Transcription
Hello ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to this live script writing workshop for YouTube creators.
I'm just going to do a quick check to make sure all my text is set up and ready to go. Is everyone's fired up in the chat? Be me one sec. Welcome! Yeah, sounds working okay, good stuff.
So let me just tell you a little bit about what to expect today. First things first, I've spent about 12 months trying to find a way to really simplify script writing. Some of the people in the chat before this were saying that it is incredibly overwhelming. They get analysis paralysis, they get stuck, and I hear this a lot.
So I want to help you guys overcome that, and I want to give you a quick and easy tried and tested system that you can just stick to. I've actually been using this system for a few months. I use it on Creator Booth. I also use it to write emails, and I also use it to write tweets. As a little secret for you, it's just my writing system in general.
At the end of this workshop, I'm going to give all of you guys who are live a link to a document that you can just fill out as a template, and I think you'll be able to use this for every script you ever make again. So I've really tried to simplify this as much as I possibly could.
A little caveat for you: This is not the only way to write a script. I'm not saying this is the best script writing system in the world. What it is, is the most simplified version of all the complex things we can do. I think it covers the foundational things you need to get good at.
So we're going to get started. Hooray! Anything else that I need to tell you? No? Let's get cracking!
First things first, why do you need the script writing system? Well, it's going to help you get better than 99% of info videos out there. I honestly believe that. It's going to save time, it's going to help you with overwhelm—we've already been over that— and it's going to build the foundational skills.
It is not a viral system, though. If I wanted to make a viral video, this wouldn't be the one that I use. I would use something different. I would be way more heavy on story. We are going to use storytelling and elements of it, but it's not really a sort of viral kind of script format.
It's also not for every channel. I work with information-based channels, or you guys who teach or pass on information. This is a system that you can use. If you are doing a vlog, it might not be the best option. However, you can use elements in this.
I'm going to reveal it to you. This is the system. There are eight steps. As you can see, each step has a little green line pointing. Now this doesn't mean that this has to be the distance between steps. I've just plonked them on here. Step five could actually be right here. Step six could be up here. But I just want to lay it out in this really easy way.
Alright, so for those of you who don't know who I am, before we get onto that, I'm Ed. I have this channel Film Booth and another one called Creator Booth. Film Booth helps people get views. Creator Booth helps people monetize. I work with a lot of YouTubers and spend my whole life, all day every day, talking to people at YouTube, whether or not it's my friends who are YouTubers, to clients, to just anyone really.
This is the channel I work with. We picked up 100,000 subscribers in 10 weeks. They doubled their channel and have since put on another 100,000. This is another channel I've been working with, someone called Rian Doris, who owns a company called Consulting.com. Those of you who know Sam Evans, you'll know what that means.
His first video on his new channel got a million views and it's been growing nicely. This is another channel I've been working on as well, and we use a similar system on it. They picked up 300,000 views in a year going from 25,000 to 322 million views. I also help people kind of monetize their channels. I got this call email in the other day, and someone I had a call with made $1,000 straight after as a result of the advice.
I give away a lot for free too, so if you're not in my mailing list, every week I send out an email teaching people the tips and the kind of things I'm going to teach you today. I also share the things that me and my friends are exploring on our channels to help get growth, and we get results for free.
Here's another example of someone who made quite a decent chunk of change just from watching my other videos. I have other communities as well where we help people with thumbnails, which is kind of like a paid service. But basically, what I'm trying to show you is that every second of my life is spent helping educational YouTubers, either grow their businesses or their followings.
This is the system that I'm now encouraging them all to use and have been using on some of the other channels too, and I'm using too because I truly believe it to be the simplest and best option.
Alright, so the first thing we need to do to make sure this system flipping works is we need to make sure you guys sound more interesting.
So why does this matter? A lot of people think YouTube is all about editing and filming and fancy cameras, and it's not. I truly believe that writing is the most important skill any educational or information-based YouTuber in the world needs to get good at because they can take that skill away from YouTube. They can take it to email, they can take it to blogs, they can take it to Twitter, they can take it to writing descriptions on social media.
If you get good at this, it impacts you everywhere. Writing is the highest leverage skill there possibly is. Editing isn’t—you can’t take that off platforms.
Now, it's going to bring your content to life, but I really think you should all be trying as hard as you can to get good at writing. So why I'm excited to share this with you and what I'm going to teach you is what I call the Ben’s System.
There's more to this, but I’m just going to take four very simple things, and we're going to use them to make your scripts better, basically.
The first of the Ben System: B stands for Big. So what we need to do is figure out how to make your ideas sound like they are bigger. Because no one wants to click or listen to a video that sounds like it's going to get them an average result—they want big results, right?
So we need to make big promises that sound exciting. We also then need to make it sound easy. Again, people don't want to watch YouTube videos, no matter how in-depth they are, that feel hard. So we need to let them know that this is going to be easy.
Also, we need to try and find ways to make the content easier to digest. We also need to make it sound new—that's what the N stands for. News always does well on YouTube because it is new, right? People love new information; they want to get the edge. The problem we have with education is there are tons of things repeated, but that doesn't mean we can't make it sound new.
You might be thinking, well, it isn't new—I can't make something sound new that isn't new—but let me tell you what happened with Film Booth.
When I came onto the scene, I used to get so many messages from people saying, "Ed, you are—sorry, I'm not showing you the slides. You are teaching us stuff that I've never heard before." I used to laugh because I was like, "I know that you've—it’s all out there; this isn't new information." All I did was find new ways to represent that information and I explained it in ways that made it feel new to people.
So if I just go back because I missed the slides, we got Big, we got Easy, we got New, and this final part of Ben’s is Safe. So Safe is kind of like we need to make people feel like they're not going to waste their time by listening to us, that the information or what we teach isn't going to be high risk.
If we can do all four of these things, we're going to make more interesting scripts, and we're going to keep people watching longer. We’re going to be looking at that quite a lot, and hopefully that makes sense. This is the first part of our system.
As you can see, packaging is actually part of the scripting, and it’s outside of our attention graph. You might have heard people say you need to do your thumbnail and title first. I say it every day, maybe six to a thousand times, and most people just don't listen.
Hopefully by halfway through the end of this, you're going to understand why it's not just that you need to do it; it's that you have to do your packaging first because this whole entire system will not work if you don't do it.
Let me run this fast for you now. We're going to look at some people's packaging, and we're going to put it through the Ben’s System to start off with. Getting the click is the first part of our script—it's the first hook.
So here's Cody Sanchez, and what we want to look at is this thumbnail and title: Big, Easy, New, and Safe.
What I'm going to turn around and say is, yeah, the first thing it gets a tick, it's big: "I bought land for 10K and made $1,500 a month." Well, in terms of interest—in terms of like a yield on investment, sorry— that's pretty epic. So that's a big claim, a big result for an amount of money that in the investing world might not be seen as that big, although it's definitely a big chunk.
Sounds easy: "I feel like I could buy a bit of land and put a tent on it. Do you think you could do that too?" Although I'm not very good at setting up tents, I still feel like I could make money from this. So me as a viewer, I'm thinking, yeah, I can do this.
Then we got New: to me, this is new information. In the make money online niche, you tend to find it’s always the same things, right? It’s people being like, "How to make money with AI coloring books," or "How to make money with drop shipping." This is totally unique, so it's got my attention; it's new.
Does it sound safe? Well, in terms of investment, maybe it depends on how much money you've got. Some people might think, yeah, I’d happily risk that—it does sound safe. But also, I think the thing that makes this sound safe for me is Cody said she got the result: "I bought land for 10K and made $1,500 a month." So she said the result is there, so to me, it’s ticking all the boxes.
Then we have Elizabeth and Elizabeth Phillips with this video: "You'll Not Forget My System for Memorizing Everything." She's got in the thumbnail here: "You'll Never Forget This Video."
So is it a big claim? Well, let's have a look at that: "You'll Never Forget This Video." That's a big claim. Then "My System for Memorizing Everything," that's pretty big as a claim.
Is it easy? This is one thing that you want to pay attention to, and you'll see this all over YouTube, but systems in particular—whether or not they're visual or just the word system in a title—implies that it's been planned, it's been thought out, the process has been taken care of, so that sounds easy to me.
So I give that a tick. Is it new? Well, it's her system for memorizing everything. It's not a system that I've heard of before, so I'm intrigued by that.
Is it safe? Well, she said she's done it, and she's also saying, "You'll never forget this video." I kind of feel her; she’s getting four ticks.
And then finally, we got Charisma on Command here, and they have some great thumbnails and titles. Here we want to say a big claim: “Seven Verbal Habits That Make You Extremely Attractive.”
Extremely attractive: it's a pretty big claim. But also "The One Trick to Make Me Extremely Attractive," that is a very big claim.
But does it sound easy? Right, and it sounds new: I’ve never heard of it.
Does it sound safe? Maybe not so much, but we don’t have to have all of them. That's one thing you want to be looking at your own thumbnails and titles: Are they ticking many of these boxes?
Once we've got our packaging nailed, we move on to our hook.
This is the first step. A hook is basically your job to get people interested. Now, there is an argument to state that your thumbnail and title is the hook, and that is true, but for this system we're just going to drop in another hook. So we hook and then we hook again.
What we're going to do here is I'm going to teach you three kind of different types of hooks that you can use. There are lots of other ones, but I'm just going to teach you three that I use a lot.
The first is a question hook. This is where you pose a question that the viewer wants to know the answer to.
So let me give you an example: "Have you ever wondered why train tracks are filled with stones?" Now I saw that earlier, and it made me wonder straight away. I hadn't actually wondered it, but if that had started off a video, I would have been like, "Yeah, actually now you mention it, I do wonder."
So that would have hooked me. Then there's this one: "Have you ever wondered what that dangly thing is at the back of your throat?" Now that was something I’ve always wondered as a child. It's kind of a weird thing, right? But people have probably wondered that at some point in their life.
Now we don’t want to just throw random hooks at people like this, but the whole point is we want to get them thinking. We want to intrigue them; we want to shout out something that feels relatable to them that gets them on the same page as us and keeps us interesting.
Questions can do that. They can be much simpler, though. They could be like: "Have you ever been fed up that no matter how much exercise you do, you just can't lose weight?" You know, these relatable questions can hook people and make people feel like we get them and we understand them.
The next type of hook is a story. This is where you would basically start your video by dropping people into the most exciting or chaotic part of it—the part of the story where the stakes are at their highest because there’s tension. You want to know the outcome, and if it's kind of a relatable situation for your viewers, then it’s going to hook them even more.
So I'm just going to give you an example of this. Here's one of Leon Hendricks's videos. Let's just put it through the Ben’s system.
His title, to start off with: "Millionaire Goes Homeless to Prove Anyone Can Make a Million." Is it a big claim? Massive!
Does it sound easy? Well, he’s trying to prove anyone can make a million, so there is some sort of ease to that. If this homeless guy can do it, maybe I can.
Is it new? Yeah, I've never seen anyone do this. It's intriguing for sure.
Is it safe? Well, probably not a safe thing to do, but I feel like if this guy can do it with nothing, maybe I could too, so I'm going to trust it. But also the word millionaire tells me that this person has a lot of credibility, so I'm happy to trust them and listen to them and dive in.
I'm just going to play the start of this clip from Leon now. Try to pay attention to where you are dropped into this story.
"Today has been really tough. This is my bench right here—going to be sleeping on tonight."
So this is Mike Black, the millionaire who went homeless with the goal to make one million dollars from nothing in only 12 months.
At the start of that clip, he's at his moment of weakness. I guess he looks like he's crying; he looks like he’s fed up. He looks like he can’t do it. We’re dropped into the most chaotic moment which makes it just so much more interesting, and then the story unfolds from there.
So that's an example of a story hook done a slightly different way.
And then there's the statement hook. A statement hook is pretty simple, and this is where you kind of want to shock or surprise people the second they click play on the video.
I have different ways of doing this, and I'm going to share with you how I do it. This is a statement hook I wrote the other day: "YouTube Shorts Won't Just Wreck Your Channel; They'll Destroy Your Life," which sounds really over the top, right? And it is!
But the cool thing about this is I actually had a script where I could back up this massive claim. I felt like I could actually link shorts to wrecking people's lives. You don’t want to make a bold statement and then not be able to back it up.
But this was the first one I started with, and the whole idea is I write a really over-the-top statement I think will shock people, and then I tone it down and I write three or four.
When you're writing your statements, no one's going to see them, so you can say whatever the heck you like as long as it doesn't leak out on the internet. You can figure out how much you want to tone them down, but it's like a slap in the face; it's a wake-up call to some people.
That’s a statement I think I ended up using in an email or somewhere else. So those are your three kinds of simple hooks: your question, your statement, and your story.
I got to show you this one because here, see if you can work out what’s happened. But Leon has basically combined them all: "Overthinking Is Like Losing Your Virginity By Accident."
That doesn't make any sense! Well, how about this one: "Losing Your Parking Ticket." But dude, just because two things suck doesn't mean it's a good analogy.
What's a good analogy for overthinking? "Overthinking is like a hamster frantically running on a wheel, stuck in a never-ending loop, wasting energy going nowhere. Where could we go in life if we stopped getting stuck in our heads and just violently took action toward our goals? Let's explore some ways to do that, but it may not be what you want to hear."
Okay, so what Leon has done there: he started with a statement, he then turned it into a story when it cut to him and his friend, and then they went back to making statements and doing stories. At the end, he posed a question, so he used all three hooks in his hook, which I think made it fantastic. And I think that was on Leon Hendricks's Slats video, which was brilliant.
So you can use them all together if you get smart like Leon, but you really don't have to.
Then that kind of brings us onto visual hooks within your hooks. You will plan these, of course, while you're writing, and I don't want to go too deep on these, but what you show, the sound effects, the music, the script—all of these things combined to hook people.
Visual hooks in particular can be really effective on their own. There was one where Matt DeVela, as soon as the camera came on, was just lying on the floor. It looked like he was dead, and that was kind of a shocking moment. So you can combine that with the actual audible hooks—the narrative that's coming out—to make it work.
Okay, so let’s move on to the next step. This is the setup.
So what's the setup? Now this bit is where we want to set up the value of the video that is coming and I don't think you want to set up more than three things here. You could potentially set up just one if you wanted, and a lot of people do. Then you can bring in other elements throughout the video.
But let’s just say we’re going to set up three for argument's sake. What do you set up? What do you write in your video to make people care about the rest of it? Well, I'm going to show you my simple setup system now, which is very, very easy to do.
I think anyway—it probably takes a little bit of practice—but the most important thing here is you have to make sure that your thumbnail and title and your packaging pose three big questions to your viewers. If you don't have three big questions that you think your viewers are going to look at that thumbnail and title and say, "I don’t think they're going to have any questions in their mind," we need to go back to our packaging.
So the first thing you do is you look at your thumbnail and title that you're going to work with and just write down as many questions you think the viewer is going to want answers to based on it.
We’re going to look at another channel at the moment, and we’ll do this together as an exercise, and then I want you to list them in order of importance. All you have to do is make sure you pay them off.
Let me show you what happens. This is Hayden Hilliard Smith. You guys who watch me usually watch him.
So what we're going to look at first is just look through the Ben System at his title and thumbnail: is it a big claim? "The One Step You’re Neglecting in Your Edits—Here’s Proof It Works."
This is a big claim because he's saying, "Here’s proof it works," and he's also calling you out saying you're neglecting something, so I’m going to say: big.
Then we've got Easy. Is he making it sound easy? Well, there's one step, and then he's saying fixing this step will take us from boring to amazing, so that in itself feels easy.
Is it new? I really like this title because I've not actually seen anything structured like this before, so to me, it feels new.
Is it safe? Well, because I trust Hayden's face, I think it’s safe, and that's kind of the nature of being a bigger creator; you get that sort of trust.
Also, he's saying, "Here’s proof it works," that's making me feel safe.
So what are the three questions that it's posing? In the chat, I want you guys to write: when you see this thumbnail and title, what three questions come to your mind or at least just one that you really want to know the answer to by the time the video gets underway?
And whilst you're doing that, I'm going to reveal what mine are. So here's what I thought my questions were when I saw this: What is the step that I'm neglecting?
How do I do it? What's the proof that he's mentioning?
What happens if I don't do it? Am I boring or amazing? Where do I fit in?
Just looking at this thumbnail and title.
The reason—this live stream is always a little bit like 45 seconds ahead, so I'll wait for some of your comments to come in before I move on. I’ll give it a few more seconds.
Okay, people are saying, "How? What is the step? Why is my footage boring? He needs to tell me what am I neglecting? How? What’s he talking about? What's the proof? What if I don’t do it?"
Yeah, so all of you guys have questions, right? And we're all going to have very different questions.
So if we write down as many as we can think of, and then in our setup include say three of them, we can work it out.
From the thumbnail and title, we’ve worked out the questions people care about, and then I wrote this intro. I didn’t spend that long on it, so let’s just pretend that the hook has happened and then I jump into the setup.
So I’ve written this: "In this video, I’m going to reveal what this simple step is, how any level of editor can easily transform their videos using it, and give you an example of YouTubers blowing up harnessing its epic power."
So what we've done here is we've taken these three steps, and let’s just say for argument's sake I thought these top three were the most important ones, and I have written a paragraph which told the viewer I was going to address all the things that they cared about based on what they wanted to know from the thumbnail and title.
So if we look here: "What this simple step is"—that was the first thing they wanted to know—"How any level of editor can easily transform their videos using it," which answers how do I do it, saying, "Well, I can teach anyone, so you must be able to."
Then I'm going to give you examples of YouTubers blowing up. What’s the proof? So we're addressing the three hopefully big questions people want to know.
Now that might not be the biggest one, but that’s what works for this sake; that’s what we’re going to go with for the sake of argument here.
Sorry. I’m just going to put this through the Ben System.
So is this a big claim? Well, we're going to say how any level of editor can easily transform their videos—that's a big claim.
Does it sound easy? Well, "What this simple step is" sounds easy because of the word "simple."
"How any level of editor can easily transform"—that sounds easy.
Is it new? Well, I haven't revealed what the system is, so potentially, and the thing about new is some people it might sound new to; others it might not, but there might be an element of new in there. Maybe it's not the strongest.
Does it sound safe? Well, again, I’ve said how any level of editor can use it, and I’m saying there’s going to be proof of YouTubers blown up. So to me, it’s ticking the right boxes.
We’ve just taken a thumbnail and title, worked out what people care about, and then turned that into a paragraph.
That then takes us on to the next step: the loop. At this stage, we have done three hooks before we've even started.
If the line was more accurate, it would probably be closer down here on the video, which brings us to the loop, which guess what? Is another hook!
This one is optional; you don’t have to throw this in here. You could throw this in at any part of the video you like, but for this example, I'm just going to put it here.
The whole point of the loop is we want to pose an interesting question that makes people curious. So we've said we're going to do all of this stuff, and now let’s pose an interesting question in the way.
But what do we pose, and how do we know what's interesting? Well, if we go back, we know that there are five questions that people really wanted to know the answer to.
We've already addressed that the video is going to cover three of them, so why don't we cover these two or one of these two by posing a question and then explaining it before we get onto this information?
What that does is it allows us to get more content in before we get onto maybe the top three that they actually cared about.
I wrote a couple of loops for you. The idea is you open a loop, you pose a question, then you explain it, and then you move on, and that will close the loop.
So I'm going to open the loop for, "What happens if I don’t do it?" which would have come straight after our setup, and it would sound like this: "But first, let me show you what happened when I didn’t used to do this and the change it made when I did."
Because it says, "What happens if I don’t do it?" So we've addressed that.
Then I would show that exact thing or to address this intrigue: "To address this question here, am I boring or amazing? Where do I fit in?"
To start, though, we need to work out what level of editor you are to ensure you know how to action everything I’m about to teach you.
So again, it's another thing that viewers might want to know.
That's the loop! You can drop the loop in anywhere, and you don’t have to use it, but the loop is simply where you pose a question that peaks people's interest and then you put in some more information, and you will see this absolutely everywhere now that you know about it.
Moving us on to the next part of the video, and that is the scripts—the points, sorry!
For argument's sake, we're only going to talk about a video that has three points. You really don’t need more than three points in a video at all because often people aren't going to remember all ten.
If you can hit them with three really flipping interesting ones or really intriguing ones or really powerful ones, that could be enough.
But also you could have 20 points in here too if you wanted to. So there’s no right or wrong there.
We're just going to keep it to three at the moment to keep it nice and simple.
What do you do for your points? What do you say? Well, all you do is you pay off everything that you set up.
We know that we set up these three things. The first point will be paying off what the simple step is. The second will be showing people how any editor can transform their video, and the third will be examples of YouTubers blowing up.
Now we could actually reposition this and start with examples of YouTubers blowing up and then go into more detail, but I’m not going to go into that right now because it’s not a real video.
Let’s just assume the ordering of this information is fine, but we could shuffle it around if we wanted, and then what we want to do is we want to rehook at the start of every point.
So, you will rehook point one, point two, point three by posing a question like you did with the loop or with a big strong statement or maybe even with a story.
Then you jump into your content. Now, the most important thing you do is that you do not pay off the point instantly.
This is a massive mistake everyone makes, and it absolutely wrecks retention because what they do is they say point one. Let’s say, for example, they set up, "I’m going to teach you the secret trick to bake the tastiest cake," and then you say, "Use more sugar."
Then you explain why you need to use more sugar. You’ve given away the point! You've given away everything the viewer needs, and they don’t need it.
You will see this is why your attention will go down, down, down, down, down because what you do is you pay off the information that the viewer was so intrigued by and then they’re like, "I don’t need anymore." Some will stick around, sure, but what we want to do is we want to unpack it in a slightly different way.
This is where stories come into play.
I’m just going to give you an example of how Alex Hoshi makes a point by using a story. He says: "This was something that was really hard for me. I had a pretty bad reputation in the very beginning of my college career and all of my high school career, and it was because I drank too much, I was irresponsible, I slept around a lot, and I wasn’t representing the type of person that I wanted to be.
I felt ashamed of the behaviors that I did, but I didn’t change them. It was only through a conversation I had with my father where I said, ‘How do I change my reputation? How do I get these people to stop saying this stuff?’
I thought there was some PR marketing angle I could take that I could control the narrative, and he said, ‘Why don’t you stop being a piece of sh*t?’ That really stuck with me, and I started thinking about it.
So I said, ‘Well, if I wanted to be somebody who was respectable, what would I do?’ And so then I tried to start acting in that way to be someone whose respect my own, I would earn.
When I started doing that, nothing changed externally. People still treated me like I was a piece of sh*t—they were probably right—but my behavior began to change, and then slowly so did my reputation. But it started with me trying to respect myself first, and then others began to respect me as a result."
Okay, so Alex Hoshi could have started that off and said, "Point number one: Respect yourself, and then others will respect you." It's like, okay, it’s a little bit cliché—maybe we could have had some of that unpacked—but what he did there instead was he started at that dark moment in his story.
So he’s talking about no one respected him in school, and he was in a bad time of his life. He wasn't a great guy. That's an interesting moment to drop us into a story, right? It’s going to hook us.
He then goes on to say he asked his dad what to do, and his dad basically was rude to him, but it kind of gave him this moment where he was like, "I need to change."
So we’re seeing the transformation of Alex Hoshi here. He then says he does what his dad told him to do, and it didn’t work. There’s a twist in the story, but it didn’t matter because he realized he just needed to respect himself in order to make others respect him, and then the results came in.
It's just so much more interesting! Do you know what will happen?
Leon is in the chat at the moment. He sent me this the other day. And so Leon's getting into using story to make points.
He said: "You won’t believe this man, guess where I stopped telling the story?" You can guess, and this is what happens.
Stories keep retention flat. And often, when we start making the point, the story has made the point; the viewer knows—they’ve worked it out for themselves.
Oh, let me just share the slide. Sorry.
Here’s the retention graph. So that is the point Leon stopped the story, and what's probably happened here is Leon's story was so impactful that the viewer actually worked out everything they needed from his story. He made his point, and then they went, "We don’t need anymore."
So it's not a case of he wrecked the video; it went wrong; it’s a case of actually they're incredibly satisfied.
So this is one of the things about using stories to make a point.
The whole point of a story is it has a beginning, middle, and end. People want to get to that end so they won’t leave.
If you can use a story to make every single one of your points, it’s going to make a big difference—just don’t pay off the thing they cared about the second that point comes in.
Which brings us on to our final part of the eight system process before we start looking at someone else's channel who watches this to see how we can apply it to their content, and this is guess what? Another hook!
This is our eighth hook in a video, and I talk quite a lot about hooks in my emails to people and the importance, and hopefully, you're seeing why.
It’s just a great big hook tool!
The end of your video should never end as an educator. The hardest thing you can do on YouTube is to get a click and keep people's attention.
You have their attention! This is the only time on YouTube we can personally recommend a video to people.
So what we need to do on your end screen is we need to rehook them, and then we need to write another setup, and then we need to point and tell them toward something else.
The hook for your final end screen could be another statement. You could say something like, "The thing is, everything I've just told you is completely useless," which is going to be like, "What? What’s going on?"
Because there are still three things that if you don’t fix them, everything I’ve just told you won’t work.
So you set up that there are three big problems, and then you could simply say, "So, watch this video next to solve them." And then unpack it a little bit more.
So that's the idea; the end of your video is not an end.
And this is why I get people binge-watching on Film Booth. There’s lots going on in the content, but I just make it crystal clear what they should watch next every time.
What you'll notice is when you go into your YouTube Studio in advanced mode and you look at traffic sources, you can see the retention of every single traffic source.
The retention in your traffic source's end screen will always be higher.
So mine goes between 70 to 80% a lot of the time because when people start watching one and you—they're no longer a cold viewer; you've warmed them up. They’re more likely to keep watching.
Then you have five or six videos linked, all pointing back to each other. You can create these massive session times!
So the end of your video is a hook.
Let's just quickly run through this again, and hopefully, you can understand why this is so important.
But I'm just going to hop into Photoshop quickly.
Let me just get it open. Be me one second.
Okay, right, so this is the interest ometer.
Let me just doodle on here.
So let's say you do your script, and then you go to the end and you start with your packaging. You’ve not built the foundations for your house. You can't work out your hook, you can’t work out your setup, you can't work out your loop, and you can't work out the points the viewers really care about.
This is why you will fail if you do not do your packaging and thumbnail first. It's not an option; you've got to do it.
Sounds so serious, but then once we've done that, let's just assume this green bar here is where we want to keep people all the time—the higher they go up here, the more interested they are.
What happens is they see your packaging; interest spikes. Oh, it’s lovely, curious packaging, intriguing, and if it follows the Ben system, then they come into your video, and you hook them.
Then they come in and you hit them with a setup that's got a couple of one to three interesting things they really wanted to know.
Then you put a loop in the way, and they’re like, "Oh, that sounds interesting too!"
Then you get to point one, and then you pay off your point before you explain it. They leave; they don’t care!
You've just told them everything.
So we need to come back in here—I'm just going to do this again—and we need to keep them up here.
So you tell the story, and then what will happen is you make your point and it will drop a bit, then you hook them again, and then you come down here.
This is kind of what the viewers' experience should be like, but we always want them in the interested zone.
That's really the name of the game. The problem is it’s very hard to do that, and when you're an educator in particular, what can happen is, let’s say you've got three points, you might get to point two and this might leave the Ben System.
It's not new; everyone knows it.
They will skip; they might want to come back or you actually make point two a bit too overwhelming for them. So let's say everyone up to this point can understand it and then you hit them with some information intermediates would only understand that they needed more prior knowledge to—your attention will come down.
So this is where we bring in story and metaphor because what you tend to find is it's the easiest way to keep people interested and understanding.
But that’s one of the downsides of being a creator; we don't know everyone's prior expectations.
I think if you're always thinking about hooking and you follow this system, you're going to get further than most people.
Okay, so let's switch back to this. What I'm going to try and do now is—I’ve had someone, well quite a few sent in their channels, and the idea was we were going to look at some of their scripts.
Some of the videos are quite long, and I'm going to take one person who sent in their videos, and we're just going to break it down.
We’re going to look at the thumbnail, the title, the hook, the setup, and any other parts and see how we can improve it together as a unit.
So where's this video? Here we are—let me just get this up on screen for you guys.
Right, share my screen. That’s the wrong screen. Let’s just share the entire screen.
Right, here we have Javin. So this was the video he sent in.
So the first thing we're going to look at for his thumbnail and title is: Does it fit the Ben’s System?
Is it Big, Easy, New, and Safe?
"How to Become Aesthetic: No Nonsense Guide." So there's no bigness to that. The No Nonsense guide makes me feel safe, but there's not really a big claim in here.
Does it sound easy? Maybe the No Nonsense thing; otherwise, no. Does it sound new? Not necessarily.
Does it sound safe? The reason I think this sounds safe is because you're so ripped. So I would be like, well, this guy clearly knows what he’s doing. I would click on that for that reason.
What I did is I kind of went and dug out some other creators in your niche just to sort of check out how they do things and look at other thumbnails to see if we could improve this in any way.
So one title I wrote that I thought could be interesting is, "How to Become More Aesthetic than 99% of Men."
It's a big claim. It maybe doesn’t fit everything else so well. So let’s think: it sounds like there’s maybe a system in there.
So maybe it could be new information to people depending on the image, which would depend on how safe it felt. I think we can always use safety because you look like you know what you’re doing, so here are some other options.
I just went and raided your niche.
So this is Athleen: "How to Lose Fat. Works Every Time."
Sounds safe; sounds kind of easy because it works every time. It’s a big claim: "Works Every Time!"
And it sounds like maybe it could be new; there’s no indication for me personally that this is something I’ve heard before.
So you would just change that to—"This is how you become more aesthetic. Works Every Time," as your title.
Weight loss: "How I Lost 75 in Three and a Half Months."
So this is really specific. Specifics are also a really good thing to have.
So how I lost 75 in three and a half months—that is a big claim! The viewer’s going, "Oh, can I do that too?"
Could be new information—there’s nothing to state that it isn’t. It feels safe because I can see this thumbnail image that, yeah, I can trust it.
So it works! So we could do, "How I Got Shredded in Three and a Half Months."
Then what you would need in your thumbnail is you've got to have a before and after.
The problem I have with this right now is there's no transformation, so it's all about the after.
For me as a non-ripped guy, it doesn't say, "Oh, anyone can do it," which makes it feel maybe less easy.
So I’d be thinking about transformation—especially in this space.
I mean, in most spaces, transformational thumbnails that are before and after based do really well. But in the fitness space, you could probably make every thumbnail that and your channel would fly!
So "How I Got Shredded in Three and a Half Months," and then "Before and After."
"Five Things Every Ripped Guy Does: Copy These!"
I mean, five things doesn’t sound like very much; it kind of sounds easy.
It’s a big claim: "Every" in capital letters—"Ripped Guy Does: Copy These!" Sounds pretty easy. Again, we’ve got his body there so we know we can trust him.
So "Five Things Every Aesthetic Guy Does: Copy These."
Got Jeff Nippard here: "The Smartest Way to Get Lean: Science Explained."
Science explained makes it feel safe. The before and after makes me trust it again.
It’s a big result, so all of these examples—all you do is you find these outliers and you think, "Could I relate it to my own channel? The smartest way to get aesthetic."
But in all of these, they’ve all got their shirts off, but look: the before and after, the before and after, the before and after.
So your thumbnail needs that transformation to start telling the story to get the click in straight away; otherwise, it's too much about you rather than the viewer.
So that's what we would do, and then we would go and we would start asking questions.
Okay, what are the things people really want to know about on this?
Now let’s just say—let’s just say "How to Become More Aesthetic than 99% of Men."
If there was a question that popped into your head, and ladies feel free to join in on this as well, what would be a question that would pop into your head?
Feel free to pop it in the chat to me, I guess.
Is it okay? Well, what are they?
How? That’s the first one. Can I actually do it?
I guess another one would be, "Do I trust this? Will it work for me?"
I've tried other things.
Maybe let’s have a look. I've tried everything else—nothing works; this is going to be BS.
That's what maybe people might be thinking.
Uh, let's just see—"How would this ever be achievable for a normal guy like me?" That’s a flipping great question!
"How can normies do it?"
What else is in the chat?
"Am I too old to try this?" That’s a great one!
This is so interesting looking at the chat because everyone’s writing different things.
"How hard will it be? What exercises do I need to do?"
Okay, there are loads. This is fantastic!
Um, "What do you mean by aesthetics?" Okay, so "Is it healthy?" That’s another good option.
"How much time will it take?"
Oh, so many!
I was struggling to come up with these, but now you can see: this is why YouTube's so hard—trying to understand what people really care about.
With a group exercise there, people spat out all these different options. I would have gone with these!
So now let’s look at this.
Let’s just—thanks, guys, for putting this in!
How long does it take? Is it sustainable?
Oh, we want to be thinking, what are our top ones for our setup? And maybe we want to bring some of these into the thumbnail and title.
So "How Long It Takes?" If we go back to the examples that I showed, this one here—takes three and a half months; it answers that question.
So you could be thinking about getting some of these things into the thumbnail and title.
But I would say for the setup, let’s say, How long it takes? Is it healthy? Can normies do it?
I would probably use those as a top three just for argument's sake, and we would use them in the setup.
But also for the hook, let’s just have a look at what you said because actually, you didn’t do a bad job. I missed out the hook there. I jumped the gun a bit.
Let’s just have a look at the video—I think you guys can hear this.
“66% of men are either overweight or obese.”
Okay, YouTube's playing up on me. Let me just read what it says because I don’t think it’s going to work.
So I don’t know if it’s because I’m streaming and it’s not playing, but I think it said, “66% of men are either overweight or obese, and you might be in that 66% but if…”
Okay, “66% of men are either overweight or obese, and you might be in that 66%, and want to become a top 30% and no longer to be part of that crowd, and want to become the top 30% of them.”
Then this is the exact guide on how to look more aesthetic: “I’m not going to do any fluff; I’m not going to do any BS; it’s just real honest advice.”
So if you want to get aesthetic, by the end of this, make sure you’ve watched all of the video, and I’m going to go through everything you need to do today.
Okay, sorry about the glitchiness! I’m not sure if it’s me or YouTube not liking each other, but let’s just tear this down, right?
So he started off with a good hook. He started off with a statement hook: “66% of men are either overweight or obese,” and I actually think that worked.
Was it big? Was it easy? Was it new? Well, the fact was new; it was about 66% of men. It was kind of a big fact as well, so yeah, it kind of hooked me.
Then what I would say is the thing where you went wrong was this: the setup wasn't strong enough.
So what you said was in the top 30%, then this is the exact guide on how to look more aesthetic.
I'm not going to do no fluff; no sh*t; this is the exact guide on how to look more aesthetic.
There’s not enough spec. It’s not specific enough!
So if we look at the questions that everyone sent us, you know these are the things that they really wanted to know.
Where are they? What have I done with them?
Yeah, this—we need to get some more specific things into your hook, but we need to make sure they’re not too specific so that a lot of people care about them, but at the same time, they’re not too general.
So in this video, for example, it would say something like this: "So in this video, I’m going to show you how to get aesthetic fast, the healthiest way possible, with the least time as possible, and I’m going to show you an exercise literally anyone on the planet can do that will transform their results."
So there are three things in there that hit the normies, that hit "Is it healthy?" that hit "How long it took?"
Then we could move into a loop and say, "But first let me show you three examples to prove this works," and then you go and do some little case studies and break down some stories to show, "Okay, this is me when I was younger, or this is my friend John, and this is Steve."
So this little list is really important.
And it’s cool; we can use it in all different kind of places.
So we now have your hook; I think we could keep the setup.
I just said to you, I just said a loop as well, and then your points—so one of the things with your points is, well, let’s see everyone who’s been watching this.
Let’s see if they can spot the mistake.
I’m sure you watched all of this video because I'm going to go through everything that you need to do today. The most obvious thing we have to do at the start of this process is set a very, very clear goal.
This is—okay, so he said the most obvious thing we need to do at the start of this process is set a clear goal, and he called the chapter goal.
So he’s paid off the thing that people care about—like, “I know how to set goals; I’ve heard this before.” They’re kind of off.
Someone just asked: "Do you need to close the loop instantly?" If you open a loop, you probably want to close it.
You could close it later on, but I wouldn’t try and do anything funky; I would just keep it simple to start.
Uh, going back to this—I forgot what I said.
Yeah, so he paid off, "This is about goals." What he should have done is thought about this—his story.
What was the moment where he realized that goals were important?
And drop us in at the moment where the change had to be made, where he had to take goals seriously and then unpack what happened there as a story.
Then make his point, so you’d do this with every point.
However, this one, you did something great; you mentioned imagining planting a tree. You might be—they might be watering it, giving it some sunlight, giving it some food, but what happens?
It doesn’t grow overnight!
"It takes weeks, months, years until that tree is blossoming and bearing fruit."
The same! So I don't know if it's glitching on your side—
It is. I’ll read this out just in case.
So he uses kind of a metaphor. So he's talking about why is YouTube hidden the transcripts from us?
"Now, I want you to imagine planting a tree. You might be watering it, giving it some sunlight, giving it some food."
But what happens is it doesn’t grow overnight. It takes weeks, months, and years until that tree is blossoming and bearing fruit.
And the same thing applies in your fitness journey!
Okay, so he’s given us a really easy and simple illustration that we can all grasp and said, "This is UNC compared to weight loss." So that’s another great way to start off making your point.
The viewer gets to listen to it and get to go, "Okay, that makes sense."
You've compared it to something that is super simple. It all clicks; it keeps them engaged.
Then you can go on to make your point.
Because I’m not sure if it’s glitching right, I’ll leave off some of the other parts.
One thing I will point out, though, is in point five, you mentioned you were an elite athlete your whole life.
Like, I wouldn’t leave that to 0:05.
Okay, everyone’s saying they can hear and see it perfectly. Alright, I’ll keep playing it.
Cool! It’s really annoying, if not, because let’s just try it one sec, which most people completely do not do is track progress.
Whether you’re in a gym, you need to have one of these bad boys, and just track your workouts. You can use your phone.
So again, you sort of said you've got to use a book; just take people to the moment where you realized you needed it and the result it had.
Um, and it’s the same for all of these.
Then yeah, point five, you actually talk about how you’ve been an elite athlete for your whole life.
I think we want to frontload that, don’t we?
Think of the cold audience, right? You’ve got a great body, so you clearly know what you’re talking about.
But let’s, let’s frontload "I was an elite athlete."
Let’s show some pictures—we don’t have to be braggy, but we can use your story and your transformation and the results you had to build credibility, and that’s going to keep people listening.
So that’s what I would have suggested for your points.
Was there anything else?
And then your end screen, your call to action.
So you did a call to action to your email list, which is fine. You did it first.
I've got no problem with that if we're trying to build a business and a list.
What I would say is let’s play it from here.
I found to be very useful if you want. All you got to do is hit the link below this video, and then if you want to know exactly what to do in the gym to look more aesthetic, just watch this video right here.
So if you want to know exactly what to do in the gym to look aesthetic, we’ve not got enough to that.
What we need is we need more bends; we need a bigger claim!
Like, let’s just—you know, we also need to rehook them and we need to reset up the value.
So you said, "The link below this video.”
If you want to know exactly what to do in the gym to look more aesthetic, just watch this!
I think we need to set up a problem.
So it’s like, "The thing is, you now know the No Nonsense Guide. What if you want to explode your growth? Would you be more interested in getting ten times faster and more explosive growth?"
Well, if that sounds like you, then there are three things you can do to really speed up what I’ve just shown you, so watch this video here next to understand this explosive strength workout.
So we need to up the importance.
Like, you've got to remember, right? And I think people sometimes are like, "Oh, I'm being too over the top."
Like this stuff does change lives.
So if someone watches this and goes and loses a ton of weight and looks amazing, you’ve got to value the information you’re giving.
So don’t be afraid to make it sound important because I get emails every day from people saying, "Oh, this is blown up my channel, changed my business," and you just we don’t see the impact!
So I’ll leave that there with you.
What I’m going to do now is get the link. I’m going to share it with everyone who came in the chat, and I’ll email you the link.
There’s a Google Doc, and in that Google Doc, you can basically copy it and fill in the gaps and hopefully follow this system and watch it back.
I’ve got six minutes before I have to head off, but let’s take a few questions from the guys that were good enough to turn up in the chat, and I’ll answer as many as I can possibly do in that time frame.
So let’s see what comes flying in, shall we?
There's always this massive lag on YouTube, so it goes quiet for a bit.
It’s just because I’m waiting for someone to send a message.
I probably need some background music.
Nearly there!
Aha! I’m glad you guys are liking the link and the template.
Yeah! It will just put it in—it’ll email it you straight away.
Um, how could we apply this to food videos?
So this is not a script that is specific to niches. This is a specific type of content, so you would apply it to food videos in exactly the same way you would apply it to a fitness video.
You have a hook, a setup, a loop, and you make some points, and then you get people to watch the next video.
So don’t—I can't tailor advice for every single type of channel.
But unless you are a vlog or this is a really heavily story-based video where you're going on an adventure, this applies to most.
Will this be available afterwards? Yes, it will!
Let’s see what else we’ve got.
How do you balance between delaying the payoff and being efficient?
So we don’t necessarily want to—it's not about necessarily delaying it, it’s about getting out lots of information and making sure the viewer still has something they’re interested in.
So as long as you pay something off, you just need to make sure sure that there’s still things the viewer cares about, but we don’t want to pay it off in a way that they go, “That’s all I came for now!” and then skip.
Because what tends to happen is people go, "I know this," and then they switch off and they don’t feel as interested.
So yeah, it’s what we—we don’t want to—what we don’t want to do is annoy people and drag it out.
And I’ve definitely been guilty of that on Film Booth. Like I used to push it. I was like, "I wonder how far I can drag out a point," and I found the point!
I got so much hate! I was like, "I found the point! Let’s rein it in now."
But you know, we’ve got to experiment and try stuff.
How do you balance between—oh, sorry, I just read that one out.
How does being dyslexic affect your script writing?
Personally, it doesn’t!
I never show my scripts to anyone, so no one’s judging me for all the typos. I’m sure there would have been some in this.
Um, apologies if there were because I didn’t check the—I didn’t put anything into ChatGPT or my spell check stuff to check it.
Yeah, makes no difference at all if you’re dyslexic. That’s why I don’t publish them and send them to people.
How many revisions do you typically go through in writing?
But writing for Film Booth? Many!
If I'm writing for Creator Booth: two or three.
So what I tend to do—and this is a tip that I would strongly recommend you do when you're writing—just write your script and go away.
Come back the next day! What you'll do is if you're sitting there for hours and hours, you're going to burn your brain out!
Like I imagine writing is a task, but my brain is operating at its fastest; I can’t do it more than a few hours a day—it just completely wears me out.
So write your script, come back the next day, read it; you’ll spot all of the repetition, all of the things that maybe weren’t driving people towards the payoff that aren’t needed, that you can cut.
Then read it out loud!
So I read my scripts like I present on Film Booth or like Jolly just to see what it sounds like, and then I’ll cut bits out.
But you definitely want to be having some time away from your scripts to see those problems.
What’s your favorite color Skittle?
Thanks, Drew!
Blue, obviously!
How can this be applied to church sermons?
Not sure—I’ve never done one!
Let's see what else there is.
Would you consider tech reviews educational content?
Yes, you could use this system for tech reviews, I would say that.
Yeah, you could definitely use it for tech reviews, for sure.
You just probably want to have more points closer together because there are lots of different parts of reviews, but you want to be thinking about what are the three main things?
What are the big things people really care about, and where to structure them?
What are your best tools to avoid information overload?
That's a tough one!
Probably practice everything you learn.
So the practice is the thing that makes it make sense, but a lot of the time—I mean, really there is a lot lot of stuff I—that in itself was a lot of information I just gave you. You could go so much deeper, and I do teach people much deeper and bigger things.
But you could dine out on that for the rest of your life!
Like you don't have to keep trying to improve! You want to improve the basics first.
I think if you try and jump up too many levels, you’re going to end up in a problem.
How long does this process take you?
Being I've done over a million words in scripts!
So a video on Creator Booth might take me an hour or two.
A video on Film Booth could take me days because there’s a lot more going on.
I think the best thing to do—and this is what I'm trying to encourage people now—is we can’t just always be striving for perfect; it doesn’t work!
Like when I was really going Film Booth, I had all day, every day if I wanted to, to work on videos, and that’s just not something everyone can do!
So it’s like, “Okay, what is the highest leverage stuff I can do to grow my channel?
What can I outsource?
And then what do I like doing?
What do I do the fastest?
And what's the best use of my time?"
That's how we should be thinking now rather than, "How do I make everything perfect on my own?"
Okay! So I’ve got to move on to a call.
Thank you very much for coming, everyone. I very much appreciate it!
This will be on the channel just as a video, and I will wave goodbye. Thank you very much, guys!
Take care!