Transcription
This video is the fastest and the easiest one I think I've ever made. It's one of the best performing on this channel, and the framework that I use to make this gets insane results for businesses all over YouTube. So now I'm going to give you every step to make your own, so you can just copy it.
So to start, what is this video? Well, it's just a very fast-paced list of things that you've learned. So you can see from the chapters at the bottom of mine here, right? That's it. Just like lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson. So your entire video, the length doesn't really matter. It could be 20 minutes, it could be 5 minutes. What matters is it's just kind of quick, fun info, and it includes everything else I'm about to show you. Hang on, I need my glasses. I strain.
So step one, to get a click, you really need to crack your title. But that can take ages to find. So I've just done the research for you and picked a few that are validated by outliers on YouTube. So these are the frameworks for them: "I did X and learned this," "Brutally honest advice that X'd my Y," and "I wish I knew this before I X." So you just replace those X and Y's. Meaning it will be: "I made 3,000 cakes and discovered this," "Brutally honest dating advice in 20 minutes," "Wish I knew this before I started making cheese."
Two, after that, all we need is just a very simple thumbnail and some text on it that creates some curiosity. So just look at these examples. They basically make you wonder why they think that, or why you shouldn't do that. And that creates curiosity, which gets an easy click. Now, do not overdesign these. Keep them very simple. Keep them minimum. We need this to feel very authentic because this video is very personal.
Step three. All right, then you need to do something very specific in your intro. And to show you how this works, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play Dan Martell's viral example, and then I'm going to break it down to show you how to get the same result. "At the time of this recording, I'm 44 years old, and if I could go back and talk to my 20-year-old self and give some advice on how to get rich a lot faster, here's what I would say."
Okay, so that's it. It's 39 words long, and it's 10 seconds. So the key is to keep it very short, but also to show you what really matters. I'm going to represent his version right now, 'cause it's going to make it really obvious. "At the time of recording this, I am 29 years old, but if I could go back to give advice to my 20-year-old self so that they could get rich faster, here's what I would say."
Can you see the difference between our two intros? Yes. They're both nice and short, but you probably didn't want to listen to me in the same way that you wanted to listen to Dan. Because there's no Ferrari, there's no stage, there's no jet. Dan's works way better 'cause his visuals created a hook that makes his viewers go, "This dude has what I want. Now tell me how I can get it myself." Whereas mine, it didn't.
So the trick here is just to show a result on the screen fast that actually makes people want to listen to you because it proves that you've already done what they want. But you don't need a Ferrari to do this. Although that would have been a great business expense. Think back to the start of the video you're watching right now. All I did was I shared a visual result of one of my videos in a really simple way. I also did at the start of this video. It's got 2.7 million views, and you can see here, I just filmed my computer screen showing the letter from YouTube saying that I was monetized. So it doesn't have to be fancy like Dan's. What really matters for views, sales, and conversions is frontloading your proof.
Before we move on to step four, I need to show you the real secret of success for this format so that you can easily copy it, and it works like this. So to try and unravel why this type of format was so popular on YouTube, I took a bunch of high-performing videos using it. I loaded up their scripts. I copied about 200 comments from each of them into my free AI bot, which you can download below. And then it told me one, what viewers love about these videos, two, what they don't, and three, what you need to include in your own for success. And the most important, important pattern in the comments was just incredibly obvious. So take a look at this clip from Dan, and then I'm going to reveal exactly what it was.
"When I was recording the audio for my book, I got the flu. When I was about to hit a new PR at the gym, I injured myself. When I was about to have a record month, somebody quit. And it's interesting how right when you're about to break through, something in your life happens. And I always remind myself in those moments, I get to prove to myself that I'm as good as I think I am. When things are going great, anytime I'm being tested, I just remind myself."
So all Dan does is he starts a point with a very short story that takes you from when he had a problem to the moment he overcame it. And then he just follows it up with the lesson he learned. And that's it. He just does that over and over and over again. So each lesson in this type of video, you just need to do three things: you start with the problem you had, then you explain the turning point, and then you give an actionable lesson. After it was the turning point, the show of vulnerability, and the actionable lesson that the viewers loved, according to the AI's research.
Step four. So now we need to plan your video based on this information. So here's what I did. I sat down, I put on my timer for 30 minutes, I turned off all distractions, and I pretended I was writing a list of instructions to myself, but years ago, when I was crap at YouTube. And this is my list. So look, it's just one sentence each point, and then some repeat themselves, some are nonsense. There's, there's no real order to it. But what I found was after like 2 minutes, the ideas just wouldn't stop flowing. It became really easy to write them. So it's really important you just get going here, right? Don't overthink it, don't procrastinate.
But if you do get stuck, here's three things you can try. So ask yourself this: What were the dumb mistakes that you made along the way? What were the things that confused you? And then what were the breakout moments that changed everything? And then just turn them into one-sentence lessons. Then when you've got about 40 of these, paste them into AI and then just ask it to remove any repetitive points or combine points that are really similar. And then just look at the list and ask yourself, what are the best lessons on this list? And then frontload them at the start.
But what does the best lesson mean? Well, let's think of it like this. People hear the same thing over and over again online, and they start to go, "I know this." So your best lessons are usually things that might feel very new to them. New information's going to make your content pop. It's going to be more memorable because new hooks people and makes them pay attention. Now, you don't know which one feels new to your viewers. You will just establish this over time by watching a lot of content in your niche and actually making videos. But if you're struggling to guess, just put the list back into AI and ask what it thinks would be new information. Just describe a little bit about your avatar and your viewer, and it will help you.
And then what you do is you just make a copy of this before you move on to the next step. And that will become clear why in a minute, which moves us on to step five.
All right, so remember our framework from earlier that the viewers crave, which was problem, turning point, actionable lesson? Now all you do is you apply that to every lesson in your video. And this will pad it out, make it a bit longer, make it more interesting, and we ensure it's not just like a shopping list. Now, the length here doesn't really matter. One lesson could be 10 seconds, one could be 90. All that matters is that you move on to the next one without waffle.
And then step six, you just film it. That's it. It's kind of easy.
Step seven. Well, look at Dan's video and now look at mine. Can you see what we're doing here? So when we both give a lesson, we put that lesson on screen in text in the edit to help make the point. And that's kind of it for the editing. It really is that simple. The key though, is to keep the length of that text on screen short. We don't want to write a whole book here because it'll be too much for people to digest. Now, if you have other visuals that you want to include in your video, go for it, but you don't necessarily have to.
Which brings us on to step eight. Now, this next thing is where you're going to get massive time savings. You're going to get amazing results. It blew up a tweet for me, it blew up my community post, it's one of the most responded-to emails I have ever sent to my list. Someone emailed me when they got it and said they printed it off and put it on their wall. They thought it was that good, which is insane.
So remember a minute ago when I said make a copy of this list? All you do is you take that and you post it on your community wall, to your social media, and your email. That's kind of it. And thank me later. You got to go and give this video a shot and let me know how you get on in the comments. And if you like someone just telling you exactly what to do to make high-performing videos, then watch this video next, 'cause I'm going to show you exactly what to do to go from zero to a million dollars on YouTube.