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YouTube Creators Hub
How To Make $10K Per Month On YouTube As A Small Creator | Nate Woodbury
00:43:51
In this episode of the Creators Hub Podcast, host Dusty Porter discusses effective YouTube strategies with Nate Woodbury, CEO of Be the Hero Studios. They explore the importance of tailored strategies for ad revenue versus lead generation, using...
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- [00:00]
A
One strategy is better than another. It's just looking at what is my goal. If my goal is ad revenue or sponsorships, you actually don't want to focus on search because the suggested the browse algorithms can bring you a lot more views and will end up generating a lot more of that ad revenue.
- [00:18]
B
Welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. If you're looking to start, grow or monetize your YouTube channel, this is the show for you. I interview wonderful creators each and every week on Fridays, 6am release time. And you can either listen to it on your podcast player of choice or you can watch it here on YouTube if that is your preference. Couple of things, we have no advertisers for the show. We're just going to let you know what we provide to creators. Number one, I offer one on one private coaching links down below. I do channel reviews and audits. If you're not quite ready to hire a creator coach and invest that amount of money, you can get me to review your channel. And thirdly, we have a Mastermind group. I release exclusive podcast episodes on that feedback. Five bucks a month get you in. You get access to our creator's corner Mastermind call every month. And we're really beefing up the kind of offerings over there. So for five, ten bucks a month, you're really getting probably the best bang for your buck. And also we have a email newsletter called the Entrepreneur's Minute letting you know things that are interesting to me, what's going on behind the scenes of my business. And it's a great tool, Never spammy, released on Fridays. And then if you're looking for the things that are mentioned throughout the show from every guest I've ever had on, we have a running spreadsheet called the Entrepreneur's Toolbox. All of that will be linked in, mentioned down below. Now with that said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. I'm really excited today to be joined by Nate Woodberry. He's the CEO of Be the Hero Studios, which is a renowned producer of over 60 successful YouTube channels specializing in helping coaches and speakers transform their expertise into thriving platforms of thought leadership. With a proven tactical Strategy to dominate YouTube search, Nate has consistently delivered measurable results, turning subscribers into high quality leads, which is extremely important. Backed by a dedicated team of 35 experts, Nate offers a comprehensive done for you system, making YouTube lead generation seamless and predictable for his clients. Nate, how you doing today?
- [02:17]
A
Doing very well. Glad to be here.
- [02:19]
B
Yep, I'm glad to have you. So can you, I obviously a little bit of a recap there in, in your podcast bio, but can you just give the listeners and viewers a little bit more about you and what you do and the work you do with creators?
- [02:35]
A
Yeah. So I found this space, this kind of unique niche on YouTube. YouTube's got many different algorithms, whether you want your content to go viral or be found in search. And I found this space within YouTube search that works really well for experts. So if there's a business that has been created around your expertise, whether you're parenting coach or you're a health coach or you're a real estate consultant, any type of expertise, politicians, construction, people are searching for your expertise right now, whether they're searching on YouTube or going to Google or going to ChatGPT. And I found a way of, okay, let's, instead of making content that I want to create or that my clients want to create, let's find out what your target audience is hoping you'll create. And so it's a very search focused strategy that works really well of building a relationship first. And once, once you've helped them, you've answered their questions, you then take them the next step to have them become a lead in your business and continue to nurture them. So that's, that's a strategy I've, I stumbled across about 12 years ago and I've really polished and refined it since then.
- [03:49]
B
And your business is, you obviously have a YouTube channel of your own, you're actively making content. You've got over 64 or 5,000 subscribers over there with a great active community, plus a ton of followers over on LinkedIn, a great business built around this model. But as far as working with the creators, they. Can you explain the process of if someone were to reach out to you, what you do for them?
- [04:15]
A
Yeah. So the way that I've had the most success is holding people by the hand through all steps beyond me, just giving them advice. So we'll start with, I call it keyword research, but it's more like question research. Finding the, the questions our audience is asking. We prepare content around that we outline. We have them outline 20 episodes at a time. They'll either fly to Utah. This home I'm in right now is not actually my home that I live in. It's my filming house in Utah. And I have another house in Florida for filming. So depending on what's more convenient for my clients, they'll fly in for a full day. We'll film 20 episodes in a single day of this, it's not entertaining content, it's not viral content, but it's this educational how to content that's super valuable for those that are searching for it. And then we do all the editing, we do the thumbnails, we launch everything for them on YouTube. So it's a done for you service for these expert business owners.
- [05:12]
B
So you obviously know or have your fingers in a lot of the different areas of YouTube. So we're going to talk about those today and about what you've seen and what is working right now in 2025 and beyond. So let's start with kind of your expertise in search. That's something that doesn't get talked about as much because most people want to go on YouTube and grow a big Mr. B sized channel. But a lot of it really is search based. And if you can figure out how to get your content to show up months later, I call it evergreen content. It has legs, whatever you want to call it. What's working in search on YouTube right now and what do you think the future holds for SEO on YouTube?
- [05:49]
A
Yeah, so if you've heard the word long tail back in the days of website SEO, long tail would mean a keyword that's four words or five words long. Today I would say we want to go super long tail, like 8, 9, 10 words long. And that actually gives us some advantages. If we have dream clients that we want to work with. When we do keyword research and we find questions that have that many words in it, we actually know exactly who they are, what position they're in, and we can filter through all the questions that we otherwise might have thought. That's in my area of expertise, but you know a lot more about them. And while your videos might get a lower number of views, lower quantity, the people that do watch your videos are your dream clients. And so you can have a hundred views that generates $10,000 in revenue in your business. Compared to when you have a Mr. Beast type strategy, you have a million views and that's going to generate a lot of ad revenue. So that's the difference that I look at is it's not that one strategy is better than another. It's just looking at what is my goal. If my goal is ad revenue or sponsorships, you actually don't want to focus on search because the suggested the browse algorithms can bring you a lot more views and will end up generating a lot more of that ad revenue. But if you have a really specific audience that you want to curate for lead generation, search engine optimization is stronger than it's ever been now in the world of SEO. I was just at an SEO conference this summer and a lot of the traditional website search engine optimization companies are in panic mode because they see that Google might not be the king of the hill anymore. Chat GPT is really climbing up the ranks. But I actually see that the traditional SEO strategy that a lot of people are still clinging to, I saw it expire 10 years ago. I shut down my website SEO service back then and transitioned to this YouTube search focus because it's more of. And I've even seen that Google has changed from a website search engine to now it's a content search engine. So if you have a content search focused strategy, yeah, we're talking about YouTube and your videos show up at the top of YouTube search, but they also show up in Google and now our videos are showing up in ChatGPT. Even videos that we filmed a decade ago are being found in ChatGPT research. So it's a, it definitely is an evergreen strategy. So a long way of answering your question. But the more long tail you can get, you think it's counterproductive because the longer these questions are, the less the search volume is every month, but the higher likelihood you have of actually owning that space for years to come and having that video continually be a lead generator for you.
- [08:47]
B
So I've had recently a couple of realtors on the podcast. Both of them are basically using the exact strategy that you're referring to. When you're in a high value real estate market and you're a real estate agent and you only get 85 views on a video, but one of those 85 views is the client that's going to buy a 3 million dollar property on the beach or on a lake, it doesn't matter, right? It's all about what your goals are and what you're trying to accomplish. Now the majority of folks listening to this Nate are going to be on the other side where they're trying to grow a channel around entertainment. You're speaking to the choir. To me, my main channel is a technology tutorial channel. It's all about how to, it's all about search. And I create videos today that I hope perform for me for the next five, eight, 10 years. And I'm excited about the rise in AI because I'm seeing videos get picked up in chat GPT and anthropic and I'm seeing all these things listed below. Now where are the comparison, like where are the similarities in. If we're trying to grow a YouTube channel for search or for long tail and these big six to eight word phrases or questions, as you put it, and then just the general YouTube channel that we're trying to grow. Are there similarities there and what have you seen?
- [10:05]
A
Yeah, I think just the journey is very similar for both. I've got a lot of colleagues in the entertainment side and it's even channels that I just follow my, myself personally. The. There's a big learning curve, right? You've got to learn how to be yourself on camera and how to be a fun, compelling, entertaining self without putting on a show, without performing, acting or relying on a teleprompter or anything. So we all know who MrBeast is. So when you look at his channel back in the early days and see his personality is what he was like then and what he was like a few years later and what he's like in his videos today, you see a lot of growth. Or one of my favorites, Marques Brown, the mkbhd. You see what his tech reviews were like, you know, several years ago and compare them to today. He's been great for many years. He's interviewing people like Bill Gates or Barack Obama. He's built into an amazing authority and just respected leader. And it's the same journey I take. Business owners that have this expertise, they know how to really impact people in their world, in their sphere, whether it's health or real estate or politics. And then to really leverage the power of YouTube to take their expertise globally to where now people all around the globe are turning to them for help and expertise. Their business grows, their confidence grows. I love impact. I love really making a difference. And it's, it's amazing what opportunity there is for this on YouTube. On both sides, both different strategies, we don't have the gatekeepers, we don't have to wait for a producer to green light our show. But we do have to learn and go through the ups and downs, the trials of learning.
- [11:57]
B
What does help a creator get more confidence or comfortable on camera? Because I know I can listen back to the first 150 episodes of this podcast and I almost sound like a different human because it's the same thing. What you said about Marquez is you can watch some of his early videos and say, is that. Is that the same guy? Just some young kid in his bedroom? And so I think we all. It's like anything in life, you have growth and you begin to learn from your mistakes and your failures and the things that you begin to work on and you become more invested and you try to get better. And so with that being the case, how can people who are listening to this become more confident in theirselves, their voice and on camera, as a creator.
- [12:38]
A
The hardest part is hitting that record button. We think that we'll see somebody like Marques and he'll take us behind the scenes sometimes and show us what his studio looks like and what his lighting and cameras look like. Or we hear behind the scenes of what a Mr. Beast episode, all the hundreds of cameras and, you know, the servers that they need for all their data storage. And so we have this image in our mind, obviously simplified a bit, but we have this image of all right, for me to be confident on camera, I've got to have a great camera and I've got to have an amazing studio. And so we use that as an excuse. The reality is when you buy that stuff, you're still going to be just as nervous. You're still going to be. And we all carry around these amazing devices, Android or iPhone. The cameras are automatic. They do all the work for you. What people really want is the word authenticity has kind of been overused, but they don't want a script. Think about this. Let me think of my Harrison Ford. So he's a, he's a favorite actor of mine. He's a legend in the acting world. So let's say there was somebody that wanted to learn how to become a better actor and they went to YouTube and they're typing in their question of hopefully finding some acting tips. Imagine if they found a video of Harrison Ford, but not something that was Hollywood produced. Imagine it was on his iPhone. And I think he has a home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. So let's say he's in his home and he's just selfie mode on his camera and he's, yeah, I wanted to talk on such and such, how to improve your acting skills. And he's not scripted, he's. But you feel like, man, I've been invited into Harrison Ford's home here. He's giving me some. Yeah, I feel like he's talking one on one to me. You know, that's what people are really looking for in my world, where it's how to videos. We're just teaching, we're educating. It's. If you're on a zoom call and somebody asks you a question, how would you answer? We're actually really good at that. It's just something changes in our brain when we know it's being recorded. We have to feel like we have to perform. But there's in the world of vlogging or when you're out and about and among people and have to get used to filming when and there's other people around listening to you, it's scary for everybody. People that are comfortable doing it, they're still uncomfortable doing it. They've just done it so much. You've got to take the leap. Don't worry about the gear. Start with the phone, start in your bedroom and keep at it. You've just gotta be consistent over the long term. And then when you look back and you compare, even if it's just a few months down the road, you compare something you just recorded yesterday to something you recorded earlier and yeah, you'll see a difference.
- [15:24]
B
As far as branding and thumbnail design and imagery and things that, that are working on YouTube now, what do you recommend for your clients? Because a lot of people ask me, how should I do my thumbnails? Should I just do a big shocked face and this and that, like the normal things. But what would you recommend someone who works and has worked with so many creators as far as just setting up branding for a channel and specifically say thumbnails and things of that nature?
- [15:52]
A
Yeah, thumbnails. As they've become more and more important over the years, it's more and more creators are getting better and better at the thumbnails. And so it just means for ours to get noticed. We've got to improve. And the biggest struggle that I have with the high quantity of content that we create is finding somebody that's an amazing designer, but also an amazing marketer. And that's a, that's an unusual mix or a hard to find mix of somebody that understands both design and marketing. And we found ways through it, but we've still had ups and downs. The biggest breakthrough that we've had in the last year and a half is leveraging the help of AI. Now, we don't have AI design our thumbnails, but we certainly have them create ideas. Creativity burnout is a real thing. And when we're creating hundreds and hundreds of thumbnails every month, you can only have so much creativity in a day. And if you're just. You just put all your creativity into a couple other thumbnails and now you've got to be creative on another one. It's hard. And so if you, if you get really good ChatGPT's even gotten to a point where you can do it. I wouldn't have originally wasn't using that for graphics work and stuff, but so many AI tools out There if you give it the right prompt of kind of what it's about, what you're going for, what the goal is of the thumbnail and just use it for an idea. And you know, it's gonna be an AI generated image that you know is AI, but then it actually, I like that idea. And so you can show that emotion and take a photo of yourself. And then we go into Photoshop and tweak it to use a lot of the ideas from that. It's been a. It's been a big help, I've noticed for me, on filming day, again, in my world, we filmed 20 episodes in a filming day. So doing 20 different thumbnails, having this input with this help of creativity, it makes it less draining throughout the day. And then as we've done that for my clients and as I've just seen their channels in the thumbnails, I'm like, yeah, these thumbnails are better. Now in terms of performance, you know, the stat that we're looking at is click through rate, and you're going to have some that perform better than others, some that perform worse. Good news is if you have a low, a below average, you can just put up a new one. We can overcomplicate it and think. Mr. Beast is split testing. He's uploading three different thumbnails and now playing with different titles and stuff. And those are awesome tools. If you have the bandwidth to be able to create multiple thumbnails, go for it, because you can see which ones perform better. But otherwise it's better just to get started other than being overwhelmed. So take your best guess. If you can leverage AI to take some of the pressure off and give you some creative ideas, put that on YouTube and just see did it perform well. You can change your thumbnail later and it's not going to hurt you if it's an underperforming thumbnail. So that's what I'd recommend.
- [18:57]
B
Are there common attributes that you've seen with successful creators? Like when you look at the roster that you've worked with and you are friends and pretty close with Derral Eves, who is one of the top YouTube experts out there. You guys live close to each other and you've probably had experience in conversation with him. Are there commonalities between the people that succeed on YouTube and those who don't?
- [19:22]
A
The thing that I would say is real emotion, not instead of over the top emotion. So if you think I want to look excited in this one, we can, like, open our mouth as big as possible. And raise and. Or we can just like genuinely look excited. Just the most subtle changes in our muscles and our face, we understand that emotion. So if you're wanting to look upset or disappointed or discouraged or encouraged, just try and as you're taking the photo or the. We usually do video clips and we'll take, then we'll scan it for the right frame. But try and actually feel that real emotion and your face will automatically do it. And so if you're gonna put that much energy into your face, you've gotta be close enough to the camera so the camera can see the whites of your eyes. We've, we've heard that before. That's the coaching I give to my clients is have it be a more subtle but genuine emotion. Cause if people can look at you and not think, oh, that's a pose for a thumbnail versus oh, that looks like a real emotion, I wonder what's making em feel that. That's what I'd recommend.
- [20:31]
B
Just more authenticity than in just the general projection of the creator when they're in their video. Is that kind of what you're getting at?
- [20:41]
A
Even Mr. Beast says he stopped doing the open mouthing. He used to do that all the time. Yeah, you just have to open your mouth real big. But now he'll put real fear and Mr. Using his as an example because his videos are like over the top videos. So he can't be over the top in his thumbnails on mine. If it's like, you know, how do you run for mayor in a city election? I've got a client who's a politician coach and he will have some politician background in there and he'll show some emotion. I don't know, I'm just trying to make it up on the spot, but just putting in the real emotion. If we were to go over the top and put a what we're used to of a Mr. Beast thumbnail on his video, that might not work as well, but something that's genuine and real, but would create. You still want to create curiosity. You don't want to give away the answer in the video, but create curiosity so that they want to know what the answer is.
- [21:33]
B
How do you teach hooks and storytelling and just the overall structure of a video? Because I believe it matters. It matters a lot. And it matters in different ways in terms of if you're doing short form content or long form content, not just the duration, but the way that you tell the story, the way that the video ebbs and flows. How do you teach that? And what have you seen to be successful?
- [21:57]
A
Yeah, it's become so important. And I'll give you an example of a client that I won't tell you her name, but her content was great. And her average length of a video is around 12 minutes, educational content. And her videos had a really quick drop off, a really low average view duration. And we were exploring why that is. Because I'd watch a video and you'd get say, eight, nine minutes in. You're like, like, man, this is good content. Yeah. Why aren't. But people aren't even getting to the good stuff. And so the coaching that I gave is we've really got to sell what's in the video. Right. You don't. Again, you don't give away the secrets at the beginning. You don't need to share your answers. If you think about a book, you're going to have a table of contents in the beginning and it just gives you a little preview of what's coming. And then if you hint at it first in the video, we're going to be talking about this and then we're going to be doing this. And I'm going to share with you a story of such and such. So that's the first part of. Is just letting people know because they clicked on it, right by this point, you've encouraged them to click on it with your title and thumbnail. So now you got to let them know they're in the right place. They clicked on this video for the right reason. Here's what's going to be covered. Here's what you're going to see, here's what you're going to learn. And if you can say it in a way that really creates curiosity. Yeah. I've learned several secrets of how to accomplish this result. So I'm going to teach you my three favorite secrets. And there's also a story where I learned how this might backfire. I'm going to share with you a mistake that I made. Right. So I didn't even share any content there. But when you know what the subject of the video is, then you know that you're going to come away with some gems that you're going to learn what not to do. Another phrase that I like to wrap up my beginning hooks is by the end of this video, you will. It's just a phrase that kind of wraps the whole thing up. Like, why is it worth sticking around for 10 minutes or 12 minutes, whatever the length of the episode is, which entertaining content's been trending much longer than that. But in the educational world, that's still where I recommend 10 or 12 minutes. Yeah, just really create that curiosity. And if you look at your data and YouTube analytics afterwards and you start to see, yeah, people are starting to leave after four or five minutes, you can actually practice bringing up a hook again. It's like, all right, coming up in this video, I'm going to be answering this and this, right? So you just keep continuing with your content. As I've explained that to different people. Some people like that approach of just, it's a table of contents, create curiosity. But one gentleman, he's a sales guy, really good at sales. And so for him, I said, you've just got to sell them on why they should watch this video. And he's, oh, I can do that. And just. So whatever way you need to look at it, just like the thumbnail and the title are selling them on, clicking the video and giving it a try. You still gotta work hard at the beginning to create that curiosity and that desire to watch all the way to the end and keep that desire. Like for me, in my world, since we're using these videos for lead gen, if people stick all the way to the end, that's when we're going to have our main call to action and give them a free gift or a lead magnet so that they'll go to our website and become a lead. And so the more people we can have get to the end, that's the more successful our videos are.
- [25:25]
B
I interrupt this conversation just for the next 30 seconds to tell you about our newest offering, which is our YouTube channel. Reviews and YouTube audits. Six to eight minute recorded screencast from me personally, where I take a look at your channel at a glance and tell you what I think you could be doing better. So if you're looking for another set of eyes on your channel, doesn't matter where you are along the journey, I believe it's one of the best things that you can do. So check that out if you haven't already. Now back to the conversation. What data metrics are you most concerned with when you're working with your clients, when they're looking in the YouTube Studio app, and at what time frame, what duration? Like obviously, I tell my clients I have some people hire me to coach them and They've been on YouTube for a month and a half and it's hard to tell anything when you're that early on. Having some history in your data is extremely important. So what metrics are you most concerned with as a coach, as Someone who works with creators.
- [26:19]
A
Yeah, it's tracking metrics that really matter because my clients aren't focused on the views or even the subscribers. We're more concerned about email subscribers. When you first open up the dashboard and that your video is performing number one out of 10 and you get the fireworks, we all feel good about that, but that's not our goal. If our video gets a lot of views but doesn't generate leads, why would we get excited about the fireworks? So it's a funny game that we have to recognize. So very quickly we go to analytics, go to the advanced tab and then go to traffic source and we look what ratio or what percentage of our views are coming from. Suggested browse, external and search. Obviously we focus a lot on search and we'll look at external because that's where it will show you if you're getting views from Google or ChatGPT and track it over time. So once you drill down and you find that data, you can also click on comparison and compare month to the previous month. It's called period over period. Kind of advanced there. But if you go to analytics, advanced mode, traffic source report and then do a comparison, I go to that report all the time. And that what that tells me and what that tells my clients is the effort we're putting into this working. If we had 300 views from search in the previous month. Right. That's a low number. What is it the next month? Did it grow up to 450? And if you look at that growth, it's like that's a 50% increase. I'm just making up numbers here. Eventually it gets up into the tens of thousands which turns into millions of dollars of revenue for business. That's the main thing that we focus on.
- [28:07]
B
Awesome, I love that. Let's talk about monetization for a few minutes. That's what everyone, that's what the big ticket item is. People are always asking me, I just want to get in the partner program. Little do they know the first month they're going to make like a penny or a dime or something of that nature. But you know what, I want to encourage people and I'm so thankful that YouTube offers that program. But you provide a service where you're reaching a demographic of creators that they don't really care if they're in the partner program. Right. Because they can be selling a high ticket item for a hundred view video and if three people buy it, they make enough in a month to be just fine. So what are your monetization staples like what are you knowing that so large of a breadth of creator listens to this show? What would be your overall kind of, I guess you would say, tier list of what are your monetization tips of creators and what should they be focusing on to be able to eventually or very soon make money from their content?
- [29:05]
A
Yeah. So I'll give you two different examples that go in opposite directions. So one, I can share the names of these channels publicly. Stan the annuity man, if you look at his channel, I think it's around 15,000 subscribers. This channel. For such a small channel, Stan is the number one annuity agent in America by four times. And let's just say it's a multiple eight figure revenue generating channel. Wow. He's done a lot of different things from podcasts to ads to interviews to article publication. It's YouTube that is, that has made this revenue happen. And so he's an example of when he finally qualified for the partner program. We said sure, but it's just, it's less than a hundred bucks a month. So it's not really something that we focused on. But it's an extremely. It's one of the, the, the top three revenue generating channels that I produce. Another one that I'll tell you about is Noelle Randall. She's almost to a million subscribers and I haven't checked for a week or two, so maybe she's at a million now. She, she teaches. She started out about five years ago. We started filming content exclus exclusively on Airbnb real estate or vacation rentals. And she started talking about turo rentals and other entrepreneurial topics. In her case, there were a lot more advertisers that were interested in her content. And so she did have videos that took off and went viral and generated a lot of ad revenue at the same time. Generated business revenues. I think our best month, ad revenue wise, I think she made $63,000 from ads. So that was, you know, a check that was a deposit that was given to her from YouTube just for that month. But her business revenue that month was a couple million, at least 2 million. And so it's just a, when we look at monetization, I think about it differently. Cause I'm like we're just talking about revenue. But most people think that only applies to the ad revenue. Yeah. Does that help?
- [31:09]
B
It does. There's so many avenues on YouTube to make money. Physical merchandise, digital products, coaching and consulting, ad revenue lead gen to your business, whatever it may be. I'm working with a larger financial client right now. And we talk all the time about listening. Listen. It's just going to take a few. We just need a few. Whether it's from the podcast or from a YouTube video, we just need a few. And can you stress on the importance of the quality of the freebie? And by the freebie, in this case, it's the YouTube video. Right. We just need to continually get better with everything we produce, because so many people get so discouraged, and maybe this is something you can speak on, Nate. People get so discouraged, and they upload a video and it gets 60 views and then just dies off. What is important that they know to continue? Seth Godin, in his book, calls it the dip. Right. How do we encourage folks to. A lot of people I see quit right before they're about to get and find the success. So what are your thoughts on that?
- [32:03]
A
Yeah, the biggest challenge that I see is when people are working extremely hard but not seeing results. All they need is a little bit of clarity on their strategy. So I recently had a conversation with a gentleman who, in order, he thought, man, if we just up the game on quantity, then we should be successful. So I don't know the number, but they're launching five to ten episodes every day. It's not following the strategy I teach. It's more of a podcast interview. So he's got a big team where they're running ads, bringing in guests for their show, a specific type of audience for their show, and they're interviewing them. It's a great value add. And so as I was talking to him about, because he's saying, how can I optimize my videos? Or is there anything we can do with your strategy, Nate, to get more views on these videos? And as I was talking to him about what's the end result? Why are you doing this? Who are these people that you're pulling into your show through ads? And he runs a mastermind, and he says, yeah, a lot of these people, we just build a relationship through this podcast. And a lot of them want to know more about the Mastermind. And so we have conversations about that. And a lot of them will join the Mastermind. And I'm like, okay, so you've got a marketing campaign through these ads, then you're using your podcast to nurture them. And this is not advice that I ever give to any of my clients, but to him, I said, if you're wanting to nurture them and provide them value, you could probably pay for some ad traffic to bring in people who would be interested in their topic. Whatever you're interviewing them about and just give that video a boost to provide them more value. I wouldn't. That's not advice that I would take myself because I'm. It's a whole different approach. I'm trying to leverage YouTube for marketing. So it's just a matter of really having clarity on am I marketing, Am I nurturing? I would say the Mr. Beast channel is a nurturing channel. He wants to grow subscribers, and every episode he puts out, he's hoping that all of his subscribers come back and watch and watch the next one and watch the next one. And so while he's gotten really good at going viral, that's how he kind of markets and grows his subscriber base. Once we're a subscriber, he no longer has to market to us. He's nurturing us. And so it's primarily a nurturing strategy. So getting clear on am I marketing? Am I nurturing? If you're nurturing, follow the people that are teaching you how to go viral and how to nurture. But if you're a business and you're wanting to market and generate leads, then understand that it is a different approach. And you mentioned giving away a gift at the end of the video. So because I focus on search, if people are asking a question about parenting, how to get your kids to listen without yelling, you want things to be linear so we know what they're searching for. So if we make a video answering that exact question, we're going to teach them, here's how you do it. How you can get your kids to listen without yelling. Then at the end of the video, I'll just mention a real one. My client, Nicholeen Peck, she has this calm parenting toolkit. So she teaches them for 10 or 12 minutes and then she says, I've got a resource I put together. It's going to help you continue to implement what we've talked about here. It's the calm parenting toolkit. Here's where you get it. And then the service that she offers or the other courses and things that she offers after that, they're all linear, they all make sense. And so you want to have that type of clarity with whatever you're doing. What is that end goal? And have clarity on am I marketing or nurturing? And how does this all piece together?
- [35:47]
B
I've never heard it put that way, but that makes so much sense about the marketing or nurturing. And as a community based channel, a channel trying to grow on entertainment or going viral, the nurturing just makes sense. That word is a perfect explanation of what that is. You're trying to curate this community, but if you're trying to educate and teach and lead gen to, to a product or a service, you are your marketing and so that's really powerful. As far as the future of YouTube, you've mentioned artificial intelligence. People hate hearing about AI right now on podcasts. It's the biggest thing going. But I'm all in think that AI is going to be a good thing if we can monitor it and maintain it and use it as a, a kind of a, a, a helpmate as opposed to a replacement. Right. Like AI can really help you and can really shave time off of your workflow. But if you're utilizing it to produce slop or AI slop or whatever you want to call it, I think that's probably your error on the side of a little too much. So what do you think is next for this platform, for YouTube and for creators?
- [36:49]
A
Yeah. When you started mentioning this subject, you said the thoughts are. In my mind. A lot of people are afraid that AI is going to replace us and. But if we just realize it's just here to help us do a better job. So if I, as I look to the future in the short term, I don't see that replacing thing happening. I don't.
- [37:10]
B
We're.
- [37:12]
A
I'm very clear on what I like to watch and whenever I click on something and I realize this is AI generated, I'm gone. It's on one hand I love the power of AI and how it can assist me and I can guide it and whatnot. But yeah, no one wants AI generated content, especially on YouTube and video isn't there yet. So it's going to be some time. So in the short term there's nothing to fear. I think it's just the people who know how to use AI properly as a tool, not as a replacement. They're the ones that are going to be in the forefront, you know, because we can do so much more, we can be so much more efficient with great tools like this if we use it as a tool. And so I do see people being left behind that aren't willing to dive in, but dive in. It's fine to dive in cautiously and experiment and test, but don't, don't try and just don't take. You have to be a skeptic. Like when my favorite tool is ChatGPT. So when I'll ask ChatGPT, how do I do this? It'll give me a confident answer. But a lot of times that Answer isn't right. I've just learned that, oh, I try it and it doesn't work. I'm like, like, that didn't work. Oh, oh, you meant to do this. Okay, so this is how you should do it then. So you've got to. But it's a great tool. It can be a great help. What's something else for the future? If you look at every platform out there, From Facebook to LinkedIn to Instagram to podcasts. Why do I love YouTube so much? It's because the content is indexed. I'm wanting to use it as a marketing vehicle. I can't do what I can on YouTube. I can't do it on LinkedIn or Facebook. If I make an amazing article or video, it's an amazing, valuable whatever. If I post it to Facebook, you wouldn't be able to go to Facebook and search for it by topic. You could not find it. You would have to search for it by my name. Same Thing on LinkedIn. Podcasts are not indexed. But if we make a valuable piece of content that people are searching for and we put that content on YouTube, it's indexed. We have an automatic transcription. And so it's indexed for every word that we say. And then that index is read by Google, it's read by ChatGPT. So one thing that I'm also excited about the future. I'm a novice to Reddit, but I'm interested in it because Reddit is indexed. ChatGPT is referencing Reddit a lot. So interested to see where that goes, because Reddit's not something I've really paid much attention to, but it's now like one of the top 10 largest trafficked websites in the world. So it's like, okay, so, yeah, that's what I'm excited about for the future is just what does search look like? I hear rumor of meta wanting to get into search. I don't know if that's even possible.
- [40:06]
B
But at this point, yeah, I think Reddit's funny because whenever I search for anything, I can't remember what it it was. But we're having triplets here in a few months, my wife and I. And so I was searching for something, trying to get advice on, I think, what to do with the stroller situation, with having three. And the first thing that came up was like three or four Reddit posts. And I think that's the beauty of YouTube is because it's indexed. It's a powerful thing that anybody at any point in time. I made this example when I was working with a client that is a musician. And he was like, what do you mean by evergreen content? And I tried to put it in his terms. I said, listen, you play guitar, right? Let's say you do a series of 50 videos explaining and showing people how to play basic simple chords. Every video is one chord. You do a three to five minute video on a G chord, on the finger placement, on where it is on the fret of how to strum it and which strings to strum. And so you put that out there, you see that video will never become irrelevant because people will always want to know how to play a G chord and how to play an instrument, the guitar. And so it's indexed. And I think that's one of the things that I dislike about like TikTok. Now TikTok has search and I haven't always been the biggest fan of vertical video. I'm getting a little, I don't know, Nate, I don't know what your opinion is on vertical video, but for me I had to come around to it. But I do think that the power of YouTube is the search part of it. And so I think to hear you say that is is very important. Last question for you. If you could only give one piece of advice to all creators, all YouTubers, not just the education side, not just the viral side, not the marketing, not the nurturing, all of them together. It was one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be?
- [41:48]
A
I'm a student by observation, so the one piece of advice would be if you can have clarity on what you want to create, let's say it's you want to become a tech reviewer, then you've got to find a tech reviewer. We'll just say mkbhd, Marques Brownlee and, you know, study. How did he become the tech reviewer that he is today? Or if you want to become a game show exciting type channel or Last man standing, Mr. B style channel, you can't take advice so often. And I can throw Gary Vee under the bus. So Gary Vaynerchuk, like, he gives advice about spamming the planet, those are my words. He gives advice about, like putting content everywhere. But that's not what he did in the beginning. So if anyone wanted to be as successful as Gary Vaynerchuk is, they'd have to go back to his roots. How did he start? What did he do in the beginning? And that's really what beginners should be doing. Just really get clear on what you want. Do you really want to become like Mr. Beast or like this travel vlogger. Or like this musician or like this educator. Get clear on what that end goal is and then study that exact path and put blinders on for the advice you're gonna get from people who didn't achieve that exact goal.
- [43:13]
B
That's really good, Nate. You've been an awesome guest. I really appreciate you spending time with me today. All of Nate's links will be down below his website, YouTube channel, all his socials and everything. Whether you're watching this on YouTube or you're listening to this on your favorite podcast, you'll see all of that down below. But, Nate, thank you again for joining me today.
- [43:31]
A
You're very welcome.
- [43:31]
B
Don't forget to check out all of our offerings. Our creator coaching program, our creator mastermind group, as well as our YouTube channel reviews. Don't forget to check out our email newsletter and all the links that might be mentioned in the show from any of our guests are on our running spreadsheet called the Entrepreneurs Toolbox. Everything linked down below in the show notes. We'll talk to you guys next week.