Transcription
I just hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. 0 to 100K in just 5 months. And here's the truth: I did not follow the conventional wisdom. Some things, yes, but along the way, I figured out a bunch of new tactics that really sped this process up. So, in this video, I'm going to break it all down. These are my nine biggest nonobvious lessons for going from 0 to 100K on YouTube. And if you want to grow faster, you're going to want to watch this video.
All right. Lesson number one is absolutely critical. This is the biggest reason why I was failing YouTube before. So many people get this wrong. The most important factor for winning on YouTube is making videos for a super precise audience profile. I call this audience matching. You want to match your content with the same audience over and over and over. Let me explain what this means. To grow on YouTube, you need the algorithm to put your videos in front of the right people. This is obvious, but here's what's not obvious: If you help the algorithm find these people, it will push your videos to more of them, and you will grow faster. If you make it harder for the algorithm to find these people, it will not push your videos, and you will grow slower. So, it's critical that you help the algorithm get confident in knowing who to push your videos to.
Okay, so what does that actually mean? If you make 10 videos in a row about science, the algorithm is pretty confident that video number 11 is going to be about science. That means it knows exactly who to push video number 11 to: people that want to watch videos about science. This is an example of a good audience match. All the videos are aligned for viewers that want to watch science. But here's the problem: The more you jump around to different types of videos on the same channel, the worse it is. So you make one video about science, and then you make a video that's more about tech, and then you make a video about career paths as a scientist, and then you make a video vlogging where you kind of do science stuff, but kind of don't. These seem the same, but they're actually all targeting very different audience profiles. In other words, the type of person that would find value in each of those videos is not the same. There's some overlap, but there's also a lot of difference. So, if you do this, the algorithm gets really confused. It has no idea what your next video is going to be, and so it doesn't know which of those subsets to push it to. And when that confidence is down, the algorithm pushes you less, the click-through is lower, your videos don't do as well, and you grow way slower. This is an example of an audience mismatch. If your content-audience fit is misaligned, your channel will not grow. And I know this because my first YouTube channel, which literally has an interview with me and Mark Zuckerberg, is a dead channel. Nothing I post is going to grow on there. And that's because I tried making tech videos, but I also tried vlogs and these content breakdowns and entrepreneurial blueprints. All four of those video types were actually kind of good, but the targeting on that profile was all over the place.
And this is the really important part: The reason I tried to make all of those different types of videos is because I made the critical mistake of assuming that the game was me making videos about the type of stuff that I liked because I assumed that if people subscribe to my channel for me, then all the different stuff I liked they would like. And this is a massive, massive flaw in logic, because here's the brutal truth: People are not watching for you. They're watching for them. They like you as the messenger, but they're primarily there for the message. Whether it's motivation, inspiration, tactics, comedy, entertainment, they watch your stuff because they're getting something out of it for themselves. So, by making four different types of videos for four different audience profiles across four different sets of needs, you're actually alienating all of them. And worse, the algorithm doesn't know which of the four to push to next. To grow on YouTube, you need the algorithm to be really good at finding new people that are not currently subscribed to you. And the easiest way to help it find those people is for every single one of your videos to be super valuable for the same audience profile.
All right, so what does all this tactically mean for you? How can you take this and tweak your strategy on YouTube? Let me lay it out exactly. When you're starting your channel, you need to start out with the audience, not the topic. Imagine your audience is a single person, one individual. Who are they? What are the sets of problems or interests that they're interested in solving? You need to make videos week after week after week for that one person. And if they truly are your dream viewer and you truly make videos that help them, there are likely going to be thousands of other people exactly like them that the algorithm will go find for you. For example, on this channel, I make videos for entrepreneurs that are trying to grow faster with content to build bigger businesses. This has always been my focus. Every single video I make has been for that exact same audience, entrepreneurs, for that exact same purpose: to grow their business in the exact same way with content on social media. And because I've been so militantly narrow from the beginning, the algorithm has gotten really, really good at helping me find more of those entrepreneurs. If I make 22 videos in a row that resonate super deeply for this audience, then the algorithm is pretty sure that number 23 is also going to resonate deeply. And because of that, it pushes my stuff more. Now, the worst thing I could possibly do now that I have that algorithm focused and trained on 23 videos in a row is violate that consistency with some random video. I think of this audience matching phenomenon kind of like playing a form of internet darts. The more you throw darts at the same board, the bigger and bigger the target gets. It gets easier and easier for you to hit it. This increasing of the board is the algorithm helping you. But if you throw one dart at this board, a second dart at that board, a third dart at this board, all the boards start getting smaller because the algorithm doesn't want your off-target darts messing up the board. Once you pick an audience avatar, you're allowed to experiment wildly with different types of formats. Think of those like different shapes of darts, but you need to be super narrow and disciplined with the audience focus, the board you throw to. And here's the last thing I'll say on this to prove to you how important this is: on this channel, I made my biggest video about storytelling that just hit 1 million views. Well, I posted that exact same video on the Zuck channel. Literally the exact same video, and it was capped at 1,700 views. Same video, wrong avatar, audience mismatch.
All right. Now, lesson number two is super counterintuitive, and this will save so many of you. When you start a YouTube channel, your intuition is that when you make a video, you want to post and share that video on all your other social platforms to get people to come watch it. You'll tweet about it. You'll put it on Instagram stories. You'll make a LinkedIn post. Do not do this. It is crushing your YouTube growth. And let me explain exactly why. Think of every social media platform like a highway. The viewers on those platforms are driving cars at different speeds. So short-form videos like TikTok, let's say it's 90 mph. Twitter is maybe 75 mph. YouTube is maybe 50 mph. People watching YouTube have their brains clocked at 50 mph. That's what normal looks like to them. So when they see your video come up organically on the YouTube home feed and they click it, the speed and delivery and pace is kind of exactly what they're expecting to watch. But when you post about a YouTube video on Instagram reels or stories, some other platform, this takes someone who's driving at 90 mph and forces them to immediately ramp down to 50. This is a mismatch from what their baseline is. is. And so what happens is they click, they go to the YouTube video, they watch for 30 seconds, and then they bounce because it wasn't the consumption pattern and speed that their brain was clocked at. Now, maybe they churn because the speed was too slow. Maybe they churn because they didn't have the full 15 minutes to watch the YouTube video. But whatever it is, they churn. And this sends a super negative signal back to the YouTube algorithm because the algorithm is only evaluating your video on really two factors: One is click-through rate, how many people click the thumbnail and get to the video. And two is average view duration. How much does an average viewer actually watch of your video? When someone clicks your link from Instagram stories or any of those other platforms, you don't actually get credit for the click-through rate because they never clicked the thumbnail. They went straight to the video. And then their average view duration is super short, 30 seconds or 1 minute because of the miles per hour problem. So, it's actually a double negative that you do not want. And this double negative nukes the metrics because it signals to the algorithm, hey, don't push this video on the homepage. People are clicking and not liking. This is a disaster for growth. So the question is, what should you do? How should you approach this? And the answer is: you should do nothing. Personally, I have 800,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, all the other platforms. Not a single one of them knows that I post videos on YouTube because YouTube wants people that like YouTube to keep liking YouTube and keep watching YouTube. So I figured, let's just let YouTube do its thing. I don't want to cloud the algorithm with anything. It's good at finding people if you stay aligned to my point before. So let's just let it do its thing. In a way, this trains the algorithm that all of the work is on it to grow the channel, and it's actually really good at that. Now, if you just can't help yourself, you have this huge following on social media, you're brand new on YouTube, you really want to tell people, you can do it, but absolutely do not post a link. Take a screenshot of the thumbnail, put that thumbnail on stories or tweet about it. Make people go into YouTube, search your name in the search bar, find that thumbnail, and click it. Even though their viewer duration might be low because of the miles per hour issue, at least you get credit for the click-through rate, which helps one of the two metrics.
Now, I will say the only cross-platform content medium that does work well to share your YouTube links is email. And the reason why is because while YouTube is at 50 mph, email is more like 20 mph. And people are willing to go from slow to fast; they're not willing to go from fast to slow. And so, if you want to help grow and you have an email list, sharing your YouTube links in email can actually be a huge help. By the way, before I keep going, you can probably tell I don't really think about content the same way as everybody else. If you like the way I think about this stuff, I've got two other things in the description for free that you're probably going to like. The first one is called Virality Blueprint. And this is my approach to dissecting how virality actually works. It's a 5-day email series. You can subscribe below, completely free. It's at viralityblueprint.com. And the second thing is I write a weekly newsletter about this stuff where I share these kind of hidden gem behind-the-scenes tactics that I don't talk about on YouTube. That's called Content Department. You can subscribe to that at content.game.
All right, let's keep going. Now, the third lesson is to understand how the psychology of being a small channel works and how viewers actually perceive you. Here's how social media and content psychology really plays out: People will more freely click and stay on your profile once your following passes a social credibility line. Let's say that line is 2,000 subscribers. So, what actually happens is if you only have 200 subscribers or a video with like 64 views, people may see your title thumbnail and actually get intrigued, but then they'll look and see the small subscribers or small views and they'll think twice before clicking. It's sad, but this is the reality of how it works as a small channel. This is why it's so much harder to get that escape velocity initially because there's just a lower percentage of people that are willing to give you a chance. What you need to do is find a way to get to that social credibility line so that any random viewer will give you a max opportunity. And this line varies from niche to niche and format to format. But on YouTube, I think it's about around 10,000 subscribers. Now, there are two pathways to get there. The common path, which is what most people have to do, is just hammer videos consistently and kind of step up 100 to 200 subscribers at a time, over and over and over, building up until you get to 10K. And like I said, this is really common. That hockey stick graph, there's a reason that flat part lasts so long. That's just how long it takes. Now, the uncommon path, which, to be honest, few people get to experience, is to have some lucky viral outlier. If you get one of these, it'll bring in thousands or tens of thousands of people overnight, and it will rush you right up to and above that social credibility line. And to be fair, hitting that viral jackpot doesn't make you rich. It just means that for every video after that point, every person's going to give you the max chance to watch it.
Now, the big question everybody wants to know is, how can I engineer the viral hit? And the easiest way to do it is with what I call a quality shock. It's not actually about what you're saying in the early stage. It's more that the package of your overall video is so shockingly good relative to how small you are that people subscribe almost as like a tip of the cap. And to be honest, the only way to engineer this predictably is to have pretty advanced video skills from the beginning, which is fair, not many people have. So, the way to get this uncommon lucky viral outcome, it's either a quality shock or it's just pure luck. Now, I'll be honest with you: On this channel, I was fully planning on the grind-it-out strategy, 100 to 200 subscribers at a time. It was going to take two years. I was settling in for that, and I was investing in the team before. I just got lucky with the latter that I had a viral hit. For mine, I actually had two viral hits back to back. My fifth and sixth videos on this channel ended up at a million and almost 200,000 views. But, I'll be transparent: that was my 25th long-form video that I tried and my 300th video total between long and shorts. I had thousands of hours in front of the camera, thousands of hours editing. There's a lot that goes in behind the scenes to create the lucky overnight viral hit. So, I'm just being transparent: I was planning on not even having one, but I got lucky that I had two back to back.
All right, the next three lessons are going to be super tactical about the three most important parts of the videos themselves. But then after that, I'm going to break down a few of the mindset hacks that were really, really critical in helping me keep going.
Okay. Now, the fourth lesson you may have heard before, but I've got a few unique learnings on it. The truth about YouTube is that it's not really a game of who can make the best videos. It's more of a game on who can get the most people to click on the right title thumbnail and then validate that click in the intro. It's frustrating, but YouTube, the video platform, is actually a packaging game because the best-in-class click-through rates are like 10 to 12%. So that means 9 out of 10 people that see your thumbnail will not click on it. 90% of the potential viewers that could have watched never even watched. Now, as someone that came from mastering short-form first, this was super hard for me to accept because with short-form, there is no packaging. There's no title. There's no thumbnail. Ideas still matter a ton, but the short-form feeds just surface your videos automatically to people. So, you don't even have to think about packaging. Here's a couple of the quick-hit learnings that I picked up about YouTube packaging that will help you on YouTube: You really shouldn't start making the video until you have the title and thumbnail relatively dialed. For titles, they should complement the thumbnail and literally bait a click. Not clickbaity in the schemy way, but you need people to click on the video to watch it. Usually, this is by describing their dream outcome or a pain point in the title that you're going to solve. For the thumbnail, you should follow the three-item rule. At max, you should only have three things on the thumbnail. Maybe it's you, maybe it's a couple words in text, and then maybe it's a graphic. That's it. Anything small, they're not going to see. Anything complex and detailed, they're not going to see. And here's another tip that people don't talk about a lot: The emotion on your face in the image matters a ton. You want the emotion on the facial expression to match the tone of the title or the tone that a viewer should experience when they're reading the title. This is actually super underrated; it matters a lot. So, let's take the packaging example of this video I made on hooks. The title is How to Create Irresistible Hooks and Blow Up Your Content. And we specifically use the word irresistible because that's what people want. They want content that people have to watch. They can't ignore. Then we added the and blow up your content as a modifier at the end to be really explicit on exactly what you're going to get out of the video. Now, the thumbnail has three elements. In this case, it's me and then it's two different text graphics. One of the graphics says The Hook and the other one says Storytelling Masterclass. We specifically use the word masterclass to exude quality and that there was going to be some depth in the video. Combine that with kind of the mischievous little smirk I have on my face. My eyes are open, but I'm kind of smirking. It just gives this sense that I know what I'm talking about. Using the word masterclass, having the big word hook, and then that smile on my face meeting with the irresistible hooks. It just combines in a way that's really, really tough to resist clicking. Now, if you guys want, I'll make a full video on YouTube packaging, thumbnails, and titles in the future. There's so much more to go into. I just can't cover it now. Just leave a comment, let me know.
All right. Now, the next lesson is talking about intros and hooks. And the non-obvious lesson that I didn't know is that click confirmation is critical to winning on YouTube. This is the first 10 to 20 seconds of the intro, right after they click. It's when their urgency to solve that pain point is highest. They click on the thumbnail; they're most excited. What are you delivering in that 10 to 20 seconds to confirm that what they clicked on is what they're getting? Because if they don't see that, it'll feel like a bait and switch, and they'll bounce. Now, fortunately for me, because I made all those short-form videos and the topics I'm making YouTube videos on are content strategy, psychology, and hook frameworks, I have a deep, deep mastery of how to actually do this. So, I could crack this pretty quickly. I've made other videos on this. I'm not going to talk about it again here, but I have a formula that crushes YouTube hooks and intros every single time. I actually put it together in a template that you can just use and fill in the blanks. If you want that, there's a link below. It's completely free. Now, the signature lesson here is that if you want to make a hook that actually hooks them and holds them, you need to create contrast against some common belief. So, common belief is what they think today; your contrarian take is something you know about solving their pain that's different from what they believe. The distance between common belief and contrarian take is contrast. If you frame this contrast explicitly in the hook, you will hook them. And if you can aim that hook at a pain point they have, well then they're going to watch the whole thing.
All right, lesson number six is on differentiation. What can you actually do to make your videos cut through and stand out against everybody else? Well, here's the first piece: When I make a video, I'm trying to make the best video ever
Made on that topic. Period. Like, I really, really hold every video to that standard. And when I say best, what I really mean is the highest value density. In other words, how much value is a viewer going to get every single minute that they're staying on my video?
Like, so far in this video, I've dropped six to 10 super tactical things that you can use to grow YouTube faster. And moving forward from this point, I have another four to five that are buried the rest of the video. So, I'm not holding anything back. This is as much value as I possibly could pack into this topic. The easiest way to cut through and differentiate is to approach your videos in this same way.
Now, the truth is, in order to do this, you have to have something valuable and different to say. And what do I mean by this? If you're trying to be an expert, it helps if you're actually an expert in the topic. This means proof that what you're saying is actually going to work. If you don't have proof, it's much harder to get somebody to rationalize why they should trust what you're saying. For example, if I make videos on content growth, but I've never actually grown with content before, well, then what good is my take? It's going to be super generalized. Instead of starting on YouTube, you should spend all that time actually building up that skill of value, coming up with an interesting take, and then start making content on YouTube.
Now, there are three different ways you can differentiate on YouTube. One is in uniqueness, so that's what you say. Two is in the distillation, which is how you say it. And then three is in the explanation, so the examples or metaphors that you use to explain your points. You really shouldn't start on YouTube unless you have a clear hypothesis for how you're going to be different and more valuable across at least one of those three axes. And I'm telling you, it's so much easier to win when you actually have proof that you can do the thing you're teaching. If I would have started doing this around content without proof, it would have been so much harder to grow, and I probably would have quit because I wouldn't have grown.
Now, the good news is if you actually do have differentiated skills and expertise, you're going to crush on YouTube because the bar is so low for people that actually have that.
All right. Now, lesson number seven is a big one. This was a huge reason for my success. I hired a professional YouTube team from day one. I'm going to explain exactly how I did that and why it helped so much. YouTube is a 40 hours per week game. If you never tried it, it will shock you how many man-hours it takes to actually produce videos of this quality consistently. I would not recommend starting on YouTube unless you're going to go all in with every hour you have or you fund it with a professional team to hire yourself out of the process. It is so much easier to cash flow somewhere else and then put that cash in to hire a YouTube team. This is actually why I recommend most entrepreneurs should start with short form on Instagram and TikTok, cash flow quicker, and then use that cash to go all in on YouTube.
Now, YouTube boils down to five main roles. There's ideas and packaging, thumbnail design, script writing, recording, and editing. For me, I was terrible with the ideas, terrible with packaging, couldn't do graphic design, so had trouble with thumbnails, and hated editing. I felt like my strategic advantage was the script writing, the storytelling, and the recording. And that's the part that I didn't actually get frustrated with, and I was willing to do over and over. So, I took the areas where I had gaps, and then I built the Avengers for YouTube. I have an ideas team that literally does all the research on the space, finds the best ideas, comes up with the titles, hands me the thumbnail design in a doc where I can just sit down and go. So, that's my ideas team. I have a thumbnail designer that is amazing at the craft of making thumbnails that match and complement the titles. And then I have two god-tier editors that are unbelievable with coming up with graphics and animations. Combined, we have one of the best teams on YouTube. I'd put money on that. And I would never have been able to get where I am this fast without that team.
Now, if you run a business and you have the cash flow to invest in hiring out your own YouTube team, I would strongly recommend you do that. There's really no better ROI anywhere in content and marketing than YouTube. And I would not hire a one-stop shop agency that does every role because you're just going to get average performance across the team with a super fat markup. The better way to do this, which is what I did, is to hire out specialists that are savages at every single role and then stitch it together. If you want to hire out those individual roles like I have with savages, I've got links in the description for every single role and I'll connect you with my team.
All right, before I get to the mindset stuff, I just want to quickly cover one more learning. I call this perception of quality. I don't care what people say in 2025. The perception of quality matters in driving subscribers. Your audio and video quality, it matters. Even if it only holds a viewer for a split second more, this increases your chance of getting them to like you. You want to invest in this. I think having a high-quality studio, having crisp sounding audio, having high-quality edits and motion graphics, it all helps. It's not that you can't win without it, but it just adds tailwinds and increases your surface area for luck. And when you're starting out and you're small, you'll take all the luck you can get. I put a free link below to a doc that lists four different gear setups. The fourth one is all the stuff that I have here. So, if you want to just copy my setup or use it for inspiration, the link's below.
All right, the last lesson that I want to talk through is setting expectations when you're trying to grow on YouTube. Life is really just one big game of expectations. If you can set your expectations low, it makes it way easier to keep going with YouTube because you're not going to get as upset when the results are not going your way. Most people quit because they think they should be somewhere before they actually should. And this is all just wrapped up in an expectation problem in their heads. So, let me help you set the expectations for what you should expect when you're starting today.
First, let me paint the upside. YouTube is a money printer. If you're building any business, it is the best lead generation vehicle, period. Okay, so knowing that, you should be willing to spend an unlimited amount of time and lots of money to build that machine.
Now, here are the negative expectations and the pain that you will probably face. You're going to spend at least 12 months trying to get this off the ground with almost no traction, no income, and no success. And when I say 12 months, I don't actually mean 12 months. I mean 50 video reps. So, if you're lazy and you only do two videos a month instead of four, it's going to take you 24 months. At some point, the traction is going to start ticking up, but it's going to take you thousands of hours. You need to expect your videos are going to suck for a very long time. Like I said before, I've made 400 videos, thousands of hours in front of the camera, thousands of hours editing, and even now, I'm just hitting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. This is what it takes. And to describe it, I use this concept of the artist gap. The distance between where you are today with skills and where you think you need to be will be huge in the beginning. It's going to feel insurmountable. You have to keep going and trying to close that gap down.
At the end of 12 months, you should be around 10,000 subscribers. And rounded to the nearest whole number, this is going to be about $0 per month in AdSense from YouTube. But it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars if you have a sophisticated backend and some efficient business model.
Now, for a sense of scale, I do about 400,000 views a month, and I only make 3K per month on AdSense from YouTube. This is not an AdSense play. That's not why you're doing it.
Now, I know setting expectations in this way can be a little harsh and blunt, but to be honest, it's easier if you can set your expectations low and stay happy throughout the process. The last thing I'll say is this. The reason sticking with it is a guaranteed win on YouTube is because the bar to succeed is just high enough that almost no one is willing to do it. That's why there's value there.
All right. All right. Now, before we close, if you're an entrepreneur, I'm just going to quickly summarize the exact steps that I would take to replicate my success. If you want to do it like I did, these are the exact steps to take.
Step one is to pick an audience avatar that you can stick with for a long time and is best aligned to your offer. If you don't have an offer yet, you need to be able to make 50 videos for this avatar without stopping.
Step number two is to plan for 50 videos, one per week over 12 months, and expect zero traction. You need to focus on one incremental improvement every single video.
Step three, begin posting weekly and do not miss a week under any circumstances.
Step four, focus on packaging and ideas above everything else. Figure out how to drive that click curiosity in the title and thumbnail by focusing on some audience pain point. Then drive the click confirmation in the intro.
Step five, have something valuable and differentiated to say in every single video. If you don't, do more research. Assume that every video is going to cost you $1,000 to make. Would you spend $1,000 on this rep? If not, you need to go back and find a more differentiated angle.
Step six, if you have cash flow, hire a professional team across all four workflow areas as soon as possible.
Step seven, plan for zero outliers across that entire first 12 months. If the universe does gift you one, try to reverse engineer exactly what you did so you can replicate it.
Step eight, trick yourself into loving this process. If you do not love it and you hate it all the way, it's going to suck. All you have to do is get to 50 videos with your best effort and incremental improvement, and everything will open up and change. This is the best ROI on anything you can do. So, focus on that.
And step nine, if you want further help on the strategy, I will open up a few slots for consulting calls below. I rarely do this. It's first come, first serve. There's going to be a link below.
All right, guys. That's all I've got for this video. I just want to say if you've ever watched, liked, commented, and especially are one of the 100,000 subscribers, thank you guys so much. It makes it all worth it when I see people commenting that they've used the formulas and different things I've shared and they're actually crushing on their own videos. If you guys keep watching and keep liking, I'll keep making them. And to my team, I could not have done this without your help. Thank you guys so much for everything you do. And with that, the next stop is 1 million subscribers. We'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.