I packed 15 years of my YouTube experience into this one video so you could learn every single thing you need to know to grow your YouTube channel today includes my best tips for my interviews with the biggest YouTubers including stuff you haven't seen yet that's the first time I've ever talked about it publicly really I get into the science of that if you wanted to boom boom boom boom like I mean that was crazy this video also includes moments from our behind the scenes you're going to have to seal John's footage he's got a lot of good and you'll also get the exact templates and tools that I learned from my very first upload in 2010 to working inside YouTube and Instagram to now being a fulltime Creator joh I love your story I'm going to pick his brain once the cameras are up but you are just so brilliant I'm watching your show because I'm trying to learn about you too you're very good at what you do and don't worry this isn't the outdated and obvious tips that you already know we're going to be getting into the Practical stuff that you could use immediately okay my hope with this video is to make it one of the most helpful videos about YouTube on YouTube and I know that sounds crazy but I really believe that the stuff we're about to cover is gamechanging whether you're a new Creator or you're growing and you want to grow faster and because I always want to go above and beyond I organize all the templates and tools and Graphics from this video plus a ton of other free bonus material into my YouTube growth hackpack which you can get for free at yack pack.com or just scan this QR code and Beyond the templates from this video you'll also get the 100 viral video ideas Playbook with ideas for any Niche my 10 intro templates to improve your hooks my confidence on camera Master Class the exact thumbnail templates that I've used to get millions of views on these videos and so much more all for free okay let's dive in our first tip is to use visual anchors so here's the truth too many creators make videos that are way better off as articles or written posts on X or LinkedIn period and that's something I learned from my interview with one of YouTube's best storytellers Johnny Harris he said this if there's a million good stories that should be reported on my philosophy is that only 900 of them should be told as videos and when I asked Johnny how he filters which ideas should be videos versus text he said two words visual anchors and here's a perfect example of that I wanted to focus on the border between Columbia and Venezuela where there was this massive migration crisis happening and most Outlets were going there and sort of filming just people coming across the border right when I got to the town where that was happening I definitely went and filmed that but then I looked around and said like what else is happening here and there were a couple visual anchors that were just hiding in plain sight that no one else was covering one of them was there was a a vendor on the side of the street who was making um sculptures out of money out of out of currency Venezuelan bolars that were now worth nothing because of the hyperinflation crisis he was taking that and using it as a raw material to make baskets and like Swan sculptures and all this stuff that ended up being like these this beautiful art but it was so symbolic you don't have to know anything about macroeconomics about the geopolitics of South America to see that something's going on here this guy's using money to make sculptures and so that was a visual anchor that to me is the best use of video to bring somebody in and really hook them into a topic that maybe they wouldn't look at otherwise you know it's a difference between Show versus tell showing bills so worthless that people are making sidewalk origami out of them is much more powerful than a reporter just telling you about inflation and don't worry you don't have to fly to foreign countries like Johnny did to find ual anchors you can use this thing called the napkin test which I talked about in my interview with Cleo Abram who is one of the fastest growing YouTubers right now you know what a good video is if you and I sat down for coffee and uh I was telling you a story about something interesting and the moment when I need to pull out like a napkin and draw a diagram or show you something on my phone and pause it and be like you see this like that's a good video otherwise it should just be an essay because that's much easier to write simply put the visual anchor test or the napkin test works like this imagine you're explaining the idea for your next YouTube video to a friend do you have to one draw anything on a napkin to prove your point two pull out your phone to show them a photo or three repeat words like this or that to point out anything as you explained if the answer was yes to any of the above congrats you have a visual anchor if not your idea is better off as a written post or really not worth your time at all and to go even deeper you may be wondering all right what's the best way to find anchor visuals for your videos like imagine there was a place where you could could sort through a bunch of anchor visuals for your Niche every single week well that place exists and it's called Reddit you just have to know how to use it in the right way so here's the tactic go to Reddit type in your Niche or topic and check out the subreddits or forums that show up for example here's a subreddit that I used to check all the time when I used to make videos about the best marketing and advertising campaigns and the first time you go to your subreddit this is key make sure you filter by top and all time so you see the best posts the best visuals which kind upvoted in this case by over 450,000 members of this subreddit like it's basically a prev vetted visual anchor if you want to make a video about marketing and packaging and and it's so cool to see that cuz it just starts giving you more ideas for longer video and then here's where things really start rolling you can literally go back to that same subreddit every week or every month just change all time to a weekly and you can see all the best visuals showing up over time like this hilarious ad from the city of La trying to hire a graphic designer that's been uploaded in the past week and then think about like this if you find a lot of visual anchors using this process then you have enough to start scripting a long form YouTube video if you only find a few visual anchors your idea is probably better off as a short Tik Tok or real and again if you find none then probably your idea is better off as a text post and we'll talk about the best way to script and weave all these visuals together coming up and bonus tip you don't have to just use Reddit you can look at Instagram Community Pages Facebook groups you know anything that has a bunch of people posting about your your niche in up voting and vetting the best stuff to the top so you know you're looking at something that is already of Interest I just find that Reddit is where a lot of things break first like I remember um when I worked at Instagram I was chatting with a few people at BuzzFeed um during their Heyday about how they'd find their viral video ideas and they were literally telling me this thing that I never forget when something gets posted on Reddit on Monday it ends up on BuzzFeed on Tuesday then it gets picked up on social media on Wednesday and then it shows up on Facebook next month their words not mine is true so research visual anchors on Reddit the next tip is to make your intros rainy on YouTube great videos are killed by Boring intros all the time so remember to make it rainy r a i n y hear me out this means your intro has to check the following five boxes or at least as many of them as possible and I'll show you how I did it with a few examples of intros that got 74% retention and 60% retention so r r stands for result up front in your you got to tease the result the viewer will get if they watch your video like where is it going what are you going to deliver the value or at least pose the question that your video will answer highlight the stakes and make sure it Peaks enough curiosity to watch and again I'll show you a few examples of how to do that for both unscripted and scripted videos here in a moment a stands for address the objection call out the elephant in the room before your viewers even think about it listen viewers today are sharper than ever before because they have more options than ever before and that means their BS detectors are on high alert like you can say the r the result of your video and your intro but they're already calling BS in their minds whether it's subconscious or conscious and you need to address it I stands for instant for long form your intros should be around 45 seconds or less and don't worry we'll talk about what that means for short form n stands for why now like why is your YouTube video relevant right now is there a trend a change or something in the news that makes your video more timely and why stands for why you like why are you the person to deliver this message and don't get me wrong that doesn't mean you have to change who you are for a YouTube intro that just means you have to highlight the right parts about your background so here are two examples of how you could do that one for unscripted which are videos like Vlogs man on the street interviews and another for scripted like Talking Heads video essays so it can apply to any video you're making cuz I know there's a lot of different creators out there so let's start off with an intro for an unscripted video where you don't control what happens you can't control what's said after you press record and here's example of my interview with Liza Koshi that nearing 1.9 million views and the intro has 74% retention so let's play it and I'll break down how we structured it be reading a lot of comments on your videos Liza and a lot of them talk where you at upload hello we'll talk about that why is the Koshi quit YouTube one of the biggest creators on the platform disappears although I was at like my peak in terms of numbers in terms of eyes and Partnerships a Koshi everybody the fastest growing YouTuber ever I just I needed me I missed me and I refus to be ignored who is ignoring you who is ignoring Liza Koshi you know so how did we make this intro rainy well we sorted through every single moment from this hourlong interview and here's where we landed for the r the result right away we showing you that if you watch you'll find out why Liza Koshi one of the biggest YouTubers ever left the platform at her height with over 15 minutes ion subscribers and that's what I titled the video as well which is another way to communicate the result then immediately I addressed your objection which is the next line we put in the intro because most people would just assume like there's no way that Liza Koshi actually talks about why she left YouTube but she does she doesn't dance around it she even makes a joke about it and during the actual interview we deliver on this by diving deeper the I is for instant and again this entire intro lasts about 34 seconds which is well below the 45 second threshold the why now the N well this video came out during a time when Liza had left YouTube at her height but she never really talked about it in a full sitdown interview until now and then the Yu well I made sure to includes lines and questions from myself where I push back and I challenge her in this intro like really like who is ignoring you so the viewer knows like oh crap this is not going to be a cakewalk this interviewer is going to ask what's on our mind and you know you have to remember that making an intro for an unscripted video does not mean you have to be unstructured about it in fact how you structure those moments and sound bites according to the rainy framework can make all the difference now next up here's an intro for a scripted video which typically means a talking head video like this one which is another popular format on YouTube and the intro that we're about to watch is from a video that I made a few years ago called X YouTube employee explains how to grow on YouTube but let's watch the intro then we'll break it down because I actually used a lot of the same tactics in this video the rules of how to grow a YouTube channel have completely changed this year and I would know I used to work at YouTube for 5 years then worked at Instagram for 3 years and then I started this Channel and I wanted share seven unconventional tips that led me to get millions of views per day and it's not the obvious stuff that everyone is talking about it's stuff I don't think people have heard before the r is simple it's tips to grow on YouTube that's what you get if you watch the a that I address the objection is that most viewers who watch videos like this are like oh these are the same old tips that I've heard before like be authentic or be consistent so I'm like no no no this is not those same old tips and I have to overd deliver on that obviously but again addressing the objection I is for instant and this intro is about 43 seconds long the Y now this video came out during a time when shorts was still new and changed how careers approach their channel so I wanted to lean into that moment and the Yu well simply is I worked at YouTube and I've been on the inside I launched many of these features that you use today and honestly I know I sometimes lean on that too much but make no mistake about it you don't need to be associated with a brand or have a professional experience to make a video about a topic so here's a bonus tip you could use the guinea pig method where you put yourself through an experience to answer that y you question and here's two examples from two amazing creators named shervin shares and Sam Reed like Sherin is not a foot doctor so how did he answer that Yu question well he only wore barefoot shoes for a thousand days and emphasize that in the intro and title which makes viewers way more intrigued to hear his perspective versus the many other shoe review videos out there and for Sam well what's actually crazy about this one is that I gave a talk about this video to Taco Bell and Sam isn't a nutritionist or anything but him eating only Taco Bell for 30 days to see if it's the healthiest fast food makes his intro all the more compelling now of course that's an extreme example and I wouldn't recommend it for obvious health reasons but the point here is this think about how you can make the Yu part of your intro and video stronger since that often takes the most work and again the free YouTube hack pack that I mentioned includes a lot more intro templates and examples like the contrarian hook or the shock value hook the challenge hook and more so you could put this all into practice immediately all right moving to the the next tip follow the five C's you already know how important thumbnails are to getting people to click on your videos so I made this checklist that I'll show you in a moment inspired by my interview with one of the best to ever do it Marquez brownley okay so thumbnails have two things they have to look good really small MH and then they have to obviously get you intrigued and maybe get the video started without actually getting the video started so Marquez talked about two things when it comes to thumbnails but I actually think there are five and I call it the five C's composition context clean curiosity and color the first C is composition meaning does the framing or the angles or the leading lines draw you in the first thumbnail here is so captivating because it comes from the point of view of a person holding on to those chairs for dear life and the leading lines down the corridor I mean this is just a masterpiece of a thumbnail the second one comes from Isaiah photo and it's so well composed of the camera being positioned above his head the prime bottles all all around him like you could tell that he took time to frame and compose this shot properly the second C is context so too many creators design their thumbnails without any context of where it'll show up they design it on a giant screen so it may look good on desktop but like Marquez says uh it has to look good when small on mobile so here's a rule I like to use if you scale down your thumbnail to 18% can you still read it if not you got to simplify it and you can see in these examples you can clearly see the headphones the ball the text the spider it still pops even when it's smaller the next C is clean too many thumbnails are a cluttered mess the rule to remember is this does your thumbnail have three elements or less like this first one has the head the text the pink foam the second one from Tyler Blanchard has his head the text a grenade it it's simple and clean the next C is curiosity meaning does your thumbnail pose a question that viewers immediately want answered and this could be done with blurring or blocking out of an element like unbox therapy did or contradicting something like you seen this fake model thumbnail that Zach did and again this one has great composition too look at those leading lines they just draw your eye in so the more C's you could check off the list the better and the last C is the most powerful and that's color meaning do you pair colors in a way that draws the eye and for that you want to refer to the color wheel and pair of primary colors with the complimentary ones like Ryan Tran's hair and shirt in this thumbnail are yellowish gold so it's not an accident that he made the chairs around him purple or Michelle car pairing the primary color of blue of her blazer and glove with orange jumpsuit and the orangish brown background brilliant and you know it's really w I was playing around with the new chat GPT 40 and you could literally take these thumbnails or any thumbnail that aderes to the 5c's and then like take a selfie of yourself um and then put in a prompt that's like please replace the person in this thumbnail with me and keep their wardrobe and facial expression the same and then you like look at this this is crazy you'll get these thumbnails and to be clear I'm not recommending you do this at all I'm just showing you how powerful these tools are becoming especially if you know the 5c's so obviously there's a lot of ethical questions and and you know there's a lot of things to unpack and discuss here but the point is that even you could like put in a sketch like this now and get a great thumbnail back in no time I mean just understanding these 5c's is a game changer and I created about 90 more examples of great thumbnails in the YouTube hack pack that I mention I I know I keep bringing that up but I really believe it puts so much to this in practice but the bottom line is you don't need to hit all the 5c's with your thumbnail but the the more the better the next tip is to test macro than micro so YouTube recently launched a thumbnail testing tool and there's a really clever way to use it that few creators have caught on to so quick background this thumbnail testing tool is a relatively new feature where you can upload three thumbnail variations and here's an example from a Casey neistat interview and basically YouTube shows those three variations to different segments of viewers and after a few days it selects a winning thumbnail based on which one drives the most watch time to your video and no surprise but Mr B is using this tool in a really creative way that few others are during our interview he broke down his step-by-step process on his protect the yacht video Step One is he uploaded three thumbnails with macro big changes like the angle of the shot his face the different items from the gun the clothing the bomb step two he let YouTube select the best performing thumbnail after a few days simple step three he then made micro changes to the winning thumbnail like a different shirt or a person on the boat like very small and then step four he typically will continue to make micro changes until the test results aren't that different Ryan Tran did the same with this video I tested onear hotels like first he had macro variations text shirt composition then after YouTube selected the best performing one he made micro changes just to the text everything else stayed the same a lot of time these creators will run tests like this for months but I know not everyone has the team or the time to do that so just try to run at least two thumbnail tests to squeeze as as much juice out of your video first macro changes then micro continue until you see a clear winner and then move on to your next video so the next tip is fix your first frame so most of what we've covered till now is for long form videos but this tip is specifically for shorts because your first frame in your shorts is as important as your thumbnail and intro and your long form and what I mean by your first frame is literally what do you see at 0 seconds of your short your Tik Tok or your real it all applies and the key is to making sure you set up the expectation and intention for what is about to happen for example I have a short form series with over 250 million views where I ask people on the street who's more famous creators or celebrities who are these two people is that Logan Paul and uh I don't know who the other one Tom Clooney Tom Clooney That's My Boy uh he be fighting and that's my man that be acting and my first frame for these videos is really dialed in where I have this physical print out with the faces of a Creator and celebrity so you immediately get but honestly it did not start out like that like it took lots of iteration because my first attempts were just terrible I did this whole boring monologue where I said hey guys we're here in Hollywood asking people who's more famous creators or celebrities first up we have Logan Paul versus Tom Hanks like way too long then I had a shorter version of that question and prompt and then I had an even shorter question where I said who are these two people you saw the faces and We're Off to the Races which bring me to a bonus tip whenever possible use props like printouts to show it physically not just digitally with Graphics like most creators do with all the editing tools available today and here's another example Keegan Evans has this amazing format where he makes videos based on a random product and a random genre by putting them in two bowls in the frame and putting note cards in them like he'll pick a card that says Oreo and then action movie for the genre and he'll make that into a short video it's really good but the way he sets it up physically and has everything in the first frame is a great example here's another one for my shorts where we compare Creator products to Fortune 500 products I Tred to make my first frame as visual as possible the bottled the blindfolds everything is right there physically but if I'm being honest I think Logan did this much better with his first frame where he did a similar video because he shows everything more clearly with even fewer Graphics he brought the bottles up in the frame he put sugar on the table when comparing the sugar count and he wrote out different note cards to show you things about Gatorade vers Prime and you know I actually had a chance to ask Casey neistat about this because he draws things on his hands he makes cutouts print outs better than nearly anyone and he said this is why it helps so much with retention I think that's infinitely more interesting than sort of an optical text that you type into into um you know Premiere video editing used to be a highly specialized thing very few people knew how to do it 30 years ago there's only a few video editors and now like you know my nine-year-old teaches my wife how to edit videos and then during our interview he said this quote that I'll never forget Perfection erases Humanity when something is truly perfect there's no kind of the human hand in it and this applies even more to shorts because people scroll so quickly and see so many Graphics so that means if you fix your first frame to set up your story immediately and physically even if it's imperfect it'll help you stand out and if you still have any doubt of how powerful a great first frame is like knowing this can be so powerful it can be deceiving um just check out this hilarious clip no it's actually amazing how much more credible people seem to think you are when you're just pretending to be on a podcast like you don't even have to do that much it's just all you really have to do is look to the side of the camera as opposed to looking into the camera people are like wow he's got to be really important to be on a podcast I'm ready to buy whatever supplement he's trying to sell me literally by having a sure mic and looking off to the side in his first frame it makes this feel like he's on a podcast when he's just looking at the wall like I'm not saying do this but it's crazy how these little touches in your first frame can change the expectation of the short versus him just looking at the camera like this the next tip is to adapt outliers I'll level with you the best time to start on YouTube was 2012 but now is the second best time to start and that's not some Rah R sees the moment type speech it's about the data you see YouTubers in 2012 had the first mover Advantage they were early they had less competition but all of us have the second mover advantage since YouTube is over 20 years old now you can see which video ideas or outliers have already taken off and adapt them and what are outliers well here are a few examples they're basically videos that perform so above and beyond a Channel's normal noral audience then they must be tapping into something more like there's something about the video's topic or format or packaging that you should study and adapt which we'll talk about how to do in a moment and the bigger the outlier the more you should take notice in fact I asked Mr Beast how he finds outliers like these to make videos that end up getting hundreds of millions of views and here's what he said I thought it was so interesting how you've studied outliers and I want to talk about that video the dollar versus series talk about the inspiration because I don't think people realize how you came to that and then I got a ton of followups at that yeah 100% so for the $1 versus the thing is yeah we've all seen BuzzFeed did it but also not only did BuzzFeed but it's just like people across every format on YouTube beauty channels gaming channels everyone was doing videos where they'd compare something cheap to something expensive and they usually did well and what I like to do is if I see something going viral across like multiple you know formats all all across YouTube then it's like okay that seems to be something people really like and you know they're really interested in that content so maybe I should just do that I get a really beway on the channel and sometimes creators like Nick Giovani who's one of the biggest food creators out there don't even bother with certain ideas if they're not outliers or haven't already performed well on other channels because this a sign that viewers may not be interested it comes down to a deep dive on you know has this been done before and how did it do I think that's always important to look at not to say that you can't take a concept that has been done before and not make it better yeah but if people aren't interested in something there's sometimes where it's just like this may not be worth our time you mean looking at it in terms of other channels other genres it can be really helpful to go and see okay 10 people have tried to make uh a video trying the best burgers in the world and no one seems to be that interested in it and so that might not be worth the time and that's a good sort of first test to see has this been done you can also do this with shorts I was actually with Jimmy when he was filming this running video which was inspired by Daniel leel and adapted to feel more like Mr Beast with bags of money and it's crazy how much Jimmy tries to elevate things because he filmed this entire short when I was there then he scrapped it because it didn't look good enough and went back to film it again with different props and I even tried taking part in the running video when the money was the heaviest and uh let's say it got a little embarrassing for me I got you we'll give him some we'll give him some power my God this two one but here's where it got even more interesting Jimmy saw that that short did well on his channel and then he did it again this time with bigger and bigger Feast double bars which I think is a key Nuance in other words you could also study your own outliers and then double down and actually Patty Galloway told me how he does this with his creators like jesser to help him grow past 25 million subscribers it's just a simple question of you know what are the five or six best performing videos I've made on my channel could I make them again in some form could I adopt them could I make a series out of this video with jesser going to three NBA games in 24 hours yeah we've done that same video four times probably going to go on five six times each time we just put a little twist it's like playoff games instead of regular games it's seven games in four days instead of three you know it can kind of go infinitely like that and now if you're wondering okay well John how in the world do I find these outlier ideas well there's actually a step-by-step process that I've outlined here and I'll show you a much faster way to do it in a few moments but to find an outlier in your Niche all you have to do is this number one open up your YouTube app and search three to four words related to your Niche then go to search filters and sort by view count video and anytime this is key because essentially you're asking YouTube to turn off its algorithm for just a moment to show you the videos that have the most viewed then scroll and click on these top videos and then click one more time to see the subscriber count of the channel That uploaded the video and where you're looking for here are videos that have over five times more views than the subscriber count of the channel That uploaded it and if you make a list of these outliers and reference them they'll help you so much when you brainstorm your ideas now what if there was a way to find outliers even faster or what what if you could automatically get ideas on how to adapt that outlier based on your Niche well that's exactly what you could do with spotter Studio which is a sponsor of today's video with spotter Studio you can go to the outlier Tab and filter videos about their outlier score you can also look up 2x outliers 10x filter by long form short form and here's the best part you to just press this brainstorm button and it generates ideas customized to your channel and if you go to this link you'll get an extended free trial spotter studio and because I always want to go above and beyond for you guys I'm doing two things one I'm hosting a free online workshop for anyone who signs up in the next two weeks and on top of that I'll be picking nine of you from that group to fly to LA to come to the lighthouse to spend a day Getting mentored By Me Colin Samir and April Lynn and yes we will be roasting your videos and if you've already joined spotter Studio don't worry you're already eligible just make sure to add 10 or more ideas to your idea bank then hit the share with an expert button so I see it and you're seeing this after 2 weeks don't worry about that either you'll still get the extended free Tri spotter Studio which should help your channel a ton okay moving on the next tip is to copy with taste so once you find these ideas and outliers don't just copy and paste do what I like to call Copy with taste and here's a little Spectrum I created to remember it put your own spin on it adapt from outside your Niche meld it with other ideas we'll talk about how to this in a second but I thought jimmmy actually brought up a great Nuance about all of this if you watch someone's video and you can't tell the difference between their video and my video besides the budget then it's like yeah you're copy and paste but yeah but like you know me and Ryan might sometimes do similar videos not even say he's copy but like Ryan and I could like I will go visit hotel rooms $1 versus Ryan will go visit scary a scary airbnb's and it doesn't feel the same right that's like and that's the thing like Ryan has his own voice he's quirky and he's just like you know let's see breathe more and blah blah and that's like Ryan style and then our style is like a little bit quicker and just show you cool things and spend more money and you know making it epic and um so yeah that's not that he's copying us but in general that would be like doing it with taste and then the copy and paste is yeah you know there are tons of other people who after our hotel video just went literally sometimes hit the same hotels same thing use my same texts on screen speak like me act like me use my cuts use the same timing pacing and it's like be more like Ryan invent your own style we need more people like that we need less people that just look at Ryan look at me and other big creators and just you know literally copy and paste like if people wanted to watch My Style videos they'll just watch my video we don't need someone else doing my videos with lower budget or less effort like and that's why when you adapt outliers with taste you get this amazing string of ideas where Mr Beast elevates a buzzfeed concept but does hotel rooms instead of donuts and takes it up to $1 million then Ryan Tran puts his own spin on it by only focusing on cheap hotels and then Nick Giovani does cheap resturants instead of hotels and a cycle of creativity continues On and On In fact there's this great quote from the late Virgil ablo who said you only have to make a 3% tweak to an existing concept for it to be Innovative that's it 3% and that's coming from one of the best designers of all time and one of the best ways to make a 3% change or copy with taste is to look at different genres eras or mediums so Ryan Tran Nick djani Mr Beast BuzzFeed all of them change the genre of a similar concept from Donuts to hotels to cheap hotels to restaurants which kept it Innovative but besides looking outside your genre for inspiration today you could also look back at different eras just like Zack King did to grow past 40 million subscribers and I'm not talking about looking back at eras like the early 2000s I'm talking about even further back Zach told me that he and his team study filmmakers like Buster Keaton from the 1920s like literally 100 years ago because so few creators are looking that far back to come up with ideas today oh I love Buster and I noticed that he does so many jump cuts that are reminiscent of what you're doing today yeah it's so good this is so good um we share all these clips internally really um every once in a while but I love Buster Keaton um I studied him we did a video referencing Buster at the back of the car and the car drives off and I'm on the tire and that's one of his gags but we just added the M it's like how do you 10% that or 50% it it's fun to reference those because for sure the Young Generation does not know who that is and the third way to with taste is to change the medium so by medium I mean like film TV radio YouTube this is honestly one of the more straightforward ones but it's also the more competitive because a lot of people are already adapting the medium of tv for YouTube but there's still a lot of opportunity like for example arach did this I tra 25 strangers in a box which is basically a YouTube version of big brother or the Sid man's Tinder in real life is a faspac and YouTube version of MTV's next dating show or honestly I'll give credit what credit is due my man on- the street videos were totally inspired by Jimmy Kimmel's can you name a country segment except I wanted to know if people can name more celebrities or creators or another example of changing mediums entirely is going from a shot in a TV show like Severance and adapting it to a still image for a thumbnail just like Jimmy said in our interview it's just interesting that you can draw inspiration from anywhere like basically one of my thumbnail guys Chucky watch Severance and one of the opening shots is that uh image in the top middle where this uh lady is laying on a table and he's like we should do this for a thumbnail and I was like what does that even mean and he sent me that Snapchat with a circle in a human and I was even more confused the image on the top right and I was like Chucky I I don't know maybe you're drinking alcohol even though he doesn't um and uh and somehow that led to this thumbnail we ended up doing here in the bottom right which actually worked pretty well and it was kind of nice cuz usually my thumbnails have my face and the left side uh and I've been looking for ways to not have every thumbnail be the exact same and that was a good Breakaway that people seem to like it's not like we got that from a different YouTube thumbnail like he was literally just watching SE it's you know so look outside your genre across mediums or back at different eras for better inspiration so the next tip is to find popular problems here's the thing YouTube is the world's second largest search engine after Google and it's estimated that there are over six billion searches per day of people trying to watch videos to answer a question to get advice solve a problem and so forth so as a Creator as especially if you're just starting out and growing you'd be crazy not to try to make content to meet that search demand you see just as entrepreneurs make products to solve problems we as creators can make content to solve problems but the question remains how do you find the most popular problems in your Niche to make content about well there's three ways to do that first is the incognito mode method two is the quora method and three is to pull your audience the incognito mode method well for that one you just have to go to incognito mode in your browser then go to YouTube and start typing in video ideas or search queries and let autoc complete tell you what most people are searching for you see by doing this in incognito mode you're not letting your past searches change the autocomplete so you're seeing the autocomplete based on the masses based on their searches second you can go to quora and figure out what are the most popular questions that people are asking in your Niche all you have to do is search your topic and a filter by all time and I love quora because it's literally a place where people ask questions and votes tell you what the most amount of people need help answering and if you make content about that you're golden third and perhaps most underrated is poll your audience you know you could use the poll features on Instagram YouTube Community LinkedIn and so forth to treat your audience like a focus group I mean if you follow me on Instagram you'll already know that I ask your thoughts on topics for my next videos or even thumbnails you like best and I constantly go through our Discord Community to see if there's a pattern of questions or problems that I could help with in my next video basically the goal is to make content that falls in the middle of this Vin diagram where what you know and what you're excited about matches up with what people want to hear about whereas so many creators don't even ask Their audience and just make content that feels totally out of touch and the next tip to remember is that interested is interesting all right I know I know we've talked a lot about data but sometimes you just got to say screw the data screw the algorithm because there's a lesson here that dates back to one of YouTube's first viral videos the Double Rainbow Guy which I never really considered until it was pointed out by Dan mace who is the creative genius behind a lot of Mr Beast and Casey nist videos interested is interesting I think it's like so remember the first ever viral video I'm pretty sure for me the first of a viral video that I saw was the double rainbow oh my god oh my [Music] god wow H yeah everybody's seen a double rainbow yeah that video went viral because of the man's reaction to the double rainbow he was enthusiastic about the rainbow like Casey's content and what he does is he's just so interested in it that it becomes interesting and if you think about it it makes sense I mean that's why even Casey's videos about public bathrooms or bike lane violations get millions of views and and yeah okay now he has a huge following but it all started by being so interested in something that it became interesting to all of us and I still believe in all the tactics and the data that we discussed so far but the big caveat to all of this is this if you can barely contain your excitement about a video idea then just make the damn video trust me the audience will feel it because at the end of the day YouTube this thing is about transferring the energy that you feel in front of the camera to the person watching it in front of their screen okay I I I I know okay that was a little mushy gushy but I want to follow up with another tactic all right the next tip is to avoid eye fatigue this one drives me crazy because so many creators overedit their videos and you don't even have to have any technical editing skills to implement this tip so most creators Jam way too many visuals on screen that cause your eyes to Dart all over the place and get fatigue which will inevitably lead to viewers clicking off case in point we have a Discord Community with over 6,000 creators who share their videos thumbnails and ideas for feedback and I want to share a few seconds of a video from a Creator who shared this and I say this out of love but just look at this Frame alone I'm sorry I mean my eye has to be in four places at once the top visual the bottom visual what's on the monitor what's on the notebook I mean this just continues on and on and countless creators do this without realizing in their videos as well in contrast here's what we did during my interview with Mr Beast where he's talking about these six different versions of a thumbnail a lot going on but we literally zoomed in and dimmed everything else out but the one visual he's referencing so there's no question what you should focus on at any given moment this is even more important now with so many YouTube views coming on TV where the screen is bigger so you don't want to have people darting their eyes and craning their necks while they're watching your videos so make sure you have one primary focal point and for shorts it's slightly different but same principle and here's a guide for that anything around here is off limits it's too far away from the center focus and it overlaps with the UI the buttons on YouTube Tik Tok and Instagram anything here is safe because it's where the eye naturally looks your text hook should go here to make it more prominent your eyes go here and your captions go here right below and again if you want this template while you're editing or to give to your editors that's also in the YouTube hack pack I mentioned earlier the next tip is to remember the Paradox of production so few creators understand this and it kills their growth simply put the smaller you are the more your production value matters the bigger you are the less it does and people who say oh your camera or your gear doesn't matter they're honestly naive yes story is more important than that but for new creators your viewers are Beyond impatient and your production value and your prep are your first impression so get a freaking mic set up some lights script so you don't ramble and we'll talk about how to do that in a second or at least prep some bullet points you know people say oh it's inauthentic it's over rehearsed whatever it's not it just means that you care and maybe you're the next I show speed or Emma Chamberlain but they're the exceptions and you know even speed told me during your interview about how his spontaneous live streams actually take a lot of planning it's a lot it's a lot that go into these streams that people don't see like people just see the 15sec clip of me you know what I'm saying but it's a lot that goes into that just for that 15 seconds or even offthe cuff comedy YouTubers like Liza Koshi said in her interview that she scripts her videos in advance and a perfect example of this is her Dollar Store series wait so you're going to the dollar store you're picking up like a like a like a basketball what this is only 79 come on man it's a dollar store get this cheap stuff out of here oh my God this is a dollar a dollar a dollar a dollar dang that's so cheap I can go balls to the wall in this place oh sorry that joke was scripted absolutely weeks before I'm going to the Dollar Store and looking at each product understanding what I could do and how I can you know write a joke around a specific word on that product and raise it up to camera uh and then hopefully give a natural effortless um delivery when it comes to day of shooting so it takes some pre-production that I never really talked about Eliza also said her parody video of Vogue 73 questions which now has 32 million views took seven attempts to film even though it looks all Improv right now flip it okay let's say you do have a bigger audience what do your viewers want to see they want to see you but raw unedited and I think that's one of the reasons why our behind the scenes videos when Mr Beast took off because people rarely see him in an unedited context like that I mean that's also why we love docu series or even you know these FaceTime Tik toks of celebrities because after seeing them so overly produced everywhere we want to see it all Stripped Away and I actually had a chance to ask Will Smith about this because he's obviously been in some of the biggest Productions ever and now he's active on on socials I can't wait to share that video but as newer creators you're not there not yet and to be honest production value is just a fancy schmancy way of saying respect your viewers eyes and ears only then will they respect you with their attention the next tip is simplify your speech all right so when it comes to scripting during my interview with MKBHD he showed me the video scripts and we talked about how they tend to be at a sixth grade speaking level despite him talking about in-depth topics like Tech and in fact many other YouTube creators like Ryan traron Tom Scott and so forth tend to hover around that fifth to seventh grade level so for YouTube you need to simplify how you talk without dumbing it down that's the key especially if you're making videos about a popular problem for example so for that I always try to follow this cheat sheet which I call the Three B's basic bold brief and you could probably tell by now that I love alliteration so the first b stands for basic make sure you translate jargon into simple words like instead of Leverage say use instead of optimize say perfect instead of competencies say skills the second thing is to be bold remove words from your speech that can undermine your Authority Without You realizing like possibly it might I think there's a time and place for that but most times it just undermines your Authority be more assertive the third thing is be brief and these are just rules of thumb but they'll become instinctual over time when scripting your videos so avoid more than 25 words in a sentence because you'll start to ramble avoid more than three sentences in a paragraph because you're jumbling a lot of thoughts into one section and my biggest pet peeve by far a avoid double descriptions like you don't need to say the room was clean and tidy just say the room was clean we get the point move on the next tip is to hone your off camera craft so there's two parts to being a good YouTuber being good on camera by doing all the things that we're talking about here improving your production your speaking your thumbnails you're editing but the second thing The X Factor to all of this is having a skill off camera and the more Uncommon that skill or craft the easier it is to honestly have a real career on YouTube and I'll give you an extreme example of that followed by a more relatable one so the extreme but a great example of this is Matthew beam before he had millions of subscribers few people know that he was an auto mechanic who painted and wrapped hundreds of cars off camera before he ever did it on camera with hits like making a real life Lightning McQueen or a SpongeBob Patty wagon looking at the larger creators they all have like their own unique value and mine was being in the car industry like I think the average age in my industry was like 55 I was always the youngest person so I thought there's no there's probably a good likelihood that I'm the only person that's really into YouTube that can like paintt a car know someone that can rap a car and do something like that so I I realized that that was like my advantage and if you look at Matt's videos now it's clear he's kept honing his craft off camera with bigger and bigger projects another example of this is Dr Mike who keeps treating patients even though he's well past 10 million subscribers I can't give up practicing clinical medicine because it makes me understand better the problems people have it allows me to relate better to people use better language where I can actually see one-onone if they're understanding what I'm saying and it just makes you just more valuable but also happier even when the Channel's not performing as well as you hope going to the office and having someone tell you your notes are late or your patient mad that you're five minutes late to their appointment that's valuable and I people will always belittle it so valuable being able to see the exact outcome of your work right there in the moment so so valuable it's what keeps him sharp because he's in the trenches he's hearing about the latest problems from his patients and that could spark a Content idea that could help even more people or another example is Hayden Hillier Smith who makes content about editing and he told me the same thing it's fun doing the podcast but for me I still want to maintain the right to still be talking about editing and so I need to make sure that I'm still in the thick of it and so I'm still very much taking on as many jobs as I can as long as as long as they have reason be balanced and I could go on and on creators like dream worked with another Minecraft creator before becoming one of today's biggest gaming YouTubers himself uh Nick Giovani honed his cooking skills before becoming one of today's biggest food channels and Peter McKinnon who is the king of Photography tutorial said this my wife was always a huge advocate still is of practicing your craft so if she sees me just pounding videos after videos after videos she's like when was the last time you went on and like just took photos not for Instagram I was like ah you should probably do that like she's like because as much as you're the teacher and as much as you're the guy inspiring everyone else to get out there and do it but you still need to like follow the passion that got you here in the first place and if you're not learning you're unlearning so you got to make sure you keep your skills sharp and you know I try to do the same as well off camera I work with so many creators of all different sizes Brands Executives who bring me in like just the other week I was working with LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman and when they hire me to come help with their content and social media it helps keep me sharper no matter how big this channel grows I like working with other people to understand okay what problems are they facing and what content can I make because all this stuff on camera to be honest the speaking the editing the packaging that's a must you need that to survive on YouTube but it's the stuff off camera that helps you thrive it's the stuff that happens in Dr Mike's office or Nick's kitchen or Matt's autoshop and that's what gives them their Edge and ideas and sure you could say okay John yeah I don't want to hone any of these off camera skills or these professions I just want to be a pure Entertainer like I show speed Logan Paul Emma Chamberlain to which I say good luck because sure you may be part of the 0.01% that gets popular from your personality alone but that's a much harder path and as Dr Mike says kids these days when they're pulled they say their number one dream job is to be a YouTuber and I have to redirect them in that hope and say hey learn something bring some value to YouTube otherwise you probably won't get popular number one because you won't have anything really interesting to talk about but even worse you might get popular and they're like wait why is it worse if I get popular well then you'll get popular you're probably going to be popular for a short period of time and at some point it'll fall off and then you're going to feel terrible about yourself and you won't have a career not to necessarily fall back on but to say well I've learned this this is where my value is they'll say a negative comment will come in and say you have no value and they say something really mean but then if you look inside and you say well what is my value what am I bringing to the table that's going to be a that you're really going to struggle with man what a bar from Dr Mike all right moving on the next tip is earn the right to Rebel so this one has more to do with making money and brand deals which I actually think is one of the biggest pitfalls for creators as they grow and I want you to imagine for a second that a brand uh wants to give you $225,000 to make a sponsored video for them and here's a kicker you barely have to mention the Brand's product at all and on the service I know this makes no sense at all but I got to bring back Casey neack because he does this all the time just ask Nike J crew or the other that he's worked with on his videos so how do you convince them to give him full creative control and how can you do the same or just get a little bit more control in your sponsored videos even if you're a smaller Creator well it's a huge contrast to what creators normally do they usually stick to a Brand's talking points and script with no wiggle room and typically the video underperforms as a result but the key is What Casey did before pitching Brands his wild idea and he earned what I like to call the right to rebel and to do that he started by creating free ads for Nike and soon he got their Executives attention if you're not willing to do the work without getting paid a hundred times then chances are you're never going to find the opportunity to do the work and get paid for it and that's how you know that's how I was able to you know get the thumbs up to make make it count that's how I was able to get the thumbs up to make the Mercedes campaign or the Walter midi campaign that eventually led to a brand deal with Nike where they asked him to make three videos to make it count for Nike yeah I think what's underappreciated about that video is I deal with Nike to make three videos for the fuel band and the first two videos had significantly more emphasis and significantly more budget and when it came time to make the third video I called up Alex Lopez at Nike and I was like look I want to do this differently I want do something that's way off the book I'm way different from what we initially scripted I I won't spend any more money um but I think I can make something much better and he was like okay just like don't screw me over don't leave me in the lerch but if you want to run wild with a creative go for it the video was Casey spending Nike's budget to fly all around the world with their Nike fuel band it was his way of living their slogan make it count now had Casey pitched the crazy idea first he probably would never have gotten the green light as a Creator I've seen this firsthand too as we work with more brands on a repeat basis but can I tell you something from working on the other side the corporate side of all this it's not just the manager or whoever you're talking to at the brand who has to approve your idea for a sponsored video or a segment it's their boss and their boss's boss and everyone is honestly just covering their ass like it's why so few big companies take big risk believe me I've worked at Several of them and it's not that they don't believe in creators a lot of them do it's just that they don't want to be fired like like actually like if something goes wrong with your video or it underperforms or it bombs they just want to justify why they took that risk or at least explain their decision to their colleagues and the best way to do that is for them to show your past work like like oh wow this Creator videos perform well for us so that's why we gave them more leeway so if you give that to them first then you'll earn that right to rebel and do crazier ideas which is really where the Breakthrough comes and the last tip is be more like Mozart now before I explain what the heck Mozart has to do with YouTube um this is probably the most personal of all the tips and I want to share one more story from my interview with Casey I know I'm referencing a lot but this one is really stuck with me you see for 800 days straight Casey uploaded a Vlog every single day no matter what knowing that you have to post every day like did something to me which was like you know Screw Your writer block like it doesn't get to happen there were also days many days probably happened a dozen times over the course of the Vlog where I would sit down to do the edit and I would have no audio because of my own not paying attention or something microphone not plugged in but what' you do in those cases I go watch the videos but I think I did like a lot of like cutting to me sitting in the kitchen being like look it's 9: at night I just have worded this audio I don't have any I don't have any audio so I'm going to put some text on the screen and like did something fun like that now compare that to today Casey has only posted seven videos in the last 365 days so I had to ask him an ironic question I asked him is it harder to make videos now that you have more time yeah harder in other words does Casey feel the wrath of Parkinson's law the phenomenon where your work expands to fit the time that you give it to which he said this do you feel like now that you don't have a daily deadline which most YouTubers don't have like your work kind of balloons to fit the deadline that you have yeah it's much harder now because I don't need to post today yeah I haven't posted a video in eight months there's no fire there's no rush I think that speaks to the importance of posting your work instead of spending time perfecting it even if you feel insecure about it like I was surprised to learn that Casey did I was really insecure about that and then sure enough I come to realize that like no a lot of people are tuning in because beyond the content they've sort of formed an interest in whatever it was that I was sharing that day and when I heard Casey say that it reminded me of my first year on YouTube where I got so in my head that I only uploaded six videos and whenever I went to upload a video my desktop would look like this I'd finish the video and save the file as final and then I noticed that the color of the video looked a bit off so I'd up the saturation and then resave it as final uncore final but then I realized that the audio of the video could be clearer so then I tweak it and resave it as final but actually and then I kept repeating this process until sometimes I honestly still didn't upload the video because it still wasn't good enough but hearing that Casey kept posting even though he was insecure about his videos changed everything and then it really hit home when I realized that this trend exists throughout history that a lot of great artists throughout time were as prolific as Casey that they cared as much about quantity as quality even if you go back over 200 years to Mozart because Mozart wasn't this automatic Masterpiece making machine that history makes him seem to be some of his early critics called his music far too noisy but Mozart just kept working kept putting out work and made over 600 compositions before he died at age 35 Which is far far more than his peers who only averaged 150 compositions despite them living much longer in other words mozard made countless compositions that we've now forgotten to get the few masterpieces that we still remember or the legendary artist Monae who may 2,500 pieces of art but here's the thing about Monae that just just crushes my soul and reminds me of so many creators including myself because that number 2,500 should be way higher but Monae was such a perfectionist that this one time he spent three years working on a set of new paintings until at the last moment he noticed these slight imperfections in the corners of those paintings so he took out a butcher knife and slashed through every single one of them because they weren't perfect enough for him but curators and Scholars today say that he destroyed over $3.4 Million worth of art that night just because it wasn't perfect enough which got me thinking how many of us are too much like Monae instead of Mozart or even Casey how many of us slash through our videos instead of just shipping it and how many masterpieces have we unknowingly left on our floor because we got to in our heads it only once I switched my mindset from Monae to Mozart that I started see a change in my career as a Creator because after posting an embarrassing six videos in my first year we've now uploaded over 270 videos that have somehow gotten over 340 million views and we're getting guests on our show that I can't believe are coming on and yes we've had tons of flops more than ever but I now realize that cringing at your past work is proof of progress and and sometimes perfectionism is just procrastination in Disguise so next time you're working on your next video be more like Mozart not Monae put down your knife because every Creator every artist even if you're as big as Cleo Jimmy or Casey all of them feel some level of anxiety but I hope no matter what that you keep creating that you keep putting stuff out there because the only thing worse than something imperfect is something that doesn't exist thank you again for watching make sure to subscribe and ring the bell it would mean the world with the amount of work that we put into our videos and I think you'll like this video that builds on a lot of the topics that we talked about out and I'll see you guys in the next one