washington will follow what enough of the masses advocate for and culturally normalize. They're not really leaders. In many cases, they're followers. They will follow the popular opinion or the money or both. And if you just understand that and accept that, you realize you have to become educated about AI and you have to educate people to use AI in a way that is responsible, ethical, and appropriate. Appropriate. Now, the other thing is for creators and where I see it, with the platform and content creation, YouTube is the platforms understand this and they're making standards to embrace AI and they're using it to make all of our lives better. The fact that you can reach an audience, no longer have a language barrier to them, is great for creators and they'll get more audience, more views, more of a community. It'll make the world smaller. Apple just decided that within two years, you're going to have real time AI audio translation in the AirPods in addition to all the accessibility things they just did with AI to make AirPods essentially affordable hearing aids for people, for the hearing impaired. That's a tremendous benefit for humanity. And now we're gonna have Star Trek like technology where we're all gonna have real time translation in our ears within the next two years. It's gonna suck that first two years, but it's gonna grade in five or 10. It's gonna revolutionize humanity and make the world smaller and make us all be able to understand each other better. And that's. There's nothing but good that comes from that for the most part. And so we need to accept that those things are reality. One of the things we're going to see is imagine the world. Is any YouTuber going to complain when YouTube gives them an option? I'm not saying YouTube is absolutely doing this hint, but okay. Is anyone going to complain when YouTube decides that when you upload a video it'll have an option where, hey, you know what, your audio is not perfect. You can toggle this button on and we will AI enhance your audio for you and you'll get studio quality audio and It'll be at $0 cost to you. Is anyone going to complain when YouTube embraces AI and does that? No, no, not a one. I don't think people are complaining that, oh my God, please YouTube don't translate my audio, my transcription, my titles to languages where people can enjoy my content all over the world. Oh please don't do that for me. So I don't think people are going to complain about these things in the majority. I think it's going to be edge cases and some of those edge cases are valid with protecting intellectual property. You recently saw Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey advocating for the end of copyright and ip. I'm like, oh gee, I wonder why they would do that. It's not for your benefit. The thing about it is I do want those things protected. I think that we could look at things. I know that blockchain is a dirty word to some people, but you know what? In a world where anyone can steal your stuff with AI, would it be nice if everything you make has its own DNA? It has its own Social Security number, it has its own chain of custody that can be publicly validated as a point of origin and say, no, this is attributable to you. And then if it's monetized in any way, shouldn't you get A cut. That's what blockchain could look like in the future is chain of custody. And open ownership for anyone who creates intellectual property is that has its own DNA without us having to file it with the government. It's just the technology layer itself. You know, we used to do that with metadata, but metadata can be manipulated. But if it's built into the thing at a DNA level of the thing that's created and it's harder or impossible to manipulate and it ends up in the public register, the public register could serve of a way of having having the equivalent of copyright protections in terms of chain of custody, proof of ownership, proof of origin, without us involving governments at all. It would just be a way to say I can prove this and if I have to go to court, I have proof. Because the filing of a copyright or a trademark is just a way for the government to say we can verify a claim. But if the technology allows you to verify a claim, it's called digital forensics. It is evidence in and of itself. It's tangible evidence. So. But the thing is we can then advocate for ourselves and we don't need the third party of the government if we do that. Now this is a great visionary thing for me. But the thing is it's an actual solution that could exist to the problem just using material science we already have and using systems and frameworks. It's just a matter of adoption. But it's like we adopt norms with technology all the time. We say photoshopping something now, we say googling something now. There was no such thing as doing that 25 years ago. So those were not normalized. Regular people had no idea what those things were 25 years ago. Only us nerds on the Internet. So when you look at the AI and the direction it's going, a lot of people are concerned that you're going to see Nothing But AI Slop on YouTube. The AI slop argument is you'll see it soon and now. But that's like while the technology is very, very bad, this is the worst.

Dusty (52:05)

It'S ever going to be. We talked about this last time you were on, right?

Roberto Blake (52:07)

This is the worst it's ever going to be. So here's the thing. Original human content on YouTube in 2005 through 2010 was God awful. The AI slop is better than OG YouTube in many cases. The exceptions are, you know what regular people, most people are not Freddie Wong, they're not Harley with epic meal time. Even the early content from John and Hank Green, the Vlog brothers, was Done in terrible quality. PewDiePie's first videos were done in terrible quality. Even Mr. Beast first videos were done in terrible qual quality. The majority of content on YouTube, even from the biggest YouTubers today, their first 100 videos, as we say, their first 100 crappy videos were truly crappy. And the thing is, average AI slop is a more enjoyable experience than most of the original content of the first 100 uploads of the biggest OG YouTubers, if we're being perfectly honest, and this is the worst the technology will ever be. So in terms of a consumer product, in terms of what consumers will tolerate, we as artists might be affected, offended. But the truth is consumers get to decide what their preferences and what their things are and what their quality standards are. And the thing is, the AI isn't doing bad quality audio right now. The voices are becoming less monotone every day. And regular human YouTubers who start out and aren't confident start out with monotone and bad voice and bad audio all the time. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, especially us, right? The. So the thing thing is the AI can improve in five years more than most humans will ever self improve in five years. And that's what's scary to me. That's what's scary to me. So what I believe though is proof of human will become a priority for a lot of people. Maybe not everybody, but there will be people who value proof of human. I think it's fine with the AI stuff when it goes to the entertainment space, because again, you're just choosing sugary snacks built by machines instead of sugary snacks cooked by humans and everything like that. And you could say, well, the difference is, well, that was done with love. Okay, great. So the shot of diabetes straight into your veins was done with love. Okay, cool. Like, so you have that, I think, for thought leaders and educators. We will use AI not as a replacement or as a shortcut. We will use it to enhance ourselves and become cyborgs. And we will just become. Just become cyborgs out here. We'll just become super soldiers. We'll just use it to become super soldiers. We'll use it for efficiency. We'll use it to shrink teams and scale out outputs. We'll use it to refine processes and give a better product to our people while remaining human by getting rid of all the things that annoy us. Our humanity will be enhanced because now we're focused in our zone of genius. That's how we will use AI. There will be artists and entertainers who also follow suit with this. But the majority of them are super, super young people. So to be honest, they'll just use shortcuts. But the market will decide whether it values that or not.

Dusty (55:00)

I think my follow up there really is just. If you're a creator listening to this, lean in, don't lean out, don't, don't run away from this thing. Don't be afraid of it. I understand that sometimes the technical jargon may feel like it's a big hurdle to get over, but it's really not. Once you kind of start diving and learning and doing all these things. I know for myself, I was scared of it a couple of years ago, but now I'm loving it because like you said, it's kind of giving me some superpowers behind the scenes that are allowing me to really. It's not cutting corners corners, it's being more efficient. And I think that when you differentiate the two of yes, AI will allow some people to cut corners. That will be AI slop and it will be crap forever because that those people are just wanting cheats and shortcuts. Let me give you a heads up. They're. They've been wanting shortcuts way before AI These are lazy people. These are people who don't have a work at. They don't care about really what they're putting out there. But people like myself and Roberto and other people that you consume, they're going to utilize AI to only enhance what they're doing. And so I know I got to let you go. So I want to get to this last part here, which is the light lightning round. It's just some, some fun questions that I want you to give me. Kind of, you know, maybe one, one.

Roberto Blake (56:01)

Sentence answers to those would be perfect for YouTube shorts.

Dusty (56:04)

Yep, absolutely. You know, trying to think about it. What is one of your favorite YouTube channels to consume right now?

Roberto Blake (56:11)

One of my favorite YouTube channels to consume right now. I really like Cleo Abram a lot and I love that she's reawakened some of my intellectual curiosity for esoteric scientific things gets my brain going.

Dusty (56:27)

What is your current obsession outside of YouTube and work?

Roberto Blake (56:31)

Outside of YouTube and work. What is my current obsession? Cleaning, like organization cleaning, life optimization, also micro workouts. I've been doing these micro workouts where I've been doing weighted squats and I try to do 100 weighted squats a day when I can now and everything like that. I've become obsessed with that. I've become obsessed with my pull up bar in my closet. I've Just, just like I'm walking by, it's like, you know what, it's going to take me less than two minutes to get a micro workout in. Let me just go and do the pull up bar for as many pull ups as I can. Just real quick, just get it in. I walk into a room, I leave weights in the rooms that I spend the most time in. So it's like I walk by, I glance, I go, I'm not going to walk by those weights and not pick them up. It's like let's getting a like 90 second micro workout.

Dusty (57:09)

I've been ahead of the game. I've been doing that for, for a long while. My wife made has made fun of me. I had the little push up things that I have and I try to do 100 a day. I try to do the body squats. I've heard them called exercise snacks or micro workouts or whatever you want to call them.

Roberto Blake (57:21)

So it's m. That's why I call it.

Dusty (57:23)

That's really cool. If you weren't a YouTuber or online educator like you are right now, what would you do?

Roberto Blake (57:27)

Social media consultant most likely because that's what I was doing before I pivoted to content creators. I was a full time freelancer mostly in graphic design. All those things, doing branding, doing packaging, doing the print design for, you know when you go to trade shows and conferences and you see people and they have the backdrop or they have the table spread with their logo. I used to do that stuff for a living or the packaging for their products, book cover design, everything like that. So I used to do those things. It evolved into consulting. As my own social media grew, other people and small businesses worked with me and I managed their social media. So right now I would probably just be in the world of consulting or marketing or I'd be working for a company, maybe Kajabi or something like that. I even think sometimes of like if they would, if, if a company out there, if like a 9 figure, 10 figure company wanted to just have me on retail and I don't have to do like actual clock in hours or any kind, but I just need to be available to do some calls. I'd be open to doing a like 80 to $140,000 a year gig where I give up, you know, 10, 20 hours a week to do consulting for one company if they are willing to pay me 80 to $140,000 a Year to do that, to give up 10 to 20 hours a week flex time. But it's like it's just about consulting or doing meetings or solving some problems. I don't have to clock in regular hours. It's just me doing these micro calls with them or something like that over the course of a week and giving my thoughts or reviewing a product feature or meeting with some product managers. Like I would be willing to do that on top of everything else I do. I mean, the money is good, but also I like the idea of being involved in technology. So I would want to do that for either like an AI company or an education company. So if so, if I'm willing to do that consulting, like part time, flex time, I would just do it consulting either with multiple clients. Multiple clients where I do. I mean, similar to brand deals, right? I would just basically consult with brands, if not be a spokesperson for them and their presenter at events and be their wrangler, be their ringer, be their, their guy that goes at events, is charismatic and crushes it like I did at Nab show, right. With Opus Clip. I would just do things like that for companies and I would just say, yeah, I'll do all these things for you. You'll be category exclusive. And I would just get three or five companies to pay me 60 to $120,000 a year each. Three to five companies. And I would just want to make, you know, like 250 to $360,000 a year doing that, working with brands. And I would just do a combination of consulting, public speaking and some marketing services for them on the back end and that'd be that.

Dusty (60:13)

I love it. I love it. Well, guys, if you can't tell, Roberto and I could go on forever. It's why I like bringing him on every six months or so. You can find him over at awesome creator academy.com se roberto blake on YouTube or google to find all of his things that he has going on. I'm really excited about your new book. You, you again are one of the great thought leaders in this space and it's so fun to have you on. I get to have Nick Nimmin on multiple times a year as well. And so through these friendships that I've kind of garnered through the years, it's really valuable to my audience. And so, Roberto, your time is so much appreciated and we'll talk to you next time.

Roberto Blake (60:48)

All right, take care.

Dusty (60:49)

That's it for this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed that awesome convers with Roberto as much as I did. If you'd like to connect with me again, I offer one on one coaching. I would love to connect with you and help you along your journey. We have our membership group called the Creators Corner where you get exclusive access to the group of, you know, YouTube creators there, myself other past guests of the show, as well as an exclusive podcast episode that I release there each and every week called the Creator's Corner. It's about a six to ten minute monologue from myself about a topic that can hopefully help you move the needle in your business. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast as well as our email newsletter. Better if you're looking for behind the scenes looks of what it takes to run an online business, a podcast, a YouTube channel, check all those links down below and we'll talk to you next week.