B (2:33)

Yeah, I watched your most recent video, A Brush with Death, the Grizzly hunt film. It was so intriguing and I can see why it's performed so well. You know, you mentioned having kind of like a midlife. You call it an adjustment. I am 39, so I'm one year away and so I'm. I think I've already had mine. I think I've got some. My wife would say that I've already had mine. For me, the way I respond is start new things, like new businesses and new, you know, that's just me. I've been that way since I was younger. It's like, how can I get my hands in different things? How can I start new podcasts? I love the entrepreneurial side of YouTube is why I love having these conversations. When you first started and you started uploading your adventures, was it an instant or an immediate satisfaction? Did it satiate what you wanted as far as. Give you something with as far as direction?

A (3:24)

I would say yes and no. The yes part of this is I satisfied the adventure part of me that I wanted to go on remote adventures and go on these hunting expeditions. I got to be able to do that. But as far as scratching that. I'm sorry, scratching that itch of entertaining lots of people. No, I struggled a lot on creating content and creating a YouTube channel and man, so many different types of struggles, but I struggled a lot in that, especially in the beginning.

B (3:58)

What were maybe one or two things that you had the most difficult time with as far as transitioning, going from not being a content creator, never doing anything like this, and then trying to run a YouTube channel. What were the things that you were running into that you had the hardest time with?

A (4:13)

There's the technical part of it, of how to film these adventures because it's not like I could just hire a high end professional videographer and spend tens of thousands of dollars to have someone come follow me around and edit the way it needed to be edited. So I did a lot of this stuff myself, which was the self filming out in the field, which is very difficult and which is a huge learning curve there. And then trying to figure out how to edit this to make it entertaining for someone and, and then learning the platform of YouTube and the. All the psychological plays that come, I mean, that's actually down the road for the first year or two. It was just the technical part of like, how do I even accomplish any kind of film and any kind of editing and upload, that's like, that was huge learning curve was the technical part. But then it's the psychological part too. Of now I'm trying to put myself out there for people to see. And there's a fear of judgment, right? Like, okay, I'm putting out videos and if someone, if no one likes it and no one watches it, oh, man, that's the worst thing in the world, right? Like, but after you do it for a few years, you realize if no one watches my video, no one sees my video. Like, you don't have to worry about looking like an idiot, you know, on a video or a piece of content,

B (5:27)

you know, so, yeah, yeah, the technical side of it is interesting because you were probably presented with a lot of elements that a lot of creators are not going, you know, to these remote places, trying to figure out how to get the gear there, how to capture it in the most high quality way to make the film the best it can be whenever you're done editing and you upload the video. And so that part of it is just kind of learning as you go, and you kind of learn what works for you and what doesn't. And we can definitely touch on that. But I'm more interested in kind of the psychological aspect of the comment you just made about no one watches your video, then that's fine, you just move on to the next. No one watches your video. How did you, someone who had no experience in this space, how did you get beyond that? How did you mentally tell yourself, okay, maybe it didn't give me the results I wanted, view wise or number wise, but I learned something, or I can do something and apply it to the next video that I upload. What was your strategy as far as getting through that aspect of it?

A (6:26)

I think the thing I struggled with is the volume piece is wrapping my head around how to do volume, and I still struggle with that. Even after five or six years of doing this, I still struggle with figuring out how to put long form content out on YouTube at volume. So that was probably the biggest thing is like, okay, I'm gonna do this and then I do one video and then four months later I'm trying to get another video up and that just doesn't work. And let's relate this to an entrepreneurial standpoint. As I know growing businesses, it takes reps to learn, right? So whatever business you're in, you have to dig into it. And takes you a long time of struggling in that business to Learn the correct way to do the business and then you could figure out SC scaling after that. So without the reps you're not going to learn. And that that was really kind of the moment that it clicked for me was like, oh, I need to increase my volume. Not to like try to get more views per, you know, okay, If I got 100 views a video, if I do 10 of them, I got a thousand views. That's not the point. The point of volume is to learn and to sharpen your skill level. Right. And learn about what you're doing. So by increasing my volume and letting go of the ego of like who cares what you look like? People are out there going to and I get a lot of hate in a lot of my comments. I got a lot of anti hunters that jump on and like give me death threats and whole bunch of stuff that I've over time learned how to let go. The first time I had a video go viral and got so much negative content on it or so many negative responses, it was really hard to deal with on a psychological level. And we can go down any road you want to go down here, Dusty. I know I'm throwing out a whole bunch of stuff but on that psychological level it's like getting over myself, getting over my ego and realizing, well, I was successful in the past with business because of the volume I was putting in and how fast do I want to learn this? So I need to increase my volume to learn. And that's really what happened.

B (8:20)

Did you and have you put things in place to guarantee that you upload on a consistent schedule? You're not, you know, your channel doesn't really play itself to hey, I'm going to upload two videos a week or whatever. That's just not how these films work. You know, when you're going out in these remote locations, you may only have four or five of those trips a year. And so for you, how did you lock in the cadence to where it was appropriate for your channel and doable for you on the a level of still having a personal life and a professional life?

A (8:52)

Yeah, and I have other businesses that I need to worry about rather than creating content also. And I don't think I'm even doing it well to today, to be honest with you. Yeah, I think that and I've been, it's been hard for me to structure myself. I've never been much of a structured person when it comes to that type of thing. I'm structured in a bunch of different other ways. But when it comes to okay, I need to do, you know, at least one video a week or one video a month. And like I'm put together a calendar and a schedule and I gotta hold myself to it. I suck at it. I'm not good at it at all. And I know I need to be better. And I'm figuring out ways now to increase volume and do that. So for example, and this is just a lot of recent, you know, realizations. So now I've scheduled out, okay, I'm doing this many hunts this year and I'm bringing this videographer with me. And then I know that like an edit takes a long time on these. Like literally an edit may take a month or two to get done. So how do I keep long form content going on on YouTube of these hunting adventures? How do I stack them and do delegate some of the edits to continue to have things going out on a regular basis? I'm still figuring it out, but I'm think, I think I'm, you know, it has to be more than just me. So I need to have an editor that I can hire out without breaking the bank. I need to bring a couple videographers with me, you know, and delegate a lot of that stuff. So did I answer your question, Dusty, or I kind of ran off.

B (10:17)

You did that? No, that was a perfect answer. I do want to follow up by asking this. How do you balance long form and short form? Because it looks like when I go to your channel, you're uploading vertical videos too. So as far as programming goes, does the short form allow you to kind of supplement in between the hunts? And, and it looks like you're putting some other bits of programming, like tutorial videos, how tos and guides in between that. How does that work for you?

A (10:40)

Yeah, yeah. So I think of, I think of my hunting adventures as like, that's my highest quality piece of content. That is a typically a 20 minute piece of content that people will really sit down and get to know who I am on a marketing and advertising level. And just to preface this, Dusty, I'm not putting content on YouTube to get, to get, make my living on YouTube Adsense. Right. I'm not, I make some money on it, but it's very little. And we can dig into that later too. But, but my long form 20 minute hunting adventures, that's my most quality piece of content and I'm trying to get one out every other month. I have not hit that schedule yet, but hopefully this year I can get it and then I do when it's Somewhat nice outside. I go outside and do some tutorial stuff the best that I can, which is another high quality piece because that's giving value to my audience. And. And then I will do short form. And it's much easier to do short form where I'm not really creating a lot of that short form content. It's our. It's cut up through my long form video. So there are moments of my hunting adventures that are cut up and I'm using tools like Ops, cut, Metricool, you know, the schedule. So I'm like, I can cut that up, tweak it a little bit and boom, I put it out in volume. So understanding that is like, okay, I only have so much time and energy to do all this. What are some good tools I can use to scale that? That. That has come in and handy of recent too.

B (12:06)

Yeah. I think that looking at your channel and seeing that, you know, these videos like the one that you just recently did a couple of months ago, the Grizzly Hunt film, has performed so well for you and you kind of have a, a template of knowing that, okay, you know, a video I did a year ago, you know, hunting the Timberwolf, you know, you did that video. These have hundreds of thousands of views. That is your tent pole content. And figuring out what other buckets of content fit on the channel and the different types of formats, like short form and then long form, maybe throwing in a live stream here or there. I do want to ask you this, Kurt. What is something that you wish you would have known sooner? Like looking at the, where you are now, you know, years into this journey on the YouTube side of things, what is something that you wish you knew personally earlier to where you might could have taken your channel, you know, maybe successful even quicker?

A (13:01)

I think the number one thing is volume is key. And again, not to the standpoint of I need lots of volume for lots of views. It's more. I need lots of volume to learn and to push myself, right? So like if I say, look, I want to have 20 videos a month out, I have to make some major decisions on how to execute that, right? So which is pushing me to, to figure out how to get resourceful and use tools to be able to do that. So if I just willy nilly like, okay, I'm going to upload a YouTube here and there when I feel like it. If I'm trying to reach a skill level that takes 500 hours to get there, how fast do I want to get there? Do I want to get there over the course of Five years, do I want to get there over the course of six months. So that's probably the number one thing for me is that mindset shift of hey, you need to push in and do volume to learn and to get resourceful to figure this out. Because the scale I'm doing now is not even close to the scale that I want to be doing. And I need to continue to push in and learn how to get more videos up better with higher quality. Right.

B (14:09)

That's a great answer. I wanted, I was really interested in seeing kind of where you went with that, but that's a really good answer. We allow our members in our premium creator mastermind group to submit questions that are in that group of what they'd like me to ask the guest. And a question that came in from Josh, he says, what experiences have you had that made you a better creator? Classes you've taken, advice you've been given. So I'll just kind of make the table yours there. Answering that question, what experiences have you had or conversations that you had that you've known has made you a better creator?

A (14:44)

I think the number one thing is understanding the psychology of people. And I. So I have a little bit of background in psychology. I have like an undergrad and I use it in day to day in communication, but I forgot it in content creation. So if I'm thinking about the psychology of people, go back to that mindset is what is, what is the hook, right? It's all about hooks. Like on YouTube, when we're taking, talking about long form content, what's going to stop the scroll? Okay, thumbnail has got a pop and it's got to be very intriguing. And you gotta, you got, you have to have some curiosity hook there. Next is the title. You need that curiosity hook in the title and then you need a hook in the first five seconds of your video to say, look, you're going to want to watch this moment. So watch, you know, watch into the video, right? It's like continuing to have the psychological hooks is really the, the moment I had an aha moment. Oh, that makes sense. I know this from my background. I know this from marketing in other businesses is how do I market other businesses? Well, I need views, I need eyeballs. And I know these psychological hooks. Why have I not been applying these to my content? God, if I, you know, I know the major three, three major data points I need to look at, which is click through rate viewer retention and engagement on the post, right? So if I could figure those things out and increase them, man, this is, this game just got way easier, right? So like okay, great thumbnail, great title hook in the beginning of my video. And then I do something where we do a little giveaway with my brand partners for engagement on the video, right? So hey, comment. The last one is comment grizzly for a chance to win the exact gear setup that I had through TUO and a pack that I, that I use in that hunt. So now I'm getting engagement and I'm getting conversations and then just. And that's how we get 200,000 views on that video, right?

B (16:38)

Like I interrupt the conversation just for a few seconds to remind you that we have a ton of different offerings for creators. Everything from one on one private coaching with me, YouTube channel reviews and audits where I take a look at your channel and tell you where I think you should be spending your time to efficiently grow your channel. We have the Mastermind group which 5 to 10 bucks gets you in. You get access to weekly exclusive podcast recordings, our Discord forums, the Mastermind calls alongside of the pop out calls that are hosted by our members. So if you're looking for a place to just grow and get to know other creators and bounce ideas off of them, that's the place to do it. And then lastly, I want to mention my email newsletter, the Entrepreneur's Minute. It's free. I'm not going to spam you with a bunch of different emails. Every Friday I talk about what I'm doing to grow my business and further my personal brand. And if you'd like to take a look at the links mentioned on this show and previous episodes, we have a running spreadsheet called the Entrepreneurs Toolbox. All of that linked down below. All right, with that said, back to the show, I do want to ask you this. As far as packaging and thumbnails and titles, what have you learned along the way to make it better? As far as the making people want to click or having that click through rate increase on your videos, it's been

A (17:56)

a lot of just trial and error and then looking at other people's content of like what has done well. So like if I look at people in my own niche of hunting content, long form content, what videos are doing well and I can't look at someone that's already got a really big following because they're just going to watch me, that person or that company because they love the company, right? So I'm looking at smaller creators like myself that are doing have some outliers. He this creator typically gets 5,000 views a video but this one did a hundred thousand. Why is that one? Why did this one do a hundred thousand? Let me look at the. His thumbnail. Why did he get such a good click through on that thumbnail? So I'm understanding, man, that color popped really well. It was very simple and easy to understand without a lot of text on there. But the text that was on there really made me curious and made me want to see what that's all about, to click in it. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the biggest thing for me was just really looking at what other people were doing and understanding why that was working.

B (18:55)

How much do you do that? How much do you go to other hunting channels and see how they're modeling their channel and their business? And then what do you take back to apply to yours?

A (19:07)

Well, I do a lot of research in general to apply to mine. It's not just my niche. Like, I'll look at my niche for sure, but I can get some really good creative ideas from a lot of other creators. Shoot. Some of the big, biggest, biggest creator, call it Mr. Beast, right? He's like the biggest creator out there. But like, some of his thumbnails are genius. The way that he has hooks and, you know, the first three seconds of his video is always like this crazy hook of like, win all this money, right? So, yeah, I look at other niches too, that I can app. And I love movies, by the way. I love how a movie can entertain you and take you from your reality and put you in a different reality. I call it my drug, right? So movies are my drug. And I've. I grew up watching a ton of movies and I love the structure of movies. So I, I don't try to just go super heavy on like the YouTube thumbnails that you see a lot or the, the YouTube hooks that you see a lot on. On typical creators. I'll take a lot of movie elements into my videos of like this last one, that grizzly bear film, we filmed it in a way, we went jumped right into the exciting scenes of like we're getting on the grizzly bear. And then we cut back into like five days earlier. This was what happens, which played into what was actually going on in that first scene. So that's definitely a movie play, a movie structure for sure. It's not your typical linear YouTube structure, right? So I use a lot of elements through everything, man.

B (20:35)

Yeah, that's noticeable in your, in those films. Because when I watched it, I was thinking, this feels like a TV show. This feels like a Big production and you could tell that you were going for that feel and it came through the screen very. You could tell the intentionality of what you were doing. Let's talk about your business now and how you make money. Let's talk about that first. Before we start talking about maybe how much you might be making or full time, part time, let's talk about how you make money. You're not uploading these videos to, you know, you're get, you're getting ad revenue. But that's not the main lump sum. There's other buckets of how you monetize. So break that down for us. How are you using YouTube to make money with this business?

A (21:12)

Yeah, and maybe I'm going about this completely wrong, but this is how I do it is I don't really focus on ad revenue at all. If I make some great, but that's not my focus. So I use my YouTube channel as my high end marketing, my above funnel marketing. So if you guys know marketing at all, you look at it like a funnel, right? It V's down like a funnel. So as someone gets to be aware of you, that's what I use for social media and YouTube types of platforms. And what I sell is actually hunting consulting. So I sell, I'll connect a hunter with an outfitter and we vet all these outfitters. That's the major part of my business and that's where most of my revenue comes from. And I do make some revenue from brand deals which comes right into YouTube of like, okay, we're getting this much exposure and we can do this content creation stuff. So there's really two major buckets that I make is I sell hunts to hunters and then I make a little bit from brand deals, but I make very little from AdSense on YouTube. YouTube's more of my marketing funnel.

B (22:13)

So when you say you connect hunters to outfitters, that's you setting them up on the hunts that they see you go on. So they watch these videos, it may not be this exact hunt, they may not be hunting the, the grizzly bear like what you did in Alaska per se, but they watch this video and they think to themselves, oh man, I'd love to go on an adventure like that. And then they use you as the middleman from the, the YouTube video and then you make some money from that. Is that correct?

A (22:40)

That's exactly right. And so for myself, I get to go on these, all these really super cool adventures and I get to know these outfitters and they're vetted. I know they're Good. So when hunters are watching me, they know I have a booking agency, a hunting consultant agency. I'm building the authority in the space and I'm building the trust in the space at the same time. So when they come to me and they say, kurt, man, you go all over the world, what do you recommend for me to do? I say, hey, I know this outfitter. And I also have a team of like eight other consultants. So we tap into all their experiences out there too. So every outfitter that we would recommend someone, we've hunted with them, we've vetted them, we know it's a good experience, so does not cost the hunter any money at all. We get a referral fee from the outfitter. So for like, providing a service to this person is an amazing service. We do all the work for you and we set you with the right outfitter. We were having a great adventure, great experience, and, you know, you pay the outfitter, it doesn't cost you anything.

B (23:34)

For our service, yeah, we use something similar in the summer, in July when we go to South Florida, we do some. I don't personally, I'm not a big fisher, but fisherman. But a lot of my dad and buddies that are down there with us, they use the same guy who basically he's a broker who finds these guides, who knows who the best guides are in the area. And so he's getting commission for that. And I think that you've built such a awesome platform on your channel where people can watch you. And it's evergreen, Right. Like these videos, these films will continue to get views forever in the future. And so you're continually getting these client clients and clientele as you continue to release new films, which is why you don't have to upload as frequently as some other creators. Can you talk about maybe how many of these trips you're booking in a month and maybe the different buckets you make money from and how much you might make on an average month.

A (24:29)

Yeah, so I do the consulting myself also. Then I have a team of eight other consultants, and we sell anywhere from 20 to 50 hunts a month, and we make a. A small percentage of each hunt. So if my consultant books, they make 7.5%. And the 7.5% goes back to the company. So we charge the outfitter 15%. Average hunt deal is about $10,000. So we make about $1,500 per booking. So that consultant makes about 750 bucks per booking on average. And a good consultant will do over a million dollars a year in top end Revenue So it takes 7.5% times a million. So you're making, you know, right around 80,000 doll a decent consultant for me as a business. So seven and a half comes back to the business which goes into ad spend. It goes back into platforms and tools and marketing.

B (25:25)

Videographers paying all those guys.

A (25:27)

I make a small portion of that which actually goes to profitability. So I still need to do some selling and then I'll take it to a next level of if. I like the outfit a lot and I think they do a great job, but most outfitters suck at communication with the client. They hate paperwork, they hate anything legal contracts, bookkeeping, they, they suck at the business part.

B (25:48)

I'll take. They just want to hunt.

A (25:49)

They just want to hunt. They just want to take the guys out hunting. That's what they're good at. So I'll partner with them and I'll take over everything they don't want to do. So now I'll own a portion of the business which then at the end of the year I'll get a profit sharing back on the business too.

B (26:04)

And would you say, I mean this is a full time revit? I mean you're making good money. I mean as far as like this is something that you can make probably six figures plus on throughout, you know, in the past couple of years.

A (26:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, this business, you can definitely make six figures plus on it. And it's a fun business. It's. You get to talk, I get to talk with hunters all day long. They get to share stories and I get to help them go on their dream adventures that they've never thought they could go on. They trust me, they trust our company to set them up because there's a, just like in every industry, man, there's a lot of shady stuff that happen. Weapons out there. Like there's outfitters out there that are not very good and they're just taking tens of thousands of dollars and taking you on a hiking trip with a weapon. That's about all it is, right. So you know, it can be a kind of a scary thing to book an adventure like that if you don't have someone giving you advice and who to use and who not to. You could waste a lot of money

B (27:00)

and to circle it back to YouTube and the content. Would you say that YouTube and the channel is the central cognitive that makes everything possible? I mean if, if you didn't have all these videos and films out there, sure, you could still do this word of mouth conversations, website ad spend. But you're getting free advertisement every time you get an eyeball on one of those big films that you do. Can you speak to how important YouTube is at the central hub of everything that you've built?

A (27:25)

Yeah. So like, let's just break down real quickly. I won't spend too much time, but overall, let's look at all the platforms all the way you can market, right? I can do, I use a lot of meta, so I'll do a lot of meta ads and that creates leads for us. I do social, organic, you know, Instagram, Facebook, T. Those are all great ways to advertise newsletters. We can do booths at trade shows. Like, there's a lot of ways I can create business. But I believe the future is YouTube. So I started talking to hunters about five to eight years ago and they're like, and I'm asking him, hey, where do you watch your hunting shows?

B (27:57)

Where do you.

A (27:58)

And more and more hunters were kept telling me, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. I don't watch it on normal TV anymore. I don't watch the outdoor channel, the sportsman's channel. I watch YouTube. And so I realized that, oh, that's the future of where my eyeballs, of my, my customers are going to be. So my, the, my customers, when they can sit down and have a little bit time to relax and really soak in a video, they're going to go to YouTube to watch a 20 minute video. When they're scrolling their, their phone, they may be hitting some YouTube shorts, but they're also going to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. But I would say at all my platforms for my organic content, YouTube is the most important for me because that's where they understand and get to know me the best. They get in on a 20 minute video and see what Kurt Belden, who Kurt Belding is and what this hunting adventure is all about. And then we take that video and we put it on our trip listings. So, you know, we throw out these trip listings with pictures and text and information on them and then they can click on it and go watch the video on YouTube and get to know that hunt really well. Right.

B (29:01)

The thing I want to highlight there is you talk about the authority that you've built. You know, your model is not so dissimilar to mine. You know, I build authority by having these conversations, helping Others grow. YouTube channel, they hear my voice sometimes for hours, every single week as they're walking or doing chores, as they're listening to their podcast. And then I convert them into, you know, free newsletter email addresses and Then maybe they join my mastermind group and then maybe they hire me to be their coach. Right. Or consultant. And so that's kind of the same model as far as what is the top end of the funnel. And for me, it's the podcast, right? And the YouTube channel of running these podcast clips and having conversations with you and using your circle of influence and combining that. And I think that you, that answer you just gave was perfect. If you're a business right now, you need to rewind this podcast. Listen to what Kurt just said because that's. It doesn't matter if you're a dentist, a doctor, it doesn't matter what you're trying, what your small business is being able to utilize. All the auxiliary. You mentioned it, the other socials, websites, newsletters. But YouTube is where the eyeballs are at. YouTube is where you can send people and they can build that trust. They can watch those 30 minute films that look like they should be on the Sportsman or the outdoor channel and they're like, okay, I trust Kurt. I want Kurt to do my trips. Not only that, but you had the repeat business of, oh, you went on a trip with Kurt. Kurt set you up. It was amazing. Of course I'm gonna refer Kurt to you. Right? So then you kind of see how this snowballs. That's how a business is run and how YouTube is kind of put at the center of it. The final question I want to ask you, Kurt, is what is next? What part of the YouTube side of things are you looking? You mentioned trying to up the quantity while keeping the quality the same. What is next for you in the YouTube channel to take your business even to the next level?

A (30:53)

I, my mindset needs to go to from, hey, I need to get content out to continue to have top funnel to I need to dominate my space. So I need to have more of a. I need to dominate my space. What's it going to take for me to dominate this hunting space? Right? And there's a lot of big YouTube channels out there. But don't. The one thing that, that what's. You know, if I'm looking at it, I need to create more content, higher quality at a better psychological level. We just need to get better and do more.

B (31:25)

That's awesome, guys. We've been speaking with Kurt Belding from the Western Obsessions TV YouTube channel. A lot of great stuff throughout this conversation. I'd recommend go back and take notes and listen, look at the show notes. Don't forget to check out all the things that we offer to creators. I'LL also put some links down there to where you can connect with Kurt through his YouTube channel and his website. Maybe you're a hunter, maybe you're not. You just want to chat with him about YouTube stuff. I'm sure he'd be open to that as well. So, Kurt, thanks again for joining us today.

A (31:53)

Thanks, Dusty.

B (31:54)

Appreciate you. And that's a wrap on this week's episode of the Creators Hub show. Don't forget to check Kurt out if you haven't already. I'll link below all the different offerings that we have for creators. Everything from our private one on one coaching, our Mastermind group with Mastermind calls, exclusive podcasts, as well as our YouTube channel reviews and audits. If this show is something that's helped you do something that's absolutely free, subscribe to the podcast wherever and however you consume your podcast, as well as two other things. Leave us a review and if you know someone who would be a great fit for this podcast, there's a Google form on my website. Fill it out and connect me with those creators. With that said, we'll talk to you guys next week.