Transcription
30 days into the 60-day experiment, I wasn't getting very many views. Normally, I would have given up by then, but the whole goal, again, wasn't views or subscriber counts. It was to count uploads, not views.
Right now, you're getting 12 million views per day on YouTube Shorts. And climbing.
Day 35 rolls around. One of those videos hits 750,000 views. All those previous videos all started to climb as well.
When a person says, "I'm too busy to do this," it's just not a priority for you.
Total time every day it takes then right now? 20 minutes, cuz I'll open a pack, right? And hitting it on every platform. And hitting it on on every platform.
Oh my goodness. One of the biggest opportunities for growing a following right now is YouTube Shorts and short-form content. And we have really the leading expert on the podcast today breaking [music] down tactics, breaking down the mindset, the philosophy. So, if you want to get views, if you want to grow subscribers, and if you also want to earn more money in your online business or get known if you're starting from zero, lock in because this podcast with Pat Flynn is an absolute game-changer.
Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur, author, and content creator who's built millions of subscribers and generated billions of views across his platforms. And today, he's breaking down how you can apply the lessons he's learned to grow your own brand.
Pat Flynn, right now, you're getting 12 million views per day on YouTube Shorts. And climbing. It's crazy. And climbing. It's crazy. And this is on a new channel that you started just a year and a half ago. Yes. So, I need to know all your secrets, all the things you've never shared, and your whole short-form playbook. I'm ready, man. But first, tell tell me the story. What is this channel? What's the vision? How did it start?
Yeah, so I have a Pokémon YouTube channel that was all long-form. In fact, I was here at this event a couple years ago and talked about how short-form is kind of a waste of time, right? You can't build a relationship 60 seconds in in just 60 seconds, but I was wrong. You can do that if 60 seconds happens every day, right? Across an entire month, that's a whole half hour of time with somebody, and you're building a routine, you're building a habit of showing up daily. And if you can do it right, you become a part of a person's daily routine, and you show up in ways that you never thought possible.
So, although I had a long-form channel already, it would have made sense for me to just insert shorts into that channel, but again, I wanted to experiment, and myself, I always use myself as a case study to try to teach other people. So, I created a separate channel, didn't link to it from anything I had, didn't even put my face on it, and it was just the whole goal was to go 60 days of opening a pack of Pokémon cards daily, and I recorded the voiceovers after, and whether it's a good card at the end or a bad card, I always just shared anyway. You know, a lot of other creators, they'll only show the good hits, but I wanted to be relatable. That was a big part of this. The R word, relatable, is so important today because everything is so fake and manufactured, right? So, I said, "Okay, no matter what happens, I'm just going to go daily."
30 days into the 60-day experiment, I wasn't getting very many views. Normally, I would have given up by then, cuz I'm like, "Oh, this is not working." But the whole goal, again, wasn't views or subscriber counts, it was to count uploads, not views. Mhm. buddy Alex says. And so, day 35 comes around. Now, by the way, day 30, although I didn't get a lot of views, there were a lot of things that were already happening. My editing time for these videos went from 45 minutes per video to about 15.
How'd you do that? Go deeper on that. Just the more you do something, the more you learn how to be more efficient with it and optimize that. I learned the shortcuts. I started to build a library of all the sound effects and all those kinds of things. The other thing that was really helpful in this case versus the other experiments that I tried on TikTok and in Reels and in Facebook is that I had a format that was repeatable. I had a structure, and I made it episodic, and that is the secret. The secret is in the series.
In fact, this even goes back to the first time I really got interested in in in a weird TikTok, and it was this guy named um a guy kicking rocks, or guy who kicks rocks, I think is the name of the channel. I saw a video, and it was literally a guy just kicking a rock and said, "Day one of kicking a rock until it becomes a sphere." I was like, this is the stupidest thing. Little did I know, 60 days later I was watching this thing transform and I was so emotionally invested in this rock becoming a sphere and he would kind of track its weight and all this stuff and it's just like, what is happening here? Why am I so interested in this? It's because there was something to look forward to, because there was anticipation, because I wanted to see what the end result was. And that's something I wasn't incorporating into my previous shorts, but this time, I mean, kind of inherently in a pack of Pokémon cards there is a mystery in each one. You don't know what you're going to get. So, that was kind of helping me. But [snorts] again, I wanted to continue to try to get to 60 days. Also, by day 30, I had 30 pieces of data from 30 previous uploads to tell me, well, what kind of worked and maybe what didn't. What could I
Such as? Such as, I noticed that when I was in person at a card shop and I had that transaction to purchase the pack that I was going to then open, those videos often performed a lot better because there was something different. Most people would just start at their desk. Me, I was starting in an interaction and you were kind of there with me as it was happening. And then we go and see if it was worth how much I ever spent. Usually, by the way, spoiler alert, it's not worth it to open it, but it's entertaining and and it's fun and I love Pokémon and and and deep in that space.
Day 35 rolls around. One of those videos hits 750,000 views. Kind of just I mean, it wasn't like anything drastic that I changed. It just so happened to catch that day and it did incorporate those changes that I made previously. It was done in a card shop and I, you know, started to get familiar with getting quicker to the hook and retaining people. 750,000 views. All those previous videos all started to climb as well because a person would find that new one and then they'd go back and find the older one.
And it's very scrollable. It actually is a short show you could watch daily, but you also could binge the show. Really easy. And people were telling me they were doing that. After a couple days later, they said, I've watched every single one of these. I want I can't wait till tomorrow, right? And that is the secret to growing followers and subscribers on these channels. It's what happens next. I wasn't providing that to opportunity to wonder what was going to happen next or that curiosity before. This time it was baked into this. And then by day 60, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to keep going with this." And today I'm on day 647 straight. And we are seeing about 12 million views per day across all platforms cuz it's not just YouTube Shorts anymore. I take that same video and I publish it on Instagram as a reel. And that same video also goes on now Facebook. It also goes on TikTok. It also goes on Snapchat. And across all of those platforms, it's funny because sometimes a video will do really well on one and kind of not perform extra well in the others. Sometimes it goes well in all of them and sometimes it bombs. But that's the cool thing about Shorts and short-form. Every day is like a new opportunity, right? Whereas before, especially with long-form video and I'm creating one video per month or one video every other week, it's like if you miss on that video, you kind of have to wait a while till you get another chance. Not to mention you were slower to collect that data that then tells you what's working and what's not. So that's why for anybody starting any short-form content, I say go daily because that's going to teach you faster what's working and what's not. I wrote about that sort of effort in my book Lean Learning. You just like the learning comes from the action you take. So in the world of content, publish faster. You'll learn faster. You know, you can adjust. There's very little risk in publishing a video that bombs because you have tomorrow and then the next day and the next day. And then over time optimizing the storytelling within these 60-second videos. Actually, I think a big thing that happened was I took a lot of my podcasting brain and my kind of episodic show brain and put it into this series. And I created a little jingle at the beginning. And it's should I open it or should I keep it sealed? Very inspired by like the Empire theme song or you know, all those like little old 50s kind of jingles. Um shout out to Music Radio Creative, by the way. I gave them that tune. It's it's a audio file that nobody will have ever hear cuz it's terrible, but they made it sound great after my after my little wave file I gave them. Uh and that is at the beginning. So, I flip the pack in 1 second. Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? A question that I now propose to the viewer that sticks them around that keeps them stuck to wonder, well, should you have opened this or Right? So, so the long-form storytelling that I've learned is now shortened and compacted into a 60-second.
And the show name itself, the concept itself, the idea itself is a question that creates tension. Yes, and it's a question that a lot of collectors ask ourselves all the time. But, it's also relatable for anybody who's maybe not even into Pokémon. That's the other thing. It hits a general audience because it's so quick that you're not, quote unquote, wasting time watching somebody open Pokémon, but it opens a question that then I deliver on and that and and I yield that result for them at the very end. Right? The the the secret is in the series and and I have an acronym. It's it's easy. Right? It's episodic, it's authentic, right? Just like right now. You're you're seeing me struggle with this, but it's real life. Um it is something that is structured. So, that format again makes it very easy for me. I know what tomorrow's going to be like because it's the same video, just a different pack every time. It's the same structure. People are expecting that. And then uh why? It yields a result.
I got so many questions and so many strategies to get into, but first, for listeners that would be like, okay, cool. I want to follow that format, but I'm in insurance, I'm in real estate, I'm an online marketer, you know, I'm a coach. What would you recommend? How could that look or how has that looked for anybody you coach? If you give a couple examples. If we just now get stuck, like I see the idea, but you're tapping into giant IP, Pokémon, and you you tap into a lot of deserves all the respect in the world, but there's a certain level of scale to it. So, what is the format to get business owner, entrepreneur, or content creator all the way to their concept for what they might do daily for short form?
I got you. So, you want to think about what is your target audience? Cuz that's important. You don't just kind of create randomly. Cuz it's one thing to go go viral and get millions of views, but then like so what? Yeah. Right? So, for your target audience, think about what is a goal that they have. What is an urge that they that they that they have? Um and how do you reverse engineer that into a challenge or a series? Right? For example, I know somebody who's teaching people uh how to public speak. So, he's got students of his recording themselves daily talking to the camera, and the hook is day one of speaking or of trying to learn how to be a public speaker without any filler words. Mhm. Day two, day three. And it gives you something to look back on to see like.
And is he the speaker or he's got videos of his students? Okay. But he's got his students there, and then he gives a tip at the end, right? Whereas traditionally, a person who is maybe teaching that would start a video by saying, "Hey, my name is so-and-so. I'm a professional speaker, and I'm going to give you a tip on how to be a better public speaker and remove filler words." And then they go and like by then, people are gone. Yeah, that's such a long. Right? Yeah. Start the video in the middle of the story. Mhm. That is the big secret with educational content. Don't set it up. Just go right into it. So, already you're seeing somebody going through a transformation and maybe struggling cuz it's in the early days. Or especially with that hook, it's like, "Well, let me see. Are you going to add any filler words today?" I don't know. Yeah. So, now I'm stuck, and I'm going to stick to the end because I'm going to see if this person's doing what they say they're going to do. And then the educator comes in at the end and says, "Oh, you did a good job." and those kinds of things, right? So, that's a really cool way to feature a student to then come in with some education in the middle of a story that it that builds. Right? And then after 30 days, they they can go back to the content from day one and go, "Here's how much you've improved." Yeah. And now, of course, with any marketers, we want to show the transformation. It just took 60-second spurts for 30 days to show it versus one long video which people don't have the time and attention for.
Interesting. So, I'm curious. Your story is so cool, but you went in with a lot of clarity. It became like a second channel. You started multiple YouTube channels. You've got the whole Smart Passive Income business side of things you've all done. This whole new era you're like taking over the Pokémon world. You have your long-form channel. You start your short-form channel. You go into it though with the name of the show. I didn't No. Oh, you didn't? No. So, 6 days to to discover the short I open it format. So, what did you name You named it all short pocket monster? Yeah, cuz I have deep pocket monster which is my main channel. The same brand. And then it was like, well, these are shorts. Related to that. I'm kind of short. Got it. So, so the channel name the show name was discovered actually after some experimentation. 6 days you're figuring it out. Uh but I guess my question is how would you recommend somebody who already they have their pre-existing social media or accounts? Maybe their channel is named Pat Flynn, their first and last name Sean Cannell. And I'm seeing some people do like 100 days. So, also maybe like I don't know if I want to commit to this for 655 days of the same show. Do you recommend like spurts of common themes to open loops and close them?
A that's a great idea and often what I recommend because, you know, you don't want to commit forever. And again, I didn't know I was going to do this for this long. Just so happened that it worked after the 60-day experiment. But you do need to give something an amount of time. And the time is a tool that can help you and your audience know again what's coming and and what to do at least within that certain time frame. So, perhaps you wanted to try to lose weight, for example. Like and and then I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to work out every day for 30 days. Come follow me on this transformation. But again, you don't start by saying that. You were literally on the treadmill sweating. All right, guys. I'm going to be I don't know. This is People are very bumpy on [snorts] on my treadmill. But you know you're in the middle of the story what's happening and then now I have to to see what's what this person's going to do right it could be something like that something transformational it could be kicking rocks right whatever it is you just have to do it for a period of time and let your audience know that you're going to be you know documenting this journey.
So we've helped thousands of people go full-time on YouTube here at Think Media and one of the things we discovered from analyzing their channels is that there's five stages of YouTube success. So our team got together and we actually created a free resource you can check it out at mycreatorquiz.com and what it does is it will walk you through a series of questions that will get you fierce clarity on where you're at on YouTube right now what's holding you back and what you need to do next to unlock that next level of views and subscribers. So it only takes about three minutes it's entirely free just go to mycreatorquiz.com or click the link in the show notes. All right let's dive back into the podcast.
Are you a proponent of starting fresh channels if somebody's debating if they want to start a new channel or not you started a second channel? I did for experimental purposes because I knew if I put it on my existing channel people would go well this is only successful because your other one. What's really funny is I started the second one and that one is now out performing the long form in terms of views and subscribers were at 2.7 million subscribers now in a year and a half 2.2 on the long form one it's different audiences though. There there there is some overlap but there is a large number of people a large population who do not even know I have a long form channel. Interesting and that makes sense. Because there are people who will only consume the short form stuff. Right and this is really really important to understand the content especially for educators who have long form content you take these clips out and right you're trying to get people to watch these clips and then subscribe to the bigger thing at the long form podcast whatever it might be that is the wrong way to think about why you do those clips. You do those clips because you're able to now get parts of your show in front of people who would have never listened to the full thing otherwise. Who who who can discover you from that clip, right? The content is in the clips now. When I get recognized in public now, most of the time it's like, "I I watch your shorts." Not the longs.
But hang on though, are you doing shorts of your long-form videos as well? Uh I am now. I am now. So, like any special moment. What do you mean by the content is in the clips? Meaning the special moments of long-form content is where people could discover you, but your show of opening packs is different than that. It's different than that. Yeah, I just went on a tangent for those who maybe have an opportunity to do short-form with pulling from existing long-form content. And and the big idea is that if we want to reach new people and strangers, strangers need like a low commitment. That's why 30 seconds. That's why these short-form This it gives And And if you do it well at scale, not everyone's going to move over, but it's a chance for them to get to know you. For sure. And again, they wouldn't have found you otherwise. You have that content already. You could publish a clip daily and maybe use a tool like ManyChat to grab those people who are interested in what you have to offer and on the platform to email or something. Yeah. Exactly.
Okay, so I'm curious if you were to do a case study with your advice, algorithmic advice to me, and I think that every listener I'm shocked how much I get this question. It happens a lot. Okay, Sean, I already have a YouTube channel. It's been 3 years. It's been 5 years. It's been 10 years. I haven't really done anything with it. The channel's maybe kind of confused. And And do I start a new channel? I've already uploaded 400 videos on the other channel though, and I started it. Do I start it there? And then my traditional advice is kind of like, well, if you were going to start, you you were doing like gardening channel and now you've moved into real estate and you're trying to and you have subscribers. It's two different. The algorithm would definitely be confused there. But if it's a personal brand or something, so like you've always kind of talked about the same thing, the channel is aligned. But, now if we use me as a case study, I'm curious. And this kind of is a tangent into short-form in general. Do you think I should start a new channel if I was to start focusing on, let's say, something like something related daily to the Bible. I'm a Bible nerd, read the Bible all the time, leadership principles from the Bible, the faith principles. And I have a YouTube channel that has over 100,000 subscribers that is my first and last name, Sean Cannell. It is total chaos. Like, it's what it's like cooking videos, I interviewed Benji's daughter, Juliana, went viral, it's like all over the place. Not Bible-related stuff. Those things. There's one or two Bible videos on there, there's random I vlogged for 60 days, it is a lot of things. And it's, um, you know, 16 years old. Okay, so there's that channel. Then there's like my personal Instagram, um, that you know, bio is like I help people grow on YouTube, get my book YouTube Secrets. And I do personal stuff there. And so, the the question then becomes is, um, I don't want to launch anything new at this exact second, but that what I'm describing is something I will 100% do someday. And my thought would be, would you start like a new feature account if you were me? And if you were to start short-form or long-form, but the the interest Actually, you got me piqued. I would do short-form videos cuz that makes a lot of sense and I think people would take short hits of maybe what does the Bible really say or like something from the Bible, okay. You have a maybe enough context to say, yeah, you could build it up on your personal brand channel, you could go all in on your Sean Cannell, you might want to do something else with that, or would you start a fresh account? And for listeners, it's also kind of dovetails over to how you see algorithms and how algorithms learn now if they've got baggage from the past versus fresh accounts.
Uh I'm not anybody who works at YouTube. I know and I happen to be in a Discord with the people who work on the algorithm, but I don't have access to that like what and how that works exactly. From everything you've just told me, it would be a new channel 100%. And it And it would be like a new Instagram account. Account. New YouTube channel. Correct. You can reference this new account on your existing platforms, right? For those who within that group are interested in that. And I think that's the way to go about it. The major thing to think about here is from the audience's perspective and how like you can just replace the word algorithm with audience. Would the audience be confused if you talked about all these kinds of things, especially when it comes to growth? You can't expect a person to go in and start to like read your history and look at everything, right? They're just seeing what's popping up now. Yep. And so a new channel, Sean Cannell Faith, Yeah. New video every day, I'm going to And And for 30 days, I'm going to pull out a verse in the Bible and I'm going to ask a random person on the street what they think that means. Yep. Oh, yeah. Right? Boom. You have 30 days of content, you have this interaction, it's different, we're getting you to help a person or the audience understand maybe or how to interpret these things, and then you can relate it to something personal if you'd like. Yeah. That's how I'd go about it. Yeah, that's a genius idea.
Now, on my Sean Cannell channel, there's probably there'd be subscribers that are disengaged, there'd be subscribers that are actually would be interested in that cuz they did just subscribe to me and they would either unsubscribe or not, but there also is a lot of confusion. So, even if you replace algorithm with the word audience, I feel like in some cases, there's almost this argument like subscribers don't matter. They almost become like inactive. And And then I guess my point is if you wanted to leverage that asset, like as that sits there, I sometimes wrestle with and I think this is the exact thing people feel, even if it's 300 subscribers or 300,000, I've already posted hundreds of videos. It's already a personal brand channel. And if I just push it hard, do I unlist videos and pivot that channel to leverage that as an asset to build from, or would you still say start fresh? I would still say start fresh. I I wouldn't do anything with older videos and trying to remove things to kind of like change the perception in most cases. I mean, there's going to be edge cases and maybe opportunities to do that in some some cases, but in general, I think not only for the audience and the algorithm, but for you. Yep. Having a separate channel where you know these kinds of content exists, structured videos about this particular topic, it's just going to help wrap your head around where that goes and then silo that in terms of production and all those kinds of things.
Okay, I really want to get into some tactics still, and there's so many already, but continuing on that a little bit with people starting second channels, this might be news to you. I'm just curious your take. I caught that Gary V was doing some kind of a talk, and then they screenshotted some B-roll, and he talked about there's a reason why we started Gary V Wine on Instagram and Gary V Jets, as in the football team. And he started these niche accounts even at the expansion of his personal brand. Do you think that's an extension of what you're describing here to build up like fandoms or audiences around niches? Potentially. Gary is an anomaly. Yeah. I went into his office a couple of years ago and I saw like 40 people who manage his social media accounts. So. So there you go. You know, you see how many people are working behind the scenes there and you're like, oh, he's not actually the one doing all of this. So he. He can cast the vision, but then he puts somebody on it, lets them go through footage all day long, do their full-time job. Like to try to attempt to do a percentage of what he does, which is actually not just him, is you're going to drive yourself nuts. So I would focus on one thing at a time, but to your point, creating separate siloed platforms for different audiences or different messages may make sense, but I think I would only worry about that after figuring out one. Yeah. And you might not even need the others.
And would you when we first talked, when I first heard about this Shorts Pocket Monster channel, you said you shot this all by yourself, edited it all by yourself, you were a one-man team. Still. And that's still true. Still true. Only me. That's important for me for a couple of reasons. One, to continue to be able to share an example of somebody who's busy and who is, you know, managing all this stuff and has a family. It's like I'm still able to find time to do it. And this is why optimizing the production of it was really important to me because I don't have a lot of time. Yeah. Yet I was still able to make it happen and I'll get to a point 600 episodes later where I've kept up daily. And I do batch process, that helps me too.
Well, hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. And now do you take that final export and you're personally posting it on all those platforms? Correct. Does that take? Not very long. Very quick. I've gotten it down to 2 minutes. And you upload it to Snapchat and title it and you upload it to YouTube Shorts and title it and upload it to Instagram and do the captions. Like I wish I could just show you. Do you just do it on your phone? Uh I do it on my laptop. Okay. I edit on my laptop. I use ScreenFlow just cuz it's it All these editing tools eventually get you to the same result. It's just what works for you. Does it look clean? Does it, yeah, whatever. So, I have my library of sound effects, my library of of GIFs that I use. I have the jingle with the text that pops up in a master template that I just copy and paste into the new one. I have the structure down. It's kind of the same thing repeated every day. But, that's what people want. Totally. And so then so total workflow, now that you know and you've built momentum and it's actually insane. The headline of like solo busy dad business owner builds, you know, 12 million view a day channel. 40-year-old opening cardboard with hard work. 40-year-old opening pieces of cardboard with no AI, None. no help, and a simple phone and laptop, um and passion and a dream. And passion and a dream, and grit and a and the hustle and the love builds channel. So, it's kind of inspiring and it I mean, it proves it done like for anybody who said, you know, I'm too busy to start a YouTube channel. I'm too busy to do so social media. You are really are It actually is inspiring to hear your story. I can see why you're doing that. Like, you're finding a way to do it. Yeah, I just interpret when a person says, "I'm too busy to do this." is it's just not a priority for you. Sure. That's it. That's really what that means. Yep. How can you make it a priority? How can you get yourself to get off your butt and just do it?
Total time every day it takes then right now to do your 12 minutes. Total time for the whole No, the whole show? Oh, uh 20 minutes cuz I'll open a pack, right? And hitting it on every platform. And hitting it on on every platform. It takes a total 20 minute turnaround to do your daily show that's getting 12 million views a day.
Before I came here to Social Media Marketing World, I recorded three episodes because I'm going to be gone for I was gone from home for 3 days, or I am gone home from home for 3 days, and I just scheduled them. So, they're all they're all ready to go. They're going to go up every platform every platform 8:30 p.m. Pacific.
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So okay, I mean there's a lot of that the systems you're breaking down, the simplicity, the time it takes to get there. It's cool to start and tweak it in. I want to hear now then uh tactics for anybody that wants to get views on shorts, any platform, maybe the nuances of different platforms. And you recently did a 30-day challenge and you did a 14-day challenge for short form. Uh you could take this however you want to start it and I just want to pull it apart, but like what what is working? What are the tactics for getting views with YouTube shorts and short form videos right now?
Uh hook is everything. Okay. I mean it's the most important thing. And with the students of mine we had thousands. Hook? Attention-grabbing moment. Cuz it's not just what you say. It's not like a hook is necessarily a sentence, although it's part of it. Could be what you see or what's happening or some interesting kind of part of the middle of the story that then you kind of go, "Well, here's how I got here." Right? You share those moments that are interesting up front because people are literally flipping and instantly moving on until they find something that captures their attention.
What have you learned that makes a great hook? Uh curiosity, visuals, right? I had a friend of mine who was opening packs two of Pokémon in in his own way. And he was just starting by showing the pack and talking and then opening it. And it took him like 12 seconds to get to the point where he was opening the pack, which is what we all want to see. But we said, "Well, what can you include visually up front that would stop people and then give you permission to now talk for 12 seconds and then open the pack. Well, he started filming himself going to Target and every video starts with him pulling something off the rack. And now that very relatable moment, the thing that we all hope to see at Target, that pack coming off, becomes the start and he uses a voiceover. The voiceover is a very big uh tool that we could use to fine-tune and craft that story and insert a hook after the fact.
You're a big fan of voiceovers. That show is a voiceover. That show is a. Entirely a voice voiceover. Um all my long-form videos, much of the video is voiceover. It's like voice in my head, kind of Dexter style. Less bloody, but yeah. Uh and that is great. Different target audience. Different target audience, yes. That allows us to craft the story after everything's captured. On the long-form, which I know is going to be a separate topic or discussion, you know, we capture hundreds of hours of content across multiple cameras, right? Then it's about pulling out those best moments and putting them into a story. The voiceover becomes the glue. Yeah. Between that. So it's less vlog and more you're with me here and you get a voice inside my head. With the voice inside my head. Anyway, going back to shorts, the hook, right? So practice the hook every day until you get that framework and structure that is repeatable because that is when a person will start now start to follow because they follow not because they liked the video. I think there's a big confusion here. A lot of people go, "Hey, if you liked the video, please follow and subscribe." It's like that's what a like is for. People follow a video because they want to know what's coming next or they want the same thing that's going to happen tomorrow. And this is why daily is important, too. I love shorts because it's to me like fishing. I love fishing. I love to go fishing. Imagine going fishing, you put the perfect bait on the perfect hook and you cast the perfect cast in the perfect conditions with a perfect retrieve and then you don't get a fish, which is pretty often. What do you do? You pack it up after that one video? Then cast again. You cast over here. You maybe try a faster retrieve, a slower retrieve. You never know that next cast could be the lunker, right? Yeah. And that is what is so fun to me about short-form video. Every day is a new cast to potentially catch the big one. And then eventually you in fishing, for example, you learn the pattern. Oh my gosh, they're biting the uh purple margarita colored Robo Worm today. Okay, I'm going to stick with that here because that's what's working in these conditions. And then you just like you're just crushing it.
Yeah, okay. So, do you have any favorite business examples or just of of hooks um that could inspire listeners? There's a guy who in our challenge he he's a Canva designer. Yep. Uh Drew, I think is his name. He started a series was like bet you didn't know you could do this on Canva. And and he also did a little jingle he got inspired by my stuff. And it just starts with him showing bet you didn't know you could do this on Canva. It takes 2 seconds, which opens up a question like bet you didn't know what. What do you What are you going to teach me? It's a good That headline is the hook itself. The show name is a hook. So, after starting that series in our challenge, he's getting an average of about 150,000 views per video. Some of them have gotten millions, right? Cuz sometimes you get the lunker. And every video starts the same. You scroll through, it's just like bet you didn't bet you didn't bet you didn't bet bet bet bet bet It's the same hook every time. But the education comes after that. And it's masterful. It's great. And now he's getting clients. And now Canva knows who he is. And it's like all this stuff is happening as a result of that. Right? It's just removing the complication not just in production and what to film, but for the consumption, it's easy to know what's coming. So, therefore you subscribe, especially if you're in that world and that's something. It's great. You want.
Okay, so what would be the next thing? I mean, is it what comes after the hook or is there other tactics for crafting? Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a lot of you know, adding visuals when it makes sense, right? Not going overboard, sound effects, and little like pop like when I put a price on the screen, it goes right? Yeah. And then I've built this bank of like sounds that people recognize, and they didn't come right away, right? I've slowly added over time. I've I've just continued to refine daily.
If your videos take you 20 minutes to edit, you put the price of every single card you show. Uh not always. On a more vintage pack that's slower to open, yes. Okay, yeah, those are the ones I was thinking of. But if I'm opening one that's like $3, $4, the last one, yeah. So, does that take a little bit longer? You have to use some sort of way to source the info? An app, and it just I mean, I even This is an app called Collector where you can kind of track your collection and stuff. Um I'm friends with the founder, and I was like, "Hey, can you build uh a screenshot feature for me that you can like just take the price and put it on the screen? I think a lot of other creators and myself would enjoy that." Nice. They built that in 2 days, and it's like what I use now. It's just like. That's so good. That's cool. That's like a detail working on your workflow to get an element dialed in. Yeah.
Okay, if you describe one of your shorts, and you were to just say, or maybe you could say, "What am I missing?" What we're talking about here for those who haven't watched the channel, and they should just to even get inspired for their own niche, their own content. But you've got a music jingle. Does music play under in it it? Uh it does. And I have three songs that I use every time. One is more of like. Stickiness to that. To it, yep. Not just a jingle, but there's music. There's sound effects. Sound effects. There's visuals if when necessary, what I would see, the price. Price pops up on a certain card. What other visuals or words, I'm not sure. Will also So, I again, I learned this over time. It's like, "Okay, well, I'll talk about what I hope to see, right?" There's often like a very expensive card that I hope we get, right? Again, that opens that loop. I then learned to show that card so that people can see it and look out for it at the end. So, in the middle, when I'm like, "Oh, I hope we get the Mega Charizard." or whatever. Which is a screen grab from somewhere else of the card you're hoping for. Yes, from Collector now. But, yes, I mean, I would just pull that from eBay or. That cuts in. That cuts in, then it swoops out, and I have. Yeah. Like little swooping noises that I started to add, and all this kind of stuff. Um eventually, one day I randomly added this meme sound from a Vine long time ago, where a guy was doing this Who's That [clears throat] Pokémon game, you know, if you've ever watched Pokémon, they show like a silhouette of a Pokémon, and then you have to guess who it is. There's a There's a meme from a 5-second Vine of a Clefairy [snorts] being shown, but the guy goes, "It's Pikachu!" It's like really loud and obnoxious, and it's funny. Um I I added that when I pulled a Pikachu one day. And then, the next day people were like, "You should always do that." Like the commenters. They're like, "Where's the It's Pikachu?" So, I just now I add that sound effect whenever I pull a Pikachu. And when I forget to do it, people get upset. They get pissed off. Wow. Because they expect that, right? When I change the song to something completely random one day, they notice that. Yeah, why is the song different? The song Like some other things happened like over time. This is This is going to be really important for those who might be a little scared to do this and put themselves out there. So, the the camera is really close to my hands, right? Cuz I'm opening these packs, which means you can see my fingers. Yeah. And I have very weird, strange-looking thumbs. They're club thumbs. They're like I just saw your eyes go down real quick. Curious. I was checking them out, yeah. Uh they call them Megan Fox thumbs cuz they look a little That That makes me feel better. I call them Nintendo thumbs as well cuz I'm like, "Oh, they It's from all the gaming." No, they're just club thumbs. It's a thing. Okay. Um they're short and kind of fat. Okay. And then, in the beginning days of this video series, people started making fun of them. Hm. They're like, "Oh, this guy's thumbs are nasty." Puke emoji. And I was like, oh, like wanting to hide, right? Um but I was like, "You know what? I want
"to embrace this cuz this is me." That like, "Great, you're pointing out something that's uniquely me. I'm going to I'm going to lean into that."
>> Yeah.
>> So, I literally call them out one day and I say, "Yeah, I know I got nasty thumbs. They're kind of like Diglett thumbs." Diglett is a Pokémon that kind of looks like my thumbs.
>> Okay.
>> Fast forward to today, when I go to a card convention, I am signing Diglett cards all day long.
>> It's like a common uh Pokémon that nobody really cares about, but now when they see a Diglett card in a pack, they think of me.
>> Yeah. That's deep.
>> Um and like people are you should tattoo Diglett on your thumb and it's just like, you know, one time I was at an event and they're like, "Wait, are you the should I open it guy?" That's what I'm called now. The I'm not even Deep Pocket Monster. I'm like, "You're the should I open it guy?" And they're like, "Let me see your thumbs."
>> To to verify.
>> Yeah. To verify. [laughter]
>> That's amazing. So, I mean, there's so much there like I I would recommend listeners that are new to you uh your book Superfans
>> Thank you. Yeah.
>> because there's so much genius that you do, things you've learned in terms of community building. What would you almost call those? You'd almost call them like uh lore.
>> It's uh it's it's part of the culture of our brand, right?
>> of your brand.
>> the brand language.
>> Brand language moments, audio. And what I want people to hear and I don't know if I'm missing anything, but it's like over time that and that's another layer. It's not just sound effects, jingle, music, the editing, sometimes some other things, but you're making the short-form show also have reoccurring themes or reoccurring elements.
>> Characters, like the thumb.
>> your thumb becomes a character.
>> Right. Exactly.
>> Yeah.
>> Exactly. Um it is it is amazing to see what has happened and the elements and principles of storytelling still mattering here. The other thing that uh there's so much to unpack with just the six 60-second short, right? Um
>> Are they always 60 seconds or less?
>> sometimes they're longer. In fact, they they
>> Cuz platforms allow you to go 90 seconds.
>> 3 minutes now. 3 everywhere now. Yeah.
>> It's
>> hour, but Instagram's three.
>> Yeah, just all three. Yeah. So I mean I've done 90 seconds, 120 seconds sometimes if there's more packs to open, but generally speaking it's 60 to 90 seconds.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, I've I then started a sub-series within this series.
>> Okay.
>> So on Sunday, I have what's called Burning Shadows Sunday. Burning Shadows is a is a set of Pokémon from 2017 it was released. It has like the worst pull rates.
>> Okay.
>> And it has a particular Charizard, a rainbow rare Charizard in that that is very hard to pull. And I got inspired by a creator from a long time ago who did the same challenge but not in short form. It was like at the end of every video he would try to open one pack to find this Charizard.
>> How much does one of these packs cost?
>> Uh, like 20 bucks.
>> Okay.
>> Um,
>> That's expensive though so you
>> It's expensive in the world of Pokémon, yeah, but everything
>> $80 a month to do it every Sunday.
>> $80 a month for so 20 * 4?
>> Well, I'm opening like four to six packs per week.
>> Of the black guy though?
>> Of of the uh, the Burning Shadows guy.
>> Burning Shadows people.
>> Uh, so it is now I'm on pack 416 16
>> Of Burning Shadows.
>> without yet having found this Charizard.
>> Sure.
>> Every Sunday.
>> But how rare is the Charizard? Super rare. You might be doing this for 10 years.
>> That's what a lot of people may never pull it. But I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I'm building anticipation.
>> Yeah, I'm here. I need to know
>> It's a disappoint People have renamed it Burning Wallet Sunday.
>> Yeah.
>> They say it's never going to happen.
>> Like 400 bucks. It's like 900. I could have bought 20 of them by now.
>> Interesting.
>> Right? And yes, I know I have a little advantage because I have access to these cards and I can pay for them, but again the whole point here being a sub-series
>> Yeah.
>> that people can expect on Sunday that I got to tune in to my show. Like hey honey, my show's on.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? I literally get that comment. My show is on.
>> So good.
>> Um, the other thing about this and and and something in a brand and in storytelling is you have a rival.
>> Yes. have
>> rival.
>> Okay, hang on. So I've also heard like there's a good book from Patrick Bet David of called Choose Your Enemies Wisely. And it's been said in marketing that you should have an enemy. Is that the same as a rival?
>> Uh a rival is maybe a friendlier enemy. Right? Where with a rival you might have beef with with a
>> This is different then. This is a different concept than what I'm saying.
>> Yes.
>> A marketing enemy or the thing that you're against is not the same thing.
>> enemy is AI, right? So, that's your positioning.
>> When I watched one one of your recent long form videos which recommend people subscribe and and and that'll be coming out on the channel as well and we'll have a whole separate conversation. But I feel like your rival is your son.
>> Uh he has become a rival, yes, on that, right? Cuz he's he's quote-unquote stole uh Charizard from me and we're just go passing it back and forth. Uh another rival on the long form channel is time. And we personified time by buying a kitchen timer and putting googly eyes on it and naming it Steve.
>> Yes.
>> Why Steve? Because that's kind of a name you can get angry at, right? Steve. It has that like sting on it. Sorry to Steves out there.
>> this character around with you.
>> Right. Yeah. And now we have merch. But Steve merch. We sold out in an experiment 500 plushy Steves, which again is just a soft version of a kitchen timer with googly eyes and eyebrows.
>> What time did you set since they were printed all the time?
>> 2:31, which is 151 minutes, which is a callback to our finding 151 Pokémon challenge.
>> Okay.
>> They sold out in 2 minutes.
>> Yeah.
>> The plushy Steves.
>> Crazy.
>> Another part of the brain culture in the in the character. Anyway, on the short form channel I have a rival, which is sort of like a friendly enemy. Um where with an enemy you might have beef, a rival you might have pork. And that's what we call it, my buddy Alex and I. We kind of go back and forth and we kind of dig at each other in our own cuz he does a daily channel as well.
>> So, you're just you're any reference to him would be like an insider reference. He's not actually on the channel.
>> He's not on the channel at all. No, but the reason why we have this quote-unquote pork, if you want to call it that, is there is a set of Pokémon out there called uh team up. And in this there is a very, very expensive card called Latios Latias that they these two Pokémon make like a heart shape. So, we've He's He's named this card the lovebirds card, right? That's just like the nickname for it. Um and he's like, "I'm going to get it first." And I was like, "No, I'm going to get it first." Well, I ended up getting it first, and he still has yet to get it. So, every time I reference anything related to that set or this card or those Pokémon, I I do a little dig at him. I put a screenshot of his face crying, or I just kind of mention it, and then he has now called me deep Diglett monster and talks about my thumbs in a kind of kind of not a really nasty way, but like he just Again, we pass it back and forth. And the comment that the the crowd loves it. They love this back They're like, "I live for this rivalry. It's like the this is the friendliest rivalry, and I can't wait to see what the next part is going to be, right?" And we've even gone on stage in person together now because of this rivalry. We've been invited together to speak and talk and teach about YouTube and shorts, and we talk about our rivalry. And again, we'll do a little digging and kind of elbowing each other when we're there kind of thing. It's just become a friendly rivalry that people can enjoy and another insider thing for people who watch daily, right?
>> It's powerful. I mean, I think I think I don't know if you'll love these examples, but I think they they they illustrate I think uh Jake Paul and Logan Paul as controversial as they are have used rivals rivalries against each other to hack
>> Casey KSI, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And then they went together in the prime.
>> And then if And then you start thinking about that, you think like you know, uh I'm sure there's a level of authenticity to it, but they're also master media people that they sometimes pressure. And And UFC and WWE has thrived off that. That as people start ramping up to a fight, how Yeah, so then there's that rivalry or even in like maybe Drake versus Kendrick, and any kind of rivalry makes both you know, it gets people invested, it gets people interested.
>> A minor detail is that See what I did there? That's a test. Uh it it is that it doesn't have to be a rivalry. Just I think the important thing are these the the the the brand language that you create over time that people who are on the inside know about. People on the outside wonder about.
>> Interesting.
>> It's just like the secret menu at In-N-Out. If you ever come to the West Coast and you somebody takes you to In-N-Out, they're going to tell you about the secret menu because they want to be the one to tell you about the secret menu.
>> Yes.
>> And getting your fries animal style with onions and cheese on it. Like all that kind of stuff. Those things help the brand because people talk about it because they know something that others don't. Which is a chapter out of Super Fans. Like this whole Pokémon thing is literally a case study for everything that I taught in Super Fans. Super Fans was written before I even got into Pokémon. I'm just I'm just
>> And you had already done it, but now you're doing it like a hundred X. You just keep building on it.
>> Yeah.
>> It's powerful. Okay, uh kind of lightning round talking about short form. What's the biggest mistake most people make that's killing their views on short form content?
>> Uh paying attention to the views too early.
>> Mhm.
>> You think, "Oh, I'm I'm a failure. This is never going to work." You have to stick with it. You have to give it time. This is why a 30-to-60-day experiment works really, really well because doesn't matter what happens to the views. You keep going cuz that is what you can control. You can control the uploads. You can't often control how those uploads get seen or perceived or how the algorithm treats them, right? And if you base your success on something that you cannot control, I mean, that's a that's not a great place to be. Right? So, you can control how much you upload and then give yourself a chance at least to get to the point at which you can then assess whether you want to keep going or not because you've stuck with it for that many days. And like I said, day 35 is when things took off for me. Um so, just get started. Get out of your own way. And the other thing is over perfecting and trying to make it look really nice, right? It's like that's a I need the best camera. I I the perfect editing. I need like the some of the stuff that goes most viral and sees the most discovery or is just the most raw
>> It is super raw. For sure.
>> There's a guy uh who had a a channel called Sailing with Phoenix. This guy who worked a corporate job at a tire company quit. And his first video is like I'm I'm quitting my job. I hate this life. I'm going to cash out my 401k and I'm going to buy a sailboat. I don't even know how to sail and I'm just going to I'm just going to sail to Hawaii.
>> And he did that.
>> [laughter]
>> And he had the whole world watching. He gained 2 million followers in a week
>> Yeah.
>> cross-platform because day one of sailing to Hawaii with my cat. Day two, his cat's name Felix.
>> Snarla. I mean it the thing too is like uh you know, at some point that's no longer a shorts tactic. It's like just an incredible story.
>> Correct. Yeah, and everybody was so inspired. They were following him.
>> the clearly took the risk and the time and the energy for him to do it. He actually did it.
>> But his videos weren't perfectly produced. Whether you're kicking rocks or literally having a life-changing moment, that could all be captured in short form and as long as it's consistent, right? You can't build a relationship with anybody if you're not consistent.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh and you have that courage to show up, then you have at least a chance for things to happen.
>> Genius advice. If people want to build a relationship with you, where can they find you? I'll put links in the description everything.
>> cards. You can if we want to start a relationship with me, just uh send me over some Pokémon cards. No, I'm just kidding. Um long walks on the beach. Um Deep Pocket Monster and Short Pocket Monster on YouTube probably the best places to go to literally see a lot of this in action, right? Um and then Pat Flynn on all social media channels.
>> Amazing. And Think Media Podcast, like, rate, share, review this one for sure. Subscribe because there's going to be a future conversation with Pat Flynn all about long form and he crushed it in the short form here. I want to just thank you for being a part of this community. Until next time, my name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. Keep crushing it, and we will [music] talk soon.