The Exchanges

Q know, Patty, you, You work with the biggest creators in the game. You've worked with Mr. Beast. You've worked with small creators who become big creators, the Noah Kagan's of the world. Um, I see you out there. So, uh, I'm excited to hear what you, what you've got in this cheat sheet. By the end of this pod, what's, what's someone going to be able to, to take away?

A I think the main thing for me when it comes to The sort of basis of what I teach with YouTube is that YouTube is not a video platform. Like everyone thinks YouTube is like YouTube videos, obviously. And you know, I'm being a bit silly, but realistically, most people look at YouTube and say, I need to make a video. What I love for people to think about by the end of this call is I need to make a video. But before that, I need to understand what video to make the strategy behind choosing ideas. Packaging. So when a YouTuber says packaging, they're referring to title thumbnail, basically like the packaging of a product, just in how, when you're building a startup or a consumer product or whatever it might be, you have to think about your marketing, your branding, your packaging. The same is true for a YouTube video. Um, and that's a big difference when it comes to other platforms, like even something like a TikTok where content is served to you, YouTube, there is still that decision made by the user of clicking on a video. Um, So I'd love for people just to have a really good understanding of how to think about that. And, um, I also have a bit of a, like a, a month by month plan. So if anyone is, you know, watching this podcast and is like, Hey, next 12 months, I want to like build a, a channel maybe for their personal brand, for their company to just like learn the game of YouTub…

AI assessment note: “What I love for people to think about by the end of this call”

Q I changed it to He built a startup using AI that prints money. Full tutorial in brackets. Put that, you know, it's a, right now it's already at three on 10, you know, 10 in an hour, it went from a 10 on 10 to a three on 10, and the comments section and everything, and it's like, damn it. What do you think? What do you think about that?

A Well, I think what you're describing is a very, like, It's a common thing that YouTube is often fine, which is like, Hey, like I've put effort into something. Cause you described this was like IRL. You got these cameras, spent this money. You put effort into something which is important, but it's less important than packaging. So like you could do incredible. I have a friend in Austin who is this like, He's shot advertisements for like Porsche, Aston Martin, um, Adidas. Like he's like this incredible, like creative mind. He gets no views on YouTube. You know, his videos are incredible. Every time I watch them, I'm like, this should get more views, but it's because his content isn't packaged. He's not actually a really good title thumbnail, uh, wizard when it comes to his content. So the point you're making, I don't, I don't think that contradicts the point of that YouTube is a stable algorithm. It's just that Maybe you dislike a little bit of what that game is in that sense. Like, hey, I put this effort into something that wasn't rewarded. But, um, to me, I would look at that and say, well, it's still, even if something is not, even if something is focused on being quite clickbait in some ways, or like being over the top, exaggerating, like using superlatives, At least we can say, well, that's what works, and we can build around that.

AI assessment note: “You put effort into something which is important, but it's less important than packaging.”

Q Yeah. I mean, this is, I wish I had this when I was starting out. Could you, Can you just walk us through it?

A Totally. Totally. So month one to four, so your first kind of four months on YouTube, if you're starting from scratch, so zero videos posted. I like to look at this as the establishment phase. So it's kind of like figuring out what we are, what we're doing, like, what are we even doing here? And just trying to kind of get to grips with the platform. A big mistake I think people make is they listen to people like me and other people talking about YouTube strategy. Too early and that pollutes their thinking and they end up like overthinking content, spending too long trying to make a video, trying to be perfect from the beginning. And I mean, it's the same with business, right? Like, you know, you can do all like the seminars, you can learn all the stuff, read all the books, but you know, if in four months you haven't launched anything, you haven't done anything, like it doesn't matter. So first four months for me, um, step one, find your niche. Like I really liked your point you brought up there a minute ago about niche versus sub niche. So kind of find what your niche or sub niche is. I like using the triple Venn diagram, so find the intersection between what you love, what you're good at, and what people want to watch. Very simple in theory, hard in execution, but I think when you're trying to identify what your niche is, whether that is your personal brand, whether that is so…

AI assessment note: “So month one to four, so your first kind of four months on YouTube”

Q Right. So I think the, the prompt there for people is if I doubled my effort here, What would that look like and how would that affect the, the product, which is the video?

A Yeah, absolutely. Um, these things also go in like really interesting flows where I feel 10 years ago on YouTube and for people that remember YouTube 10 years ago, it was daily vlogging. It was Casey and I start posting a video every day. It was Logan Paul and Jake Paul doing their like daily vlog, uh, getting in trouble. Then we went into this period of, like, the Mr. Beastification of YouTube in some ways, and YouTubers starting to realize that quality was, like, highly rewarded. And that goes to extremes on the other side, where, like, I have encountered creators that get five or six million views a video, and they post once a year. For anyone interested, type in James Janney on YouTube. He's a, a creator friend of mine from London. He posts a video probably twice a year and has a full business, does really well, has people working for him, but he just makes really, really high quality documentaries and he's able to sustain himself from just one or two videos a year. So yeah, I think one a week is a good medium place though, because like when people learn that information, what's funny about that is like, let's be honest, like if James, my friend in London was able to post a great documentary every month, he'd make way more money and would be way more successful. I think he would admit that as well. And, uh, a funny conversation I had with Jimmy, Mr. Beast, uh, when I first,…

AI assessment note: “YouTubers starting to realize that quality was, like, highly rewarded.”

Q is if I newsjack, meaning if I create a video that You know, is based on some news event like TikTok is shutting down. Here's the five things you need to do. Those videos end up outperforming by two, three, four, five X. So how do you, how should people think about, you know, newsjacking timely content versus what you call evergreen content and could newsjack content become evergreen content?

A Totally. Yeah. So I think that's a really good point because a great example you'll see is sometimes like a YouTube strategist like myself will be like, you should spend more time making videos. You should make really quality videos so they become evergreen. But if a channel that's audience is news based, you know, covers the California wildfires, You know, three, four weeks after it's happened, no one cares. The news has moved on. So I think that's a really good point. I think, um, I always like to think of channels. If you are a channel that covers a lot of news events, you're either all in on news and then you have to sort of admit that you're not going to see good catalog viewership, um, at least compared to what you could do with other formats. But for most channels, I don't think, you know, even in your case, I don't think you're all in on like being super time specific all the time. So I think it's just about having a nice mix and balance of, yes, I make time specific videos, but I also make videos that are, have a longer tail and that aren't just as focused on right now. The difficult thing that I noticed is even when you're thinking about this for your content, you say, you know, it's performance three or four times better. That might be true for sure, but The timeline over which you're measuring might be quite short because of how just naturally YouTube shows you, oh,…

AI assessment note: “I think it's just about having a nice mix and balance”

Q Were they using tools or it's more like they're drinking Red Bull and coming up with ideas?

A Drinking Rebel come up with ideas. Um, definitely like the tools, like I mentioned, the one out tens, the, uh, view stats, um, even just like using YouTube yourself and, you know, searching for popular videos, but a lot of it is just like spamming ideas, honestly. Um, and I really do think about it as like, And so something I'll talk about a little bit later. I read it, I believe in a book about Steve jobs, but this idea of like a 110 one, when they're thinking of like innovations and ideas instead of Apple, just like realizing that some of it is just like volume. Like if you get enough volume, you put it into an effective filtering system, your quality is going to improve. Um, and I think that's very true for ideation. Um, and then my point here is like, try to start brainstorming around outliers. So at the beginning, I do think it's very useful to focus most of your attention on, okay, we've established a channel. Now we're in the improvement phase. What is really working in the niche? Let's make a list of all the things that are working in the niche using tools like we've mentioned. And then for each one of those ideas, let's brainstorm four or five ways we could change, adapt, twist this idea into something new for ourselves. And one of my favorite things to do is Look at my niche and then find what I would describe as like kind of niches that are vertical to it are very si…

AI assessment note: “Drinking Rebel come up with ideas. Um, definitely like the tools”