Ep 518: How to Build a Huge YouTube Channel with Sean Cannell
RV (00:02):
There’s people that I learned from, and then there’s people that I do life with. And Sean Cannell is someone that is both of those. I like to think anyways this man is so brilliant and he is touched by God. And I really believe that he is somebody worth following, not only professionally but personally. And the more I’ve gotten to know him, the more that I have loved him and believed in him, and also learned from him. He is without a doubt, one of the world’s leading authorities on YouTube strategy growing with video. He is the og, like one of the OGs in this space. He’s the CEO of Think Media, the host of the Think Media podcast. His mission is to help 10,000 purpose-driven people, create a full-time living with YouTube. Right? It’s a very clear, specific niche. Sean’s YouTube channels have over two and a half million subscribers.
RV (00:55):
His videos have been viewed 150 million plus times. He has been featured in a number of places as one of the top YouTubers. He has an event this year. He, he does an event every few years he’s had Alex Hermo come, he’s had Dave Ramsey come. He is got Cody Sanchez come in this year. Like Gary Vaynerchuk, a main, this guy owns his space. It’s such a great example. And so I thought, this is crazy. We have to have him on to hear his story and also for me to get some free YouTube strategy coaching at the same time. So, Sean, welcome to the show, brother.
SC (01:32):
Rory. So grateful to be here and to be hanging out with you and your community and so grateful for you in general throughout the years, your frameworks, your knowledge, your insights have really shaped my career and been such a blessing to me. You be guesting on our podcast has been a huge blessing to our community, and so super grateful to be able to hang out with you today. Yeah.
RV (01:53):
Well, thanks brother. And I wanna, I want to hear the story of how you got started. You were, it was, this is your youth pastor and I want to just hear like, when did you get into the YouTube game? How did you get into the YouTube game? Why did you get into the YouTube game? Because I know that it was not back then what it is now and what it’s becoming.
SC (02:15):
Yeah, so for me, I actually got started in video in 2003, volunteering at my local church. And what had happened, I actually got expelled from Christian High School. I went very prodigal and partying and doing raves and rave drugs and all this stuff. And, and eventually I kind of hit rock bottom. So I went to Bible college for a year. Never would’ve thought I would wanted to do that, but I want, I knew I needed to do something different and get out of kind of a toxic friend group and a toxic cycle. Wow. Study the Bible for myself. And so when I came home, I didn’t want to get into trouble. I think about the biblical story of David being on his porch, seeing Bathsheba naked when he should have been at war. And knowing that lesson, I was like, let me just, let me just get busy and do something.
SC (03:00):
So sight unseen, my parents actually went to a new church and I had never been there, but during, before summer started, I called ahead and was like, can you see if they have an internship? And they didn’t. But they made a spot for me in the youth ministry, like, okay, somebody wants to come and work for free. And so I volunteered at a youth ministry that had like eight kids at it an hour north of Seattle. And the youth pastor handed me a video camera, Canon HV 30 with mini DV tapes. Nice. and Adobe Premier, like 1.0 on a bunch of cd r CD rom, you know, and a very slow computer old school. And so this is 2003, you know, 20 years ago that I start doing video. And of course, Roy, these videos are terrible. You know, people are, they, they wanna start creating content.
SC (03:45):
Like, what if my first videos are bad? They will be like, what if my first videos are embarrassing? That’s part of the process. Like for me, I was doing it before social platforms even existed, but I was learning discipline because I made a video announcement video every single week for the youth ministry that’s like 52 videos a year. So I was like, you have a weekly podcast, like a weekly show. Like I was doing that before social and kind of doing the repetitions. And then in 2007, so weird. ’cause Again, churches are usually 10 years behind. And not only that, we were not, we’re in a rural church, we weren’t in like a cool hip, like cutting edge. But our pastor went to a few cool conferences and he learned about Twitter, started thinking more about social media. So we actually started a mini reality show, like a behind the scenes vlog.
SC (04:34):
Again, it was just terrible. But we shot, so we started a YouTube channel in 2007 and started posting content, and not even really the sermons necessarily, because there was like a time limit and you’d have to chop them up. There was a 15 minute time limit on YouTube at the time. Mm. And we just started posting random videos. And so fast forward to today, I’ve been doing video for 20 years, YouTube for 17 years. And my journey took me on all kinds of paths of starting my own freelance business, wedding videos, hip hop music videos, videos for like the YMCA helping pastors and leaders that were authors and speakers being their channel managers, filming videos for them, helping them on social media. Eventually going to Vegas to be a director of communications, doing some paid ads, helping a pastor named Benny Perez kind of on his personal brand plus the church brand.
SC (05:25):
And so I clocked not just 10,000 hours, probably 30,000 hours Wow. In just video and everything about it and YouTube and social platforms between 2003 and about 2015 when I launched out to start our company today. So growth was pretty rapid, but it’s one of those things where like how deep the foundation is compared to once you start building the tower, how deep the roots go, and to how tall and strong the tree is. So all this leadership, teamwork lessons, mistakes I made really positioned us for the company of about 30 people, multimillion dollar budget, running big events. All of that was really in the local church and in small business over the years.
RV (06:08):
That’s awesome, man. What, what, what a ride. So like, so YouTube Secrets that’s the book that you wrote was like, again, like just one of the mainstays in that space is sold, you know, into the six figures of copies sold. Everybody wants to create, right? They wanna start, where do we start? How do we start, what do we doing wrong? What do we need to know? Like what, you know, how much does the camera matter like today? And, and actually even before that, I wanna address the, is it too late to start, right? Because you started in 2003, really like 2016, 17, got into it. And I think it’s like, I even have this fear on YouTube, right? Like, I’ve been speaking, I’ve been writing books, we’ve been building companies, but like, I still really haven’t started on YouTube. Like, I have put some stuff up there, but like, I haven’t really focused on YouTube and you know, I have to admit, like even myself, I struggle with like, eh, is it like, you know, all the, all the, you know, stars have already come and hit like, did I miss the wave?
RV (07:17):
Or like, talk to me about that.
SC (07:20):
Yeah. Well it’s not too late and I’ve got data to back it up. One Goldman Sachs research talked about the creator economy that’s bigger than YouTube, but that specifically speaks to these social platforms. And many listening to this probably wouldn’t even fit inside of the creator economy, although there’s a lot of overlap. ’cause In the creator economy, it would be the businesses like Adobe and Cap Cut providing software. And it would be creators who are kind of the new breed of self-employed entrepreneurs that make money directly off these platforms, right? What happens is business owners like yourself, small business owners, personal brands that are maybe authors and speakers, they wouldn’t really get lumped into that. But eventually they think, okay, what about, what if I start creating content, not just to promote my offers and get leads and prospects, but also to get a new revenue stream that in and of itself, building my influence could amplify what I’m already doing, but create new opportunities.
SC (08:17):
So the creator economy, that’s sort of what we’re trying to define there. And Goldman Sachs research said that in the next three years, it’s gonna double that. The total addressable market wow, is about 250 billion. And it’s gonna be a half a trillion industry by 2027. So we see number one, a massive expansion. Two, we actually see the users and consumption of YouTube continuing to go up right now. So if we look at the dictionary definition of saturation, it’s actually impossible for YouTube to be saturated so long as it’s still expanding. Now at some point in the arc of anything, there might be it flat lines plus more people keep expanding and how much content’s being created. And there’s maybe a crossover, but that has not happened. And as we see technology still go around the world, new people are still joining the internet every day.
SC (09:05):
Youtube is getting becoming more global. The internet’s becoming more global. Internet speeds are going up and adoption of the platform overall, it just continues to expand. We’re still in that right now. So it’s still a good time to ride that expansion wave. There’s also some fascinating data about baby boomers and Gen X. It’s something like 80% of baby baby boomers are watching YouTube. Wow. I think that shouldn’t that’s crazy and it shouldn’t surprise us. ’cause If you think it’s free and smart TVs are now common and affordable, so you can turn on YouTube and follow things you’re interested in and watch video podcasts or history shows or learn solve problems. And so, and then that just trickles down the, the, the core audience is gonna be that 25 to 35. But look at the numbers for baby boomers. It’s basically all generations. And again, as more people get used to the utility, even of YouTube video podcasts are there, you know, if we take a slight side quest on video podcasts, YouTube is the number one podcasting platform.
SC (10:05):
It’s bigger than Apple and Spotify. It has been more podcasts are consumed on YouTube. They just added RSS feeds. Youtube, Google Podcast is absorbed into YouTube music. And now when you do a video podcast, go YouTube music is making a play at Spotify and making a play at Apple and owned by Google, this company is not gonna slow down or not go for the absolute cutthroat attack of every other brand and platform if we think about these platform wars. But all that to say is betting on YouTube is a really good bet and it’s still a good time to get in. Let’s talk about some of the cons, Rory, from my perspective and what I’m seeing with the data is there is rising competition and there’s a lot of competition. Yeah. And competition is highest for mediocre content. And competition is highest for low effort content.
SC (11:00):
So getting into YouTube is, I would argue not for the faint of heart. We’re living in a world now where just throwing some stuff out there is not gonna bring a, a great return. There was a time where maybe some lower effort content because of supply and demand could actually be helpful. But you, you, I think you gotta take it seriously and people are upping their game. I’m not saying it’s out of reach for people just starting. I’m not saying that you need any necessarily fancy equipment, but you do need strategy, you need a plan. And it’s gonna, it’s gonna take some level of energy. And I would say it’s gonna take energy from the principal person, the key person, the idea that, Hey, can I just outsource YouTube to somebody you should hire or, or delegate or leverage ai. But it’s just gonna take, I think it’s gonna take some thought and strategy.
SC (11:57):
So it’s it’s like the biblical passage of Jesus said, Hey, count the cost before building the tower. You know, it’s like reverse engineering. And, and that would be my next thing to say to you. Say, what do you do next? I think you asked some questions. Does it appeal to you to, to have a YouTube channel? Do you wanna be Oprah? Like legitimately, like, not if you catch my meaning. Like do you wanna show, do you, do you like the idea of having actually a video podcast? Do you, not just a podcast, but being on video and interviewing people. Do you, like, would you wanna have a solo show and for the love of serving people in that format or the love of creating content, I’d say that’s a really good first foundation. Yes, there’s maybe other ambitions I’d, I would love to have a show impact people change lives.
SC (12:48):
I do actually, I do. I don’t want you to force me on video. Anybody can improve and get better on camera and whatnot. And I, if you’re afraid, I’m not saying that’s a sign you shouldn’t do it. But if you look ahead a few years and say, man, I think that’s something I would enjoy doing, and I think I would love to do that, and I want to change people in that video format, and let’s go bigger than YouTube. I, I just recently talked to Dave Ramsey about, he’s like, we’re platform agnostic. We, we just wanna change lives. We were on radio, now we’re on video, we’re happy to be there, but we’re on Rumble, we’re on YouTube, we’re on x Elon’s taking X seriously. Amazon Prime has got offerings. So I would actually just go bigger. Do you want a show? Do you want to be in the video game?
SC (13:34):
Because if you do, then there’s massive opportunity. Youtube is a foundation and a pillar. But once you create these video assets, there’s a lot of distribution opportunities. And if you would say yes then because it’s not too late, it’s not gonna be easy. But it is possible. And one of the biggest mistakes I think people make is they, they look at it as a tactic. Like, I want to get some leads, maybe some more sales. I’m on other platforms. Can I kick it to my team to chop up some stuff of me and get a little stuff? It’s not that that couldn’t produce some results. I think it’s gonna work best for the person who actually doesn’t treat it as a tactic, but in a way they treat it as a lifestyle, like content creation as a lifestyle and a habit. That’s not always easy.
SC (14:18):
I don’t always love doing it, but it’s something I enjoy. I, I, I love doing what I do. I enjoy my video podcast probably most of all. And there’s stressful weeks, but I look forward to it. And I want to change lives and I want to craft that content and I want to shoot great interviews and I want the results and the money is great too. And all that is great too. But I would do it anyways. And if, if that sparks, if you’re listening to this and that kind of gets a little fire in you, then I would say dive in because there’s massive opportunity to be seized right now. Te tell me then.
RV (14:49):
So I love that and I thi I I can, I can vouch for it doesn’t really take off as a dabbling thing. Like the, the days of dabbling on it and having it take off. I think those days are pretty well past us. Because, because because there are so many people on there that are taking it serious, right? Yes. And, and we’ve been just basically dabbling in social media in general. ’cause We’ve been building the company and now we’re starting to take like Instagram serious and we’re seeing results and, and is realizing to go, okay, like, you know, what if we took YouTube more serious? ’cause It could be the flagship and Instagram can roll, roll more out of that. So if, if I wanna step in and I go, yeah, I do wanna show, I I do wanna impact people, I’m fine with this being a part of my lifestyle.
RV (15:35):
Like I, it’s not something I just wanna like do for a season, but like I go, I think it would be fun. And, and, but knowing I have to take it serious, like I love what you said about the, you know, the competition is highest for the mediocre low effort content. So what do I need to focus on to go, all right, if you’re gonna step in and play, like if I’m gonna get on the field and really like, be in the game, what’s the, what, what is re what’s, what’s the requirement? Like what’s the price of admission to, to, what does that look like in terms of equipment? I need to have team strategy, frequency of posting, length of content, you know. Yeah. That kind of stuff.
SC (16:22):
Well, interestingly enough, I think step one is to go really deep in your content and really dial in who you are in your messaging. Let’s assume that stuff is dialed in. But that would be found like things like classic business principles, like a USP, what is your unique selling position? The powerful aspects of a personal brand are also amplifying your unique anyways. So starting to think through. So you start thinking through, is this gonna be a personal brand channel first and last name? Is this gonna be a channel that has a clear niche cooking with Karen, name plus niche? Is it gonna be kind, kind of a media company? Think media is the name of my channel. I coach a lot of real estate agents. And so sometimes it’s their brokerage. I think the personal brand is much more powerful. Or is, is it, is it living in Nashville? Nashville,
RV (17:17):
Yeah. Lack living in Nashville.
SC (17:18):
Yeah. That living in Nashville is an option or your personal name and, and then Sean Cannell, Nashville real estate tips, different things. So I think kind of getting clear and then of course getting clear on what is it you’re trying to achieve. And in some cases that that amount of clarity already is in a way all you need. Then you add a smartphone to it, a content schedule, and start creating content. Meaning if you are a local real estate agent, the amount of opportunity still in a 2024 world is, is shocking because it’s about executions. It’s not a lot of people that are either A, doing it, B doing it consistently A doing it at all, B doing it consistently. So I think there, that’s, that’s thing one, I think. Then what do you start with? I think in, you know, I think for everyone who’s listening to this that wants to get in the video game, I think you start with vertical video really, because it’s, it’s, at least if you are like, I don’t really, I’m not comfortable on camera yet.
SC (18:18):
I I don’t really know what to say yet. I think especially for educators, people that solve problems, entrepreneurs that listen to this, I would say, what are the top 10 to 20 most asked questions and should ask questions on you YouTube though. You’re saying like a vertical video on frequently asked questions? Well, yeah, and then I would, I would so let’s, again, let’s work out the real estate thing. So is now a good time to buy a house? So I’d pop in your car, I hope you already have a GPS holder on your, on your vent for your phone, a little phone holder. ’cause You know, pop your phone up there. You could buy a $20 mic off of Amazon, but even if you don’t, you can film anywhere. But your cart is such a good a, when you close the door, it makes such great audio.
SC (19:01):
If you got like a cool moon roof or something, you gotta look to it. And you sit there and you look at the camera, hit record. Is now a good time to buy a house or not? Here’s three things to consider if you’re thinking about buying a house and deliver that content. Be brief, be bright, be fun and be done. Keep it under 60 seconds. Rory. The power of this for everybody listening, ’cause I know I’m the YouTube guide, but now I’m gonna take that vertical video asset and I’m going to, on my YouTube channel, upload it as a YouTube short, but I’m also gonna upload that as an Instagram reel. Sure. I’ll probably throw it on TikTok so long as you know, until it’s fully banned. And then I’ll throw it over on, when I put it on Instagram, it’s gonna be connected to my Facebook fan page.
SC (19:43):
And, and as meta it just auto posts over there. I think cap cut is my favorite app and software. It’s very user friendly. It’s worth 10 bucks a year or whatever to pay. It has great captions. If you wanna put a little what we’re using, yeah, if you wanna put a headline on it or something that’s kind of a hook point, the white bars or whatever at the top it says is, is now a good time to buy a house in Nashville? Question mark. And then you’re delivering the content so you can spice it up a little bit and just get comfortable. You’re on break, you’re in between meetings, film that in your car, edit it on your phone, start distributing it to the platforms. The reason I, there’s multiple reasons I’d say doing that. The, the ROI that could start coming your way from all the platforms, dms, conversation, sales leads is extremely high.
SC (20:33):
Probably higher, not on YouTube at first because YouTube is a longer game and it’s a marathon and not a sprint. But one of the other reasons I want you to do this is just because of getting the reps in, of communicating. Whenever you’re inspired that you have a client conversation or a conversation that you’re like, man, that’d make a great video, film that and, and start building your content creation muscles. Because as soon as we step into horizon, horizontal, longer form content, you asked how long? Eight minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes. If you want a secret that is publicly observable, you can see that some of the top entertainment YouTubers like Ryan Trahan or Mr. Beast, their videos are 24 minutes. That’s not by accident. It’s because people, YouTube wants time on platform. So if a video is good and entertaining and holds attention and is longer, it will out.
SC (21:24):
24 minutes is better than 12 because it’s keeping people on the platform longer. The algorithm will push it further for that very reason. Getting stuck in that could derail listeners. ’cause We’re getting very technical now. Well then I need to force it to 24. It’s not what I’m saying. Eight’s fine. But as soon as you get into horizontal, if we, if we look at a Cody Sanchez or Alex Hermo, you gotta admit, these are some in entrepreneur space, these are people we’re competing with and they’ve got staffs teams, explosions, creative hooks, openers, B roll, and longer form if you want that real professional edge, couple thousand bucks, you know, a thousand to get a can. Some light. Yeah. 2000 to build like a nice setup. What the pros are using, they’re spending five or 6,000. And what the pros are doing in the entrepreneur space is hiring a shredder at some point.
SC (22:20):
Usually someone in person that’s a producer, shooter, editor, if their team is lean, that would mean not just a videographer, but if, if you could get it all in one. Somebody who also kind of like, is like, Hey, let’s shoot the intro again. We want to grab attention, let’s hit that hook, right? Hey, let’s make sure we get everything and has a little creative edge. And if they’re producer, shooter, editor, they’re kind of thinking concept to completion, they might also edit it, upload it. If there was a dream hire, it would be somebody that you could pay 60, 70, 80,000 a year. And over time, perhaps you know, a hundred grand, but it’d be worth it to kind of maybe one other admin person to be that generator that puts out that high qual quality content for you. So someone says, Sean, I don’t have the money.
SC (23:03):
Well then do it yourself. But then it’s the learning curve is of course you learn to edit your video shoot cameras. We have a lot, we have a whole free college called Think Media on YouTube that will train you in all of that. So you can solve the problem from either direction. And one little tip there too is you might involve someone in the vision and say, Hey, listen, I’m gonna give you half the, the channel revenue for so long as you work for me. As you help me build this and maybe cast some incentive and some vision, like that day one it’s zero and day a hundred, it’s probably still zero. But if they’re bought in, then you could grow together. And this would go all the way back to like, you wanna build a content empire, you know, you want to build you, you see the power of personal brand Elon Musk, you see the power of personal brand Warren Buffet. You see the power. And so you’re like, I wanna build Cody Sanchez. I wanna build a personal brand. And YouTube is perhaps the greatest place to do it. But those that are doing it at a high level are are putting out high quality content with, you know, thousands of dollars of year.
RV (24:02):
Yeah. They’re not doing it accidentally. And it is that way. Like it, you know, it it, it blows my mind. Like, you know, when people, people ask me all the time, can they, can I get ’em on Lewis’ show or Ed’s show? And it’s like what they’re looking at more than anything is their YouTube followers, right? Mm-Hmm
SC (25:01):
That’s just something I would pitch to the individual if you wanted to growth hack it more and get them to have buy-in. Yeah, there’s a few agencies that do channel management. There’s individuals that do channel management. You’re just wrestling with the tension. The same for paid ads. Do you bring a paid ads person in-house, a media buyer? Or do you work with an agency? Pros and cons and maybe one thing is right on one season and one or the other and you might back and forth, who knows? So generally if I would say building your own media team would be ideal but if you found the right agency that would, that would work too. What you start looking at is the, the YouTube pipeline. In fact, what is actually fascinating was Patrick Ben-David recently revealed his like, podcast workflow. I’ll come back to it when you ask the next question ’cause you’ll probably be fascinated, but, and by the way, I wanna hear that it’s like how many staff members it is?
SC (26:01):
I’ll, I’ll look it up. It’s like, it’s like 10 positions. Wow. And so what you start thinking about is you start going back to, okay somebody at the start is definitely gonna wear a lot of hats. And if it’s just you at the start, you’re wearing all the hats. And the idea of YouTube would be let’s, let’s break it down. Who’s, who’s the shooter? You set the camera up, you could just at least get the lighting right? I can, I’m in my home office, I can create content by myself. I’m the shot composition. I set the lighting up here. I’ve got, you know, these details. I think about the details and the bit, a lot of stuff that would stress people out. So I’m the shooter, I also am the researcher. So I would research not just plan out my podcast, but I’m good at research.
SC (26:45):
I’ll pull up different articles. I’m pulling that in. I’ll outline my video. I’m doing a paid brand real deal right now. So it’s a scripted video. The script is getting approved by the brand you are then the talent on camera, once it’s captured, are you then the editor, you’ve got, you edit it all together. And is it just basic editing that is becoming easier even with ai? Or is it next level editing? Then once the video is exported, you upload it and now it needs to be optimized. So you have the title. It’s many top YouTubers are famous for not just taking their thumbnails seriously, but paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for one thumbnail. You can find circles on Twitter x of full-time thumbnail designers that just get hired by top YouTubers that just create insane thumbnails. We’re talking about a very small piece of real estate, you know, like a very, but thumbnails being that serious.
SC (27:38):
So you can also do pretty good thumbnails with Canva templates, but are you gonna learn that and tweak those and get some photography done if you’re in the thumbnail? So then it’s a thumbnail. It’s writing a great title, similar to like a blog headline or an email subject headline. You want people to click, you wanna describe it. You maybe want some search based aspects to it. You want some human psychology based aspects to it. You wanna optimize the description, not so much because that’s gonna move the needle on the video itself. It’s the content itself that’s really gonna perform. But you want the call to actions to be right. If you’re driving business results, you want clickable link above the fold in the description. And then understanding how YouTube works. You maybe put in a playlist, you got an end card on the video. You, you don’t just make one video, you create a series.
SC (28:24):
So as the video ends, the way you communicate leads into other videos. And then you want a pipeline. So that, that, that somewhat simplistic overview of the steps can quickly break down into, you know, on our team we have Slack and monday.com and we do things like, we probably debate certain titles. We’ll write 10 to 20 to 30. Wow. And we debate ’em and we vote on ’em and we might switch them later. I interviewed Graham Stefan, who’s is pretty known for being a one man shop. He’s added a few people since then, but he likes to, he’s actually hired an editor and gone back to editing himself. He researches for about three hours. He writes a script for about a day. He then films it for three, four hours. He then edits him himself. He does outsource the thumbnail. He’s pre-written a few titles, and he is pulling hundreds of thousands of views. Personal finance, niche. He’s got some help selling brand deals, working with agencies. So I know you’re listening to this. Someone’s like, okay, I, I I was pumped. I did want to be Oprah, but I don’t know if I want to be like, like, so it, it’s, it gets real pretty
RV (29:33):
Fast. Oprah had a team. I mean, it’s there, there’s like, it, it’s helpful to see this because I think it’s, doing all this stuff is not wasting time. What’s wasting time is dabbling without doing this stuff, thinking it is gonna work. Mm-Hmm. And then it doesn’t. That’s what’s wasting time. Like either doing this stuff and knowing you have to do it and creating a plan and getting it done, or deciding, yeah, I’m not gonna do any of this. Both of those are good decisions. The the crappy decision, I think is like dipping your toe into it and then not really like having any sort of strategy.
SC (30:06):
If you’re in the mediocre middle, you’d be frustrated because you’re, you’re still taking time, but the results aren’t there. And then committing to it for a long enough time to get the flywheel effect going. Okay, so I found it. So here’s how to structure your podcast team from Patrick. Be David. Nine roles. According to him, executive producer oversees the entire production, sets the strategic direction of the content, and manages the budget. Podcast producer hand handles the day-to-day operations, coordinates with guests manage schedules, ensures these episode aligns with your vision. He’s sometimes having two, three people on. He just had Candace Owens and Chris Cuomo like, I think on an episode. So they have a, and that’s three a week, three episodes, like they’re pumping out shows and big numbers now, hundreds of thousands of concurrence on and when they live stream, the show number three, technical producer, audio engineer, responsible for the technical quality of the product they handle. Recording, mixing, sound editing, videographer, cinematographer captures high quality video responsible for camera operation, lighting and onset capture video editor edits the video content, integrates visuals and ensures the fi o product is polished and engaging. Copywriter and content writer develops scripts, interview questions and promotional content for each episode. Diary of a CEO split tests. A hundred thumbnails per episode. Three different phases with 25 quotes that are pulled out.
RV (31:25):
Again, they split test what? They split test how many thumbs? A
SC (31:28):
Hundred different thumbnails per episode. What? So Steve Bartlett, right? Diary of a CEO. And they have a research group that deeply gets into the psychology of not just the interview questions. They should ask a particular guest that’ll most resonate with the audience, but also how to front load those. So, ’cause YouTube, and I’ve, I know I’ve talked to Lewis, we’ve mastermind around YouTube about changing the whole front of his show compared to old school where like, welcome to the podcast, to like cutting to the chase. No fluff at the beginning, like cutting right into it at his level. You also start thinking maybe a little difference between the audio and the video, even though it’s a video podcast. But this whole copywriter content writer is a luxury, by the way, at number six here. But developing scripts, interview questions, promotional content for each episode.
SC (32:21):
Number seven, graphic designer creates visuals for the podcast, thumbnails, social media graphics. Once the episode’s out there is something about YouTube itself being where you’re gonna get the most views. ’cause The algorithm makes it take off. But then we also will do using like ManyChat, a custom vertical video. Comment the word podcast, DM people the link, get some more juice around it. That’s only on Instagram though. That’s not YouTube. That’s only on Instagram. But just thinking like the graphic designer. Really the only graphics you need is the actual thumbnail. But social media graphics might be promoting carousel post or something like carousel. There’s a community tab, which is a lot of people don’t know about on YouTube. It’s like a feed number eight distribution specialist. Digital marketing manager distributes the podcast across various platforms, handles SEO marketing strategies and audio. It’s growth. And number nine, social media coordinator engages with the audience on social platforms, promotes new episodes and builds community around the podcast.
SC (33:16):
Rory, that’s not where we’re at. That was just Pbds list that he shared with me. There’s nine staff positions, but he is an a one podcast now with hundreds of millions of views. That’s not an exaggeration. Over a hundred million views a month across the PBD podcast, the Valuetainment clips. And then you chop it up. I mean, you, you start getting to, I think it was a billion in two months ’cause TikTok clips are going viral and other clips because a video podcast can be chopped up. So that’s a lot. I I think we were already, I knocked the wind out of our listeners, including myself, and now we just, that was total knockout, you know, but this, thinking about that is what people are scaling up to. What I would say is an interesting story is, you know, you’re very familiar with Ramsey and we were just there.
SC (34:04):
Mm-Hmm.
SC (34:56):
Like if you had, and that this list doesn’t say you need that, you need a person who definitely can manage the three cameras. So all that to say is Kyle shoots or sets up the studio, sets up the lighting, sets up the camera, sets up the audio, sets up backup audio. ’cause We have had audio crash before and, and then kicks, uploads it online and sends it out. And I would say I’m the executive producer, I’m the podcast producer. I have an assistant to book people, but like I I also do solo rounds. So I oversee the entire production. I, you know, set the strategic direction. So all that to say is hybriding. That process is, you can start super lean and mean. You could shoot a sh a we’re on Zoom. I mean, what are we talking about? Like, we’re on Zoom. You could record this, kick this to an editor. You can start a lean process. And I think you should, I think 99% of people listening to this, putting a video podcast on YouTube and keeping it super lean at the start is smart. And then thinking about how do you scale it up? And then how do you let your team also start with the greatest level of simplicity, but then challenge yourself to get 1% better with every upload. The last thing I’ll add is I was talking to like hala to, to ha right? Who is, is yeah,
RV (36:15):
We just had her on the show a couple like fairly recently.
SC (36:18):
Yeah. And, and, and she had kind of like her video podcast on YouTube. And one of the big pivots she made was investing and having her team really chop up a powerful hook bump bubu this quote, no, no, no, this cliffhanger, a little bit of b-roll. A little bit of the stock market arrows going down. A little bit of drama. And, and that would be one of those. So even this episode recorded on Zoom recorded simply, you could just upload it. You hooked it at the beginning. If you’re as an interviewer, you could also realize I’m just starting when I start, so I need to hook it at the beginning. I’m gonna like, I’ll do that a lot of times. Like I’ll pre-write three or four bullets. And so you could keep it lean and, and do best practices and get traction. But what I would say is then over time, no reason why you can’t start doing better hooks.
SC (37:09):
And like maybe at month six month 10 little monetization coming in. How do we improve the show? Eventually you build a new house, rent a studio batch, produce four episodes in person, intermix those into things. You don’t have to go from zero to a hundred, nor do I think you would even have the, the character infrastructure, the technical infrastructure to become a diary of a CEO or PBD podcast overnight. They didn’t, they had to grow into it. But I think start simple and, and scale up as you go. And, and there’s a lot that goes into it for a world class level.
RV (37:44):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s, this is, it’s it’s a lot, but it’s like, this is starting a business. It’s, it’s a show. Like, just like you start a business as a solopreneur. You’re doing the marketing, you’re doing the sales, you’re doing the delivery, you’re doing the customer service, you do the accounting, and then you hire a person to help part-time, and then you reinvest to the next person the next. It’s like, I think that’s the menta the mindset of going, like, you’re starting a show, you’re not Mm-Hmm.
SC (38:40):
Yeah. So thanks again for having me. I think I’m Sean Cannel, your Guide to Building a Profitable YouTube channel. And you can Google me anywhere. S-E-A-N-C-A-N-N-E-L-L think media. But we also do have a free class and I think we sent you a link to that you could share with people. So if you wanna look over my shoulder and spend an hour together and we can, I’ll share as much as I can here specifically around that optimization stuff, specifically around some really tactical stuff you say, I wanna get into YouTube, I’d love to know how to jumpstart simply then we had to have a free hour long masterclass that we could link to. I’d say that’s the best next step for people that are wanting to explore this. To watch.
RV (39:21):
Yeah. Why don’t we do this? So we’ll, we’ll link to [email protected] slash think media brand builders group.com/think media. And then we will make sure that that tags and re we will get that redirected over to Sean’s place where you can watch that masterclass and go just through some of the tactics. I mean the, the, the part that’s powerful here is like, like anything, excellence is never an accident, right? This isn’t an accident, but it’s doable. And I think the other part, it’s been super clarifying for me to be like, yeah, it’s not saturated. ’cause It’s still expanding. Mm-Hmm.
RV (40:16):
And that is really hitting me hard as we have this conversation to go. You would never ask that, right? It, it, and you, you would also never say like, is, are Mexican restaurants too saturated? Like, well, if I had Mexican one day, I’m gonna have it again and again and again in different, I wanna try different restaurants. Like, so I think if you’re making, if you’re making good food and you’re making good content, there’s always gonna be a market for it if you do it right. And if, you know, if you follow some simple steps, like, yeah, there’s a number of things, but they’re all fairly simple. Like, you’re gonna, you’re gonna win. So, and and Sean is one of the guys that I’m looking to, to help, help us figure out how to do that. And I think you should too. So brother, thank you for being here. Thanks for what you do and, and how you do it in the world and what you stand for. We believe in you. I’m so honored to be your buddy and yeah, keep kicking butt man.
SC (41:10):
Rory, I appreciate you so much and thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
Ep 132: YouTube Secrets Tips and Strategies with Sean Cannell
Hey, Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show.
So recently, one of my best keynote clients asked me the question. They said, who do you know, that does YouTube and video? And I said, easy question, easy answer, Sean. Is that so you’re, and that’s who you’re about to meet. Sean Cannell is one of his, he’s a best-selling author as well, but man, he is YouTube. He is all things video. He is an international speaker. He’s built seven figure business. His videos have been viewed over a hundred million times, which I think is incredible. His YouTube channels have over 1 million subscribers, Forbes listed him as one of the 20 must watched YouTube channels that will change your business. And him and his team. I mean, they produce some of the best content ever, and they’re just on this mission to help 10,000 people, you know, do what they love. And so he gives amazing advice and just had a baby with his wife, Sonia, which is exciting. And brother, thanks for carving out some time for us.
Yeah. Rory, I’m pumped to be here. Thanks for that introduction. Yeah, I guess the other thing was you and I shared the stage also at Shaleen Johnson’s event. That was the first time that I was introduced to you. And then again at social media marketing world, just shortly thereafter. And now, and now, you know, this other client that we won’t be there at the same time, but I hope hopefully they’ll book you. And I have to say, man, the more that we’ve done, these interviews, I have just become so convicted on YouTube and there I have missed the boat, my entire career. I don’t know how, but I have somehow just completely missed what it is and, you know, so can you just kind of talk about like, obviously everyone listened to his personal brands, how do you view YouTube in the landscape of everything going on with a personal brand? Like all the other social, you know, social media outlets, website blog, like podcasting, how do you think of YouTube?
Yeah. you know, I think of course from my perspective, but I’ll back it up. I mean, I think YouTube is, is the most important place to build your personal brand. It’s the number one video site in the world by far, far and away, you know, Amazon bought Amazontube.com and the URL and people thought, okay, what are they going to do? And even if they do something, they don’t have the content library. Of course there’s Twitch and that’s kind of gaming and live streaming there’s other things. But even if a competitor was to start, it’s going to be so difficult for them to build the backlog of YouTube, let alone the technological infrastructure of distribution to mobile around the world, over 2 billion, monthly active users, the best feature set and it’s free. So I think it’s irresponsible for any serious personal brand, serious online entrepreneur, business owner, anybody that wants to share their thoughts, their wisdom, their message with the world to not be on YouTube.
I am empathetic because I understand that what with YouTube, it’s kind of like maybe the hurdle of content creation podcast, you know, audio it’s its own challenge for sure. But it’s, it’s a little bit simpler. I think some of the other social media platforms also give you more of kind of that quicker dopamine hit you. They’re able to like post on Instagram today, or even write an article on LinkedIn or a medium post. And you get it done and you didn’t have to like pull out your suit jacket, take a shower, do your hair that day, set your mic up, plan the content, figure out how you’re going to edit it. I think there’s a level of that complexity, but that keeps a lot of people if you will, out of the game that are missing out on the opportunity that if you can create a simple system to create what we would encourage one significant upload per week on YouTube it can have massive dividends.
And I think the other thing about YouTube is it doesn’t give you as much immediate gratification like, like a Tik TOK does right now, or even some of the other platforms. You get a comment, you get a, like you upload a YouTube video, you got zero views. You know, a week later you got 10 views, but you’re like, well, that’s how many my IETV got, but that was a lot easier to create. And the YouTube video took more energy. But the thing with YouTube is it’s like a fine wine. It gets better with age. It’s a content library. It’s not a content feed. You build up your thought leadership there, a body of work there. And over time you can create so much passive momentum, passive traffic. And I think the last example of that I think is important to note is there’s a reason why some of the most influential online entrepreneurs and personal brands really invest a lot in YouTube, whether it’s a Brendon Burchard, a grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk Billy Jean whether it’s just you know, a Marie Forleo whether it’s of course, a lot of the YouTube in foot, Jay Shetty, you think about these different people Lewis’ house.
Why are they investing also in YouTube, even if they’re doing a podcast as well or other things, because YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. There are so many people, there it is. It’s the town square of online video. And we are allowed to have our own shows all land the plane with this final analogy. What, what would it have been worth to buy? I looked it up a piece of land in Manhattan in New York. You can get a little lot, that’s an empty lot, so you could build on it. I looked it up just the other day. You know, real estate prices are going up. Maybe they’re going down, depends on the pandemic. But it was only 17 million, $900,000 to get that piece of real estate. And actually you can, we can connect later cause I got my license.
So I’m happy to flip that to you if you want. I wish. And, and so what, but what would that piece of real estate have costed 10 years ago? 20 years ago, especially 50 years ago. Nobody knows a future, but YouTube is such a dominant platform of where online video happens, where so much education and entertainment is consumed, where so many people are planting their flag. I think a lot of people are going to regret, not investing in YouTube even now and here. And we’re actually putting, we put an offer on a house today. Then the Vegas is a boom and bust market. We just need someplace to live. We didn’t really want to buy, but gotta live somewhere. And like, we don’t really want it. So we’re timing some things. Here’s the deal. It’s just continued to go up and up and up and up. And I looked at I’m like, it’s going to probably drop no, it keeps going up. And so I would rather get in today. It’s not too late to get into YouTube. I’d rather get in today because even if it dips a little, like if you play it out, it is where you want to really establish your voice as a personal brand in mind.
So the, the concept of getting in today. So just to talk about that, cause it’s, I think it’s a little bit overwhelming when you see exactly what you said, where it’s like, you don’t get the immediate gratification. I’m rebuilding my YouTube channel. You know, it’s taken a year to get to like 400 subscribers. I mean, it’s just like, or six, six months, it’s been like six months we’ve been doing it. And it’s just like, Oh my gosh, I’m just getting killed. Like w you know, putting energy into it. How do you get over that? How do you get over that mental block of like, I’m too late to the game? You know, it’s, it’s not worth it. I should be spending my time somewhere else. Cause I can get more traffic, you know, quicker, anything around how you think about that? Is it just what you’re saying? It’s just that long.
No, I think it’s two things. I think it’s mindset and systems and we’ll go systems first. I think the system is to just create a simple system to be consistent on YouTube. Even if you start really simple, let ask you will this episode go on YouTube? Yeah, it will. Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve already you’re this is what this is not, I mean, I’m not, I don’t want to belittle the process, but this is not that challenging. Like we’re on zoom right now. You know what I mean? Like we’re recording this interview. So, so I only have 400 subscribers. Yeah. But like also the show format, you’re doing a video podcast and that’s 400 subscribers. It’s like, it’s, if you can get this systematized and especially for those that are scaling out with a team, a virtual assistant, you just get a simple workflow going, by the way, I recommend everybody listening.
Here’s the model, a weekly video podcast. And if you are podcasting, especially during the pandemic, mostly just like this over zoom or something like stream yard or something else, like just flip the webcam on and have your guests flip the webcam on as well. That’s like the minimum viable product I think to get started with YouTube. Then you’re able to promise a weekly show. You’re able to leverage YouTube for the SEO properties. And if Amazon, if Apple podcast and Spotify and Google play is giving you more love, that’s just bonus on YouTube. And that becomes a foundational thing to get the algorithm seasoned. And then here’s your opportunity. Two things can happen if you were to layer the next strategy on top of that, the next strategy would be, well, this is 30 minutes. This is 45 minutes is you do a Joe Rogan. Does you cut out the three minutes or the five minutes?
That has more of a chance when we really touch on that, that hot button topic, that poll cause that’s the kind of stuff that gets clicked on. That’s why JRE clips, the Joe Rogan clips channel all the video podcasters that are smart, do this. They cut out the clips to go viral, to get awareness, to get more love. Because a lot of people that don’t know you yet, aren’t going to click on longer form content like this. And so that’s one way to evolve. And then the next one is not even necessarily weekly, but when you have the bandwidth, when you invest the time you study some of my work and you then actually create native YouTube videos, shorter that are meant to like pull or push all of YouTube buttons to blow up your awareness. So then cause you’re always one video away from changing your whole life in business with YouTube, you put out the right video at the right time with the right title, with the right thumbnail, with the right.
And again, maybe you don’t keep following up with that, but then they go, Oh, at least Roy has got a weekly show. So all of a sudden you go from four to 400 to 4,000 because of consistency. And because of having some smart systems because of potentially planning team and energy around when it is, you’re going to evolve into that. But in the meantime, Hey, in a year it’s 800 in another year at 1600 and YouTube does grow like a snowball, even if it is slow and steady, potentially with minimal effort, just with the videos you’re uploading here. So that’s systems, the mindset is simply that is really looking at it for the long haul, recognizing that you gotta level up with kind of the copywriting, the headline really good recommended book, Brendan Kane hook point. How do you write hooks? How do you grab people’s attention in a three-second world?
Those skill sets matter so much on YouTube, but you don’t want to get overwhelmed again. Even if you put out Sean Cannell was, you know, you’re already amazing at that, but if you just guessed, like it’s not the best title in the world, but you show up every week and keep leveling up. Then a year and a half from now, everything changes. And you’ve got a backlog and consistency for people that are like, man, now I want to go deep with this guy. Cause there was a short form star smart content that eventually kind of went viral. And in your case, my case as well, virals 10 K views, you know, it’s 25 K it’s a hundred K when you’re normally only getting 50 to a hundred and that’s so much more common when you just stick with it. And you know, I just got to pull this one on you. Then the mindset side is he got to take the stairs stairs on YouTube because there’s that moment when, when putting in the work pays off. And so that’s what I’d recommend.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I love the, I love the idea of, of your one video away from changing your life. I mean, my Ted talk is an example of that, right? It’s like, even though it’s not on my channel, I wish it was, but it’s like 4 million views later. I don’t do any, I don’t have to do any other marketing for speaking. It’s like people just email it. Hey, will you come do your Ted talk? People hire me to do a 25 minute version of the 18 minute Ted talk that’s available for free. But it’s, I mean, so I love that. And the, the other thing that this is part of why I’ve bought into YouTube finally, is what you were talking about, about how it gets better, like a fine wine, all the other social platforms. It’s like the, the longer it’s been around, the less valuable the content is YouTube is the opposite.
Just like Google, because they’re the same. So, you know, you mentioned the SEO part of the video, the, are there some basic things like you’re saying, okay, yeah. Just throw up some video content. That’s basically what we’ve been doing. We’re just now starting to you know, so we put these on brand builders channel and then I do a weekly video blog on Rory vaden.com, which is the, you know, we’re just starting to like put more into that or there’s some basic things because of the relationship between Google and YouTube and how SEO works that we need to know in terms of like, don’t, don’t miss this, right? Like if you’re not gonna take an hour to optimize every video, but if there’s two things you’re going to do when you post a video, my gosh, like don’t forget to do this on YouTube specifically. That makes it, you know, more find-able absolutely.
So there’s going to be two priorities, especially going into this next year that are critical for winning on YouTube. I’m going to share the lesser priority first, but it should be a given. It’s kind of like you, you like shouldn’t even have to mention the fundamentals because we should all assume you need to do the fundamentals, but it’s not the, the needle mover, but let’s address those first YouTube like Google needs to be optimized, like a great blog post. Your title should be attention grabbing and keyword rich still. And a keyword is what search term are you going after? You know what pain point or you’re solving? We teach ASQ answer specific questions. Just answer a specific question. And when I say answer specific questions, sometimes people think like a question, like what is personal branding? Well, that one’s probably been been touched on.
Here’s one of my favorite strategies. It’d be like how to upload a LinkedIn profile. That was a deep strategy, by the way, because when you answer like something super specific like that, if someone’s on LinkedIn, they want to build a personal brand. Maybe that question is not even answered. Well, the app was just updated. All of a sudden, those are the types of videos that have a quarter million views that are really practical and utility. And then you like it. And you’re like, and by the way, you know, I also help people with, with building their personal brands. And that’s why your other may be more personal development, softer topics actually get discovered because you get noticed cause you teach people how to install a WordPress plugin. So there’s something about answering specific questions and priority number two. Yes. The title, yes. The description should be filled out.
Like with enough words, like a good blog, post keywords, the tags YouTube has let us know these things carry less weight, but that is what’s called metadata. And it’s important. You just don’t want to cut corners there, especially when you’re just starting your YouTube channel. Youtube really doesn’t know what your video is about. So you’re giving it metadata. And that means you’ve architected the content to be actually tackling something very specific. And then of course the thumbnail, because that’s, what’s going to be what people click on or not. And so it’s like title thumbnail, tags description. And then the topic itself, that’s really the needle mover because if you’re not talking about the right things at the right time, especially, let’s say you were to talk about news, like there’s, this is what we would call trend surfing. It’s a good strategy. And that would be like related to personal branding.
You put, you extrapolate some principles out of pop culture and you commentate on somebody. They don’t know you, but they know something that’s happening in pop culture collection. We talked about how we didn’t do it, but with like we’d recognized, we totally could have personal branding mistakes from it and whatnot. And it brings awareness. So that’s actually a topic thing. That’s actually the content strategy, but all of that, I would cluster under important, but the lesser priority, the way to optimize your content going into this next year is the content itself. And what I mean is here’s how YouTube ranks videos now AVD and CTR, Oh, say those in reverse CTR click through rate. And then the second one’s average view duration. So almost all the other stuff is so much lesser important than does someone click on it. And what would determine if someone clicks on it?
Well, a great title that kind of like opens up a loop and curiosity, a thumbnail that’s also great and gets attention, but the topics almost more important because you might see it. You’re like that’s the best thumbnail I’ve ever seen. Well, I’ve never seen such a what Mark Twain couldn’t have written. And as PO Shakespeare, couldn’t have written a title as good as this. What does it matter if they’re not actually interested in the content? So your choice of topic, knowing and understanding your audience’s problems and ambitions their mindset, what keeps them up at night? What would actually get them to stop scrolling? Because that’s what they want to learn about. That’s what they want to hear about what gets you to click. You actually have to get the click, but getting the click. It’s not enough. They call it click bait. Wow, you got the click, but you trick me.
I don’t want to watch. So AVD average view duration, AKA watch time, right? Another way of putting it is just how long do people spend on the video? So then once you start the video, it’s actually the architecture of the content. So I would challenge you. I watched some of your stuff, this probably maybe a long time ago. Maybe you still need to do this in this next year. Quality over quantity matters. And it’s quick to be able to set your phone up and maybe just record real time for seven, five to seven minutes or 13 minutes on a topic. People who know you will endure that, but there’s so many people that are just putting more effort into at least editing out the breaks at any hour, ums, structuring their content, putting something powerful in the beginning. I’m not saying it needs fancy production value, but you’ve really optimize that content to hold viewer attention.
You’re really thinking about creating open loops, if possible, to have people go. You’re even more. So if you teach and you can have visuals, even if you do like kind of a webinar style and you share some things, you bring people from point a, B, C, D in the video. If you can hit an average view duration of eight minutes and a click through rate of over 10%, which your YouTube analytics will show you, YouTube will keep showing your video to more and more and more and more and more audiences through suggested 10% or higher 10 20, 30. And it’s crazy over eight minutes because if YouTube sees, so if you a couple of metrics and these are all taken with a grain of salt, but some good targets, a good target length of a video is 15 minutes. A good chance of a great 15 minute video will have an average view duration of about half that around eight minutes.
And if the topic has a wide enough reach that people click through it at 10%, meaning when YouTube shows and recommends it and impression someone clicks through and then stays on it at that percentage, then that’s what could potentially spread throughout the algorithm. And if you don’t hit those numbers, but you raise those numbers, people dwell and watch your videos longer. And then people are clicking through on your videos. More those priority. Number two, title, topic, covering a trend. All of that is very important. It’s like just the fundamentals, but those are the levers, which how do you optimize those? The content itself it’s taken some time practically editing. Like I don’t care if you shoot your video on your phone, get it to an editor that can actually make it more interesting, more poppy and like, think about, about faster, because everyone’s rushed. You know, everyone wants it.
It makes me think sometimes we’ll do something like this. That’s, you know, 30 minutes. But a lot of times we bond YouTube. If you took you 10 minutes to record the video on your phone, chances are a good editor could make that five and a half. And the difference between that 10 minute, just like free flowing train of thought versus just edited down is everything on YouTube. You know, this isn’t unlike English and there’s the English teacher story who had the class write a paper on a topic. And they had them write a six page paper. So he had to write a six page paper. And they were like, all right. So just choose a topic, six page paper, then they turn it in and then you send it all in. And then he handed it back to him and he said, look, I want you to cut this in half. And they were like, what?
You want us to cut 50%
Of this paper? Then he said, yeah, I want you to cut it in half because I want it to be stronger, more punchy, better. And they’re like, that’s insane. There’s no way. Okay, fine. So then they go to work and the class goes back to work, cuts their six page papers into three page papers. Then they turn them all in and then the teacher goes awesome. Great job. Hey, before actually we finished this out. I’m going to hand these back to you. I want you to cut these in half again.
What a page and a half are you kidding? Like from six to eight,
This is insane. He said, I want you to do it. And so then they cut it all the way down to a page and a half. Well, how strong was that content? By the time it got down to a page and a half, it’s what probably any great journalists would learn when they have to fit a complex thoughts into just an article in the New York times. So how can you make your content half short and twice strong? That’s sort of the idea of optimizing the content, grabbing attention, creating a story that has tension, a climax conflict resolution and holds attention. If you, I’m not saying that’s easy, but that’s like the key of YouTube right now. And to alleviate some pressure, just upload your weekly video podcast. And when you want to take a shot at maybe editing something down more or apply some of that editing to the clips channel, you go, man, during that conversation, we hit a point that’s strong that’s that’s title that one point, let’s settle that.
And let’s make this three minute clip, five minute clip, seven minute clip that just really directly delivers that promise. Let’s do a good thumbnail. And for example, Joe Rogan does it all the time. Like of course celebrity meets topic, but like Elon Musk shares opinion on Corona virus. And you know, you’re like what? And you see it. And of course you just clicked through all they’re doing is sitting there and talking, but it’s delivering like one idea. One question, one, answer, one video on sort of that you got to click on it. You want to think about how you can do that for your own content.
So if you’re saying a target length of 15 minutes and you’re trying to like cut it in half, does that mean you’re recording like a 25 minute and then trying to edit it down to 15? I mean, that’s interesting to hear you say 15 minutes and that’s low that’s long time. But you’re saying that that kind of, I mean, I don’t know if you would classify that as longer form content, but you know, like normally I am for five to seven and they end up being more like eight or 10, which then if we chopped it down, it would be like five or six. But you’re saying try that, that it’s good to have videos up there that are longer than 15 minutes because the, the AVD is higher.
The videos should be as long as they need to be, but as short as possible. So if you’re your eight should be fours and your thirties should be fifteens. And so, so I only put that out there because the average iteration of a 15 minute video, if it’s great will probably be eight minutes and YouTube loves videos that cross that eight minute threshold, but there’s no reason to try to inflate your content. Three’s great fours. Great. If you look at think media right now, our main channel, we spend a lot of time around six minutes, seven, but sometimes the content goes to 12 or 13 and it’s usually for a reason, doesn’t mean it holds attention. But if we’re we’re teaching somebody how to use a particular camera and walking them through all the settings, well, it takes 13 minutes to do that. My thought is, if you take 26 minutes to do that, when it could have been 13 a competitor, let’s say teaching on the same camera when you hold that viewer attention that YouTube is going to love you more.
Now, if both are pretty good and that person’s personality is so great and they do it in 30 minutes, we do it in 15, but they end up with 18 minutes of watch time. And we end up with like 12 minutes of watching that YouTube wants time on platform. Of course, there’s nuances to the algorithm period. End of story. How can you hold viewers attention longer? And so maybe the other way to attack this challenge is just definitely trimmed. The fluff, definitely think about dead spots. You know, I recently let me give you one example of, of actually how we practically do this. I do a show called coffee with Cannell. I livestream it. So I try to be pretty good as a communicator, but there nobody can be as good as a video editor on top of a community. There’s no way you could pause it.
Video editing is always going to make it stronger even to the point where a lot of people trim out ums and some breaths are long pauses because YouTube just likes people want that content. You know, there’s a reason we probably listened to audio books and podcasts sometimes on 1.2 or 1.5 or two X YouTube saying, Hey, just give it to me. And viewers are saying, just give it to me, you know, as fast as possible. So I don’t even have to turn it up to two X speed. And so I do, what’s called coffee with Cannell. I record the content. And then because we now have two channels, I almost have like a channel where I experiment it’s called think marketing. And then I’ll, I’ll put the hottest parts on think media that are like worthy of have taken off with. Great.
I want to ask you about that, about the channels. Okay. Well, where do you use the delineation between this should be its own channel versus like a, you know, you can, I think they’re called categories, right? You can go, I can have, I can just have several categories, like you know, like the, like you you’ve used this example a couple of times, the long form content is over here, but then the short edited clips live on a different channel. Like, is it by length? Is it topic? Like, how do you determine, Oh, I should move this to its own channel because then you’re also kind of fragmenting the viewers, but they’re getting a more focused experience.
Yeah. That’s a great question. I actually think it’s something you shouldn’t even worry about until your, you get to a hundred thousand subscribers. Yeah. So it’s kind of like, like if you’ve got your main channel, you could upload your video podcast there and also your clips there and also your one-off videos there. And also the seven week blog series when you’re touring on the road, because it’s all just building up momentum around the one channel for us, it was actually kind of creating two different brands. Think media was sort of my strategy as well as tech reviews and camera reviews combined. And this is a really powerful YouTube tip that the channel suffered for from is you never want to upload a video that subs the subscriber didn’t subscribe for. That’ll kill you on YouTube this year. You never want to upload a video that the subscribers didn’t subscribe for.
That’s how the trend strategy could backfire. Because if people thought you were always going to be political, I mean, you should do it anyways, potentially cause you want the growth and the reach, but it doesn’t make sense. Like I’ve learned this. If somebody is like, okay, Sean does camera reviews. And then I’m talking about social media strategy. They don’t want to watch that. Now. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t do it. I’m suggesting that you should know the rules and then break them intentionally and understand that it’s like, well, that’s why because they clicked subscribe because they want more camera reviews. So they don’t click on your next video, which kills it in the algorithm. Like anybody that doesn’t engage with your most recent upload and scrolls past it on any platform signals to YouTube, Oh, we shouldn’t show this to any more people. So the dream is to have a clear value proposition of your channel and continually deliver on that value proposition.
It’s almost like a target where you could on the bulls-eye is great. Those are your best performing videos, but you don’t want to like completely miss the dartboard. You don’t want to completely miss the dartboard. You’re like, it’s kind of like it’s tied in if I go to the far outskirts, but that’s about as far away from my core promise, my core value proposition that I want to go. So we just were really steering our channel. Think media, really towards tech how to use cameras, how to use your light. What is the best light black Friday tech specials for creator gear. And then we started to think marketing. When we launched a video podcast and our minimum effective dose was at least our weekly Tuesday video podcast show on think marketing. And then it also gave us though a chance to just experiment. So especially when the pandemic happened, we started a show called coffee with candle.
Cause all my traveling got canceled and I started answering people’s questions, had their tourists on our team, started to think marketing live show. And they started to be like one hour, 90 minutes, even two hours. We’d bring people on and talk to them side by side on stream yard and answer questions. Just try to do community and try to build momentum. But what we now do is we teach for 15 to 30 minutes at the beginning and sometimes that content can be really dialed in. Great. So to land a plane on the strategy the other day I did it, it was 30 minutes long, about 28. And my editor, one of my editors did it, did an edit of it. And I went back to him and I said, we got a half short twice, twice. You know, I was like, I maybe like to hear myself talk, but like this whole story, that’s not essential.
Let’s take that thing out. And four minutes was gone. It was kind of like, it didn’t help the content. And I was like, this part right here, I took 10 seconds or 25 seconds to click around. Cause I was sharing my screen to show people. I’m like, you got to cut that down. And, and he’s typically on top of it, but I was sorta like, you know, it was maybe he’s like, he just did a quick intro, outro, whatever I’m like, bro, you need to like, this thing needs to be optimized because that’s, that’s the difference between it doing well. Let’s say with people who know you and trust you, right, as soon as you hit like a lull and you know this, cause you’re a master speaker and architect, you know, it’s like, you’ve tried different things. You’re like, okay, that story bombs. Like I lose the audience during that time.
I lose attention during that time. So masters of YouTube, which let me encourage you and everyone to that, if you can learn these types of skills, which I would argue is not an option. You have to learn how to master getting attention in a 20, 21 and beyond world. It’s just the name of the game. Janell, Elena is a great example. She went from zero subscribers to 1.3 million in three weeks with three videos. Whoa. So you don’t actually necessarily, it’s not like, Oh, if I did it, if you put out the right video with the right title, with the right thumbnail, with the right tie you know, tags and the whole deal, that’s on the right topic. And it’s a good optimized video. Youtube. It can just blow you up overnight. And maybe the strategy becomes not being so stressed. Like hope is not a strategy.
Just thinking that, like Sean said, I’m going to eventually hit it, but, but creating a system and having a mindset of taking the stairs, but leveling up those little tweaks little by little because you go okay. Once I feel that once I hit my moment and arguably, I like to encourage a lot of people use your season and obscurity to prepare you for popularity. Oftentimes people are not ready for a viral video. So if you’re building a backlog of a catalog in a backlog and you’re dialing in your YouTube strategy, you’ll be able to sustain it after you go viral and keep following up with, with a level, if you will. And again, viral could be a 33,000 viewed video that grows your channel 3000 subscribers. Now you have that core audience that really changes everything for your topic, your niche, how you not, how you help people.
And so I had Kyle edit that video down. So we took a 28 minute video out of a really long live stream. Cause I went into Q and a and knocked about nine minutes off it. So it went till about 18. It’s still like a longer teaching. I wasn’t, I’m not worried about the time if you will. I was like, it has to be 15 or it has to be, it just has to all count. As far as what’s left in there, we got to trim the fat trim, the fluff that was I, my bro, I, I repeated myself and stumbled all over my words. That whole part was unnecessary. I agree. Yes it was. And so then dialing that in and that might start with you as your own editor. It might start with you with the mindset as you’re maybe coaching somebody else. Zero, very unlikely that you’re just going to find somebody who just gets this unless you like connect them to our movement. And we just we’ll train them for you. But like, you know, you probably just keep coaching, keep tweaking. And those small tweaks eventually lead to giant peaks on YouTube.
I like it. Sean canal, kennel. I say it wrong every time Canales, how you actually say it, right? Sean Cannell rhymes with YouTube channel. Nice. That’s that’s it Sean Cannell. You guys check him out. I mean, we could go on and on. There is so much stuff. He’s one of my favorite people to follow that I actually follow. And I learned a ton from him and his team really, really, really great stuff. I love this. I think, you know, use your season of obscurity to prepare you for popularity. Isn’t that true in also a spiritual sense and a financial sense and the every other sense buddy, we just wish you the best. Thanks for pumping out such great content all the time and for sharing some of your secrets here and you know, keep it going brother. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me on