Transcription
The pandemic social media boom is over. People become delusional because they become used to inflated numbers. You're used to getting 10 to 100 times the views and it drops by 10x. You, you're going crazy.
The channel's been very on the struggle bus lately, especially very lately. Those that are winning on YouTube today are putting in the time and they're playing the game at a different level. You only have to get in the top 10% of content. 90% of people are just going to sit down and like start a podcast, upload it, lazy title, and wonder why they don't get views. Create some reasons in a world that's very busy of why am I going to stop and watch this in 2026? How often should one post? Is it the hour plus or is it the 10-minute? Like, what's working?
Let's reveal the secrets of some of the top YouTubers.
You got to just press record. YouTube. I actually hit you up a few weeks ago. One of your videos popped up on my feed and I was like, "Hey, like what do you think is really happening with YouTube now because I'm personally noticing organic reach is harder to get. It takes way more effort with more competition." And then I saw you put out a video talking about this new report that YouTube just dropped and what YouTube's looking for. And so I want to just dive into that because, you know, a lot of us don't have time to read it. They would rather listen to the expert give their opinion on it.
Yeah. I mean, I think that YouTube is an interesting place right now. I think, you know, here's the big idea. The pandemic social media boom is over. Like there was just like in real estate a social media bubble and that bubble is gone. I mean, you want to get in during the wave, you rode that wave.
Now, what that doesn't mean is it doesn't mean that there's not opportunity on YouTube. It doesn't mean that there's not opportunity on social media. I think what also happens is people become delusional because they become used to inflated numbers. And so if you're used to getting 10 to 100 times the views and it drops by 10x or 100x, you, you're going crazy. You're like, "Is this even worth doing anymore?" So then what's kind of interesting though is it's kind of like drugs. There's a, there's a reset. And if you're resetting your dopamine back to a baseline of in a way health, if your numbers were a 100,000 views a video and then you drop to 10,000 views a video, you might say, "Man, like, is this worth doing?" But it could be a reframe. Well, what is, what are those 10,000 views a video worth? How are you stewarding those 10,000 views a video? Put in perspective the 10,000 views you were getting. Now, I know a lot of listeners might be like, "Dude, I'm getting like seven views. Do I get into the content game?" So we have a lot of strategies for that but I think that's the big thing is I think, um, a lot of people started in 2020, 2021, 2022, um, there is increased competition and then there's the division of attention. Attention is just being more divided to short form, long form as well as doing well, but people are watching more channels. A lot of people popped up. I mean, you also are guilty of creating a lot of competitors. You helped a lot of people start social media. That's literally my job. I, I'm like constantly putting myself out of business because I give away all my YouTube secrets. And then, yeah, you know, how many other YouTube educators are there? There's like a thousand. We've done like a light research on it, you know, but there's probably more than that, but I mean like that we could find. And so what's interesting though is I would say that future is still bright. YouTube Shorts get 200 billion views a day. That's 4x more than TikTok. But YouTube Shorts are exploding. And and while this is all happening though, YouTube is printing gold play buttons left and right for creators, especially in YouTube Shorts. Our mutual friend Pat Flynn started a YouTube Shorts channel and in 199 got two billion views, got a gold play button, and made $128,000 from ads on YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts are blowing up. And then people are also starting new long form channels and they're doing well, um, as well. And you know, I think probably what's really important to your audience though is how many customers do you actually need? Like if you've got an offer, if you've got a business, if you have identified your ideal target audience, I, I help a lot of real estate agents and they want to get millions of views because they watch Graham Stefen, but it's like, you don't need millions of views. You need a view that is moving to your city soon and is going to buy a home and there's a conversion if you're creating the right content. So, I think your approach to YouTube's got to change and I think you also can rise above the noise in this era, but a lot of things have shifted and it's a different landscape in going into 2026. There's kind of this in between entrepreneur who I think YouTube is perfect for, right? You're already doing some business, you do have time, and like putting in the work could like take you from multiple six figures to to seven figures and and beyond. And that's literally like what it did for me was, um, you know, I was doing seven figures before, but it truly like I don't know how else I would have did eight figures. Without the power of social media. So, it's like there's kind of this in between person where it's like perfect for in my opinion.
What is your thoughts about Marcus Sheridan said in the next 5 to 10 years he thinks that a company's YouTube channel is going to be more important than their website and that's like thinking about personal brand in a world where you have coaching offers, you still do like in a world where getting information could come from AI and come from low-cost Udemy $37 real estate course, how are people going to keep doing business with you?
I thought about this a lot because clearly, I mean, AI is affecting every industry, you know, not just educators but lawyers and engineers and all these things. Um, a personal brand. So I see a couple of things to answer your first question. Is a YouTube channel more valuable than a website? Yes, like easily because anyone can just go build a landing page and it's like totally not hard. I even had this debate just now about domain names because we were trying to go get a domain name and I'm like, "Do I really want to pay this much for the domain or do I want to just get the dot something else?" And I just chose the dot something else cuz it's just in my opinion not that important anymore. Um, because people are just going to click the link in your bio, they're going to click the ad. Nobody like searches ry panana.com. They just would search Ryan Paneda. So, I for sure I think the channel's more valuable. Um, but as far as the value of education, I think it's worth nothing. I think, and I've been saying this for over a year, if you're a course seller or a guru or whatever, it's just slowly becoming worth nothing. And I just look at the history of it. It's like, dude, people used to sell thousand courses, you know, seven years ago. Right. You ain't selling a $1,000 course anymore. Then, you know, there was group coaching and group coaching was $10,000, $20,000. Like, dude, people don't want to pay for that anymore. So, you know, then what becomes left? If if if there's so much amazing content on YouTube, so many amazing podcasts like this, um, the education's not the hard part anymore. Like information is free. Chat will tell you. Then where do you derive value? And in my opinion, it comes from two things as far as being like a an educator. One is providing the services that they're going to use regardless. So for us, we do this on the real estate side through lead generation, through CRM, softwares, and lending. So we give them all the things they would buy anyways. And then the education is like free. And then the other side of it would be, um, I guess there would be three things. So the second one would be implementation. So you actually do help them implement it. It's not like I'm going to just teach you, Hey, we're going to work with you. I'm going to help. I'm going to look at your thumbnail, your title, whatever. And then the third would be experiences. And I think experiences are what's really going to grow. That's why I started like, you know, our new golf mastermind cuz I'm making a big bet on that.
The level and this, if we take this all the way back to practicals for anybody that wants to grow a YouTube channel, the word that Gary Vaynerchuk used when he spoke at Growth Video Live this last time, our virtual summit was he just said, "It takes more rigor now." Like everything I just described is like what does rigor mean? It means split testing three thumbnails, split testing titles. Like when we title our podcast and we go into we have what's called we call it a title crew. It's basically like a title brainstorm. Kyle, Drea, Tekashi, our thumbnail designer, Steph, our thumbnail editor, myself are all on Zoom, and we open up Millanote, which is a workflow, and we have like the script in there, and we've got the Google doc with the notes, and it's the script from the interview. After the interview's done, I went into the interview knowing the angle, but then we run the script through AI and we say, "What are the best angles? What are the hooks for the trailer?" Not just the hook. And you know what? I mean, a lot of people know the trailer is the music, the drum hits, the open loops. We go through all of that. We brainstorm five, then it's 15. Sometimes there's 36 titles in there. We copy paste all those in AI. Which one's best? What are the different psychological? Okay, that's probably the best title. We can always split test it later, but we figure out the angle, figure out the combining words. Diary of a CEO. What's the ROI of Steven Bartlett's, you know, podcast? He's probably like maybe the biggest in in some sense of whatever genre that would be. They're known to split test a 100 thumbnails, three different looks with 30 different quotes on each of the looks of the guests or the two guests and doing like paid ads. There's interviews with his creative director and that they're they're starts becoming the individual. His whole thing is like 10 camera angles. They shoot for 3 hours but edit it into an hour and 45 minutes for the end user. The whole middle should be cut out and the continuity of the whole episode. So when Gary Vee says to win on social media today, you need another level of rigor. Just sitting down and having a random two-hour conversation is cool for your diehard audience, but Diary of a CEO is split testing a 100 thumbnails and trimming the fluff and optimizing the beginning and like thinking about the viewer audience retention through the entire episode. It's a whole different level of rigor. And it turns out that those that are winning on YouTube today are are just putting in the time and they're playing the game at a different level. I actually do not think that this is inaccessible for your average person. I just think the average person has to count the cost if they're willing to do the work because competition is highest on YouTube for lazy content. But you only have to get into the top 10% of content. 90% of people are just going to sit down and like start a podcast, record for an hour, turn it off, upload it, lazy title, and wonder why they don't get views. And if you go into the 10%, it's just you go in with an extra level and you it's the stuff you were doing. It'd be coming back to that, but you don't have to do it. You delegate it. Like who is architecting hooks, titles, angles, and and then once it's all done too, by the way, but a really great editor could turn it into magic. If if that person's not just sitting there like cutting out the ums and trimming the ends, they're an artist themselves, re maybe orienting what questions should be in there, thinking about the viewer, time codes and chapters, breaking down the sections, thinking about how those are worded and really packaging it. They might you could even get a host like that host could then take your conversations where you just want to talk real and raw and once it's done they're like at today's episode, you know, maybe they've got world class energy. They give an agenda. Our our hook formula for YouTube is grab attention, set your authority, and set the agenda. So, it's attention, authority, and agenda. You have to get attention. That's the trailer, the opening quote. What's the first sentence of the video, the opening lines, create a couple open loops. Create some reasons in a world that's very busy of why am I going to stop and watch this in 2026 when I got so many other things to watch and I've watched a lot of things before. What are you going to say in the beginning of your video that's going to let people know there actually is fresh information in this? This is new and this video is worth watching. There's a lot you want to get when you get attention. In every single video, you need to establish authority because there's cognitive dissonance. If you want to reach new people, they don't know why they should trust you. And there might be a lot of visual cues that immediately is like, "Oh man, you know, was this another entrepreneur, bro?" Even very shortly, but you being able to drop, if you want authority in a real estate room, you drop real estate math. You drop real estate numbers that you've hit. If you wanted authority in a content room, if you had a video on content, you might say, you know, I'm like, I can relate. This is you talking in your hook. And you know, and I get it. I struggled for years trying to create content. But then once I really figured it out, I was able to generate a billion views and I like intentionally bridging and correcting the cognitive dissonance that happens in authority. It might be one, two, three sentences and then setting the agenda. If it's going to be an hour long podcast, here's what's coming up and here's the this is an open loop. It's going to be valuable. This is what's coming up. the same old information because everyone's just copying each other and and echoing. It actually is doing the hard work to find new stuff, find the latest reports, think about the newest angles, and that is always happening. Real estate's always changing, rates are always changing, politics are always changing. Whatever your industry is, it's just being on the forefront. One of the things that Neil Patel said too, if you want fresh, like he said, the only thing working on social media right now is new. The only thing working because there's so much even the outlier strategy on YouTube is a strategy of going and looking at videos that already exist and then just copying them. It's a good strategy, but it's it's what you use tools like Vid IQ to study the outliers in your industry and be like, "Oh, that topic on a small channel got a 10x to 100x the views, so I should make my version of that video." Not a bad idea, but you're still an echo. You're echoing something that's already out there. So Neil Patel's strategy was use my tool which he purchased answerthepublic.com which you can actually search not just YouTube but you could search Amazon, Google, TikTok, Instagram to spot something new that's happened this week, this month and even if it's one or two months old it's still probably um pretty fresh and there's always going to be new stuff but that's what people will keep watching. But but I would agree in in 2026 if you're like how to get started in real estate like SEO title seven tips bro you're like what are you doing like of course that basic title has been so saturated a lot of other people are doing it you've got to find those fresh angles with curiosity with fresh SEO how to get started in in real estate in 2026 seven changes and how to adapt to those because maybe the laws are change and you know the way commissions are giving. So people want fresh and new information and that's why YouTube will actually never be saturated because things are always changing, things are always moving, but it's going to come back to having the rigor to put in the work to uh create new content and stay on the cutting edge.
Okay, so two questions tactically now, right? I think the main thing that we're hammering home to anyone listening is you got to want to do it. That's my main problem. Number two, you got to be willing to step up to new levels. It's not just picking up a camera anymore and just copying everybody. Like, you got to put effort into being unique and and doing that. Um, but three, let's talk about frequency. You know, how often should one post? You know, is is it the hour plus or is it the 10-minute? Like, what's working?
Let's reveal the secrets of some of the top YouTubers in the entrepreneurial space. You've got, talk about Dan Martell, Patrick Bet David, Alex Herozi, and they're all kind of doing different stuff. You know, from what I could tell, Dan Martell and Alexi are releasing essentially one long-form YouTube video a week. I think Alex is doing one. I think Dan might be doing two. These are like very well produced, edited, strong videos. These videos are 15 to 30 minutes long, but they are they're typically teaching talking head quality delivering value type videos and they're also turned into podcasts. Now, so there's kind of like an anchor long form strategy. These individuals sometimes they don't necessarily have interview shows. You know, Alex will interview Dave Ramsey and other individuals, but he's usually doing solo rounds and then he's got his podcast. Dan also similar, you know, he's mostly doing doing Talking Head. The reason I wanted to bring up Patrick David is like, dear God. I mean, like his he's getting like more views than CNN. He's pumping out long two-hour long. I mean, it's politics driven. It's like news driven multi with multiple guests to divide and conquer even your voice. So, you could bounce things off and talk and research. So I think and then he's got endless clips from those across multiple channels. The PBD podcast is a channel. Value Tamement is a channel and there's clips on it. There's the PBD clips channel or Value Tamement clips channel. Other clips go there. They rank the clips. He's got someone sitting in the meeting that is taking notes about what the best clips are so they can be pre and this is not AI. AI is helping but it's like humans that are strategists. And then it goes into, you know, I've been to their offices, edit bays. They come right out of the podcast room into an edit bay of what's getting cut, how are we putting those clips out, what what are the thumbnails, titles, what are the angles of of all of that. It's a media machine. He is going for kind of a Fox News, CNN, yeah, at scale type of a play. So, I it goes back to your question of like what what is the volume? I think that's just a self-awareness question of what kind of impact do you want to make? What do you want to put out there? How closely are you curating the uploads?
Yeah, I guess like I see there are people who it's like it's extreme one way or the other, right? Like there are guys who uh go every day or multiple times a day, right? They'll they'll start streaming and you know all these things. Then there are guys who that they're like, "Yo, couple of videos, like two a week and just like the highest quality that we can come pump out or even one a week, right?" Mr. Beast just uploads like when it's done. It might be three weeks. It might be six weeks. Couple million dollar budget on the video. It's like when it's a masterpiece.
So, I don't know. Like, I've done both. I mean, I've done daily videos. I've done three times a week. I've done, you know, and I I I just think about my workload as being like the main driving factor of what I'm willing to do. Um, but I mean, like I'm down to do three videos a week and whether they be long form podcast. I I'll do three podcasts a week. I'll do two podcast or one podcast and two 20-minute, you know, talking heads.
Patrick BD David has research people on his team. I still think this comes back to who's waking up thinking about this. Who do you think is the most valuable person on the team of a content team?
The strategist. That's what I think. That is the rarest. The actual and and strategy has like levels to it. That person who's starting in deep research, finding these topics, figuring out from the beginning what the heck we're going to even film. And also I think strategist and creative leader which is interesting because leading creatives you that's one of the powerful threads that Caleb Rston has been putting out on his channel and whatnot is this idea of how to lead creatives. So that core leader that just gets the big picture, gets the strategy, is a good leader and knows how to lead a creative team because you also want the best creatives on your team. But creatives like anybody else comes with strengths and weaknesses. So thinking about I mean who cares whether what hours they work or you know uh how what their workflow is if if you're if they're able to just that the leader is able to get the final product out of them. And so I think that's a unique skill set. It's a creative leader really a brand builder that also then can go all the way they've clearly been in the trenches. the reason they've earned the respect and have those insights is they've sort of done the pieces and my by the way I mean I I would certainly possess some of these skills as the you know founder leader of Think Media and I've been through all of those different steps so whether it's like the leadership dimension I've been behind the camera I still know how to operate a camera I understand workflows I understand editing I understand their pain points and then I'm also on the front end I I expand into reading psychology hooks communication It's a multiplicity of skills. So, you're if we were putting out a job description, too, for the level you're at. This person's 10 years of experience. You know what's interesting, too, is there's a lot of young guys that have that, meaning they're 23, but they started at 13. Yeah. My first channel was at 13, uploaded 55 videos. I've been obsessed ever since. Like, I've been in it. I started, you know, my first side business at 16 and a half. They maybe worked for one or two other people. So, they actually might be young, but I actually I think 10 years of experience would be the person that you need on your team as a strategist. As a strategist and there's plenty of people that have 10 years of YouTube's years old as a platform. So, if you were ranking the top priorities, right, the strategist is is going to pull the biggest lever out of all this, right?
I would probably guess that the editor would have the least amount of value.
No, I'd say the editor actually comes pretty close. I knew you were going to say that next. And it was interesting when we had Olli Abdoll speak because it's a little bit different for me because we have people on salary. We have W2 employees that work at Think Media, but for a lot of people and for the end user, they could benefit from this. A lot of people, if you just want to like start a simple YouTube channel, you should hire a contract editor. Like you don't need most people, you don't need staff, healthcare, thus per video. And here's what he broke down the difference between cuz you could pay $200 for a video, you could pay 500. The price for a great YouTube video per video is pushing 1,400. Got it. So that assumes you have brand strategy, all that in place for the video that gets. Yeah, it's true. you if you just have absolutely nothing and you you hire the best, you get a beast editor and even your skill and whatnot. But that actually that speaks to the the level where I actually think editor is one of the a video editors are one of the mis most misunderstood job descriptions. I actually think almost all creative positions are grossly misunderstood by entrepreneurs because the the mistake that entrepreneurs make is they think I need to hire a photographer. You're lacking a ton of distinctions. Just because somebody calls himself a photographer, most suck. A lot of people, I need to hire a video editor. Oh, great. They have a video. I don't even care if they have 10 years of experience. It doesn't mean they're a good editor. They don't know YouTube editing. Exactly. So, what what software, how fast, editing, subtle, you know, subtleties, workflows, like, but like if we're just breaking this down, the reason I said editor would be last is because they're kind of the last piece of the equation, right? Like they're that final piece of the puzzle before it launches. True. I I would add one key there. I think what's interesting about a good editor is they themselves are the best editor if they're actually a content creator themselves.
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