Transcription
He took Dan Martell to 2.2 million subscribers in under two years. To go from 100K to a million took us one year. And to go from 1 million to two took us 9 months.
Meet the genius behind Dan Martell's brand, Sam Goday. In this episode, Sam breaks out what finally flipped the switch.
The big thing for us was go slow to go fast.
His process for coming up with ideas.
We do this thing called four on four validation.
And the hook system they use to turn clicks into retention.
This is my 4C framework. You want people to click on the video. You want people to get captured. You want people to consume. And then you want people to convert.
If you want a repeatable path to explosive growth, you want to hear this.
And so if you want to get insane results, 10x results, you have to.
What up Sam? Welcome to the One of 10 Pod.
I'm Psman. I'm excited.
For those who don't know you, can you tell everyone who you are? What do you do?
Yeah. So, I my name is Sam Gdet. I'm Dan Martell's creative director. Been working with him for over eight years. Um, helped him grow his total audience from, you know, under 100k followers across all platforms to over 9 million today. And then also helped him grow his YouTube channel from under 30k subscribers to over 2.2 million and still growing. So, lot of uh experience under my belt, a lot of pain, a lot of frustrations and uh, I we ate [ __ ] for 6 years. Like we were struggling for 6 years on YouTube and then the last two years we implemented a lot of strategies um, you know, from ideation to other stuff that allowed us to get to where we are today. So um, yeah, super blessed to be on here and um, super excited to dive in.
Yeah, that's what I want to get to. So, 30K to 2 million in how long?
Well, to get from 30K to 100K took us 6 years. Wow. And then to go from 100K to a million took us one year. And to go from 1 million to two took us 9 months. Once we started going, we accelerated very fast. And that's the power of YouTube today is you can go from a nobody to somebody overnight if you follow the principles that hopefully we'll we'll dive into in this episode.
Let's deep dive into it right away. How did you go from 30K to 100K for six years? Like what what was the struggle like? Also, can you give the picture of like what did it look like when when when you came in? Was Dan already popular or what what was the situation?
Yeah. So, I'd say Dan was definitely a micro celebrity. Like he was, you know, world-renowned in the SAS space. So, he built software companies for most of his life and he exited three pretty successful ones. Um, and he spent most of his time advising, you know, the top SAS companies in the world. So if you, you know, know of any of the top top SAS companies in the world, Dan's probably been involved in some aspect. Um, and when I came on his team, he was making exclusively SAS videos to help SAS entrepreneurs scale their SAS business. Um, and I came on as a video editor and videographer. So I was filming the videos and editing the videos. And we were just doing volume. Like for 6 years was for 6 years it was just let's post a video every single week and let's not look at the analytics and let's not do ideation and let's not do all the stuff that I know is best practice today. Let's just throw [ __ ] at the wall, see what sticks, basically. That got us to 100K subscribers. And then around two years ago, that's when Dan and I um decided to to go all in on YouTube. And we saw the opportunity um of, you know, creating a big personal brand. And obviously there was, you know, some investment behind that and we had to scale the team cuz we went, you know, I took the team from essentially two people to over 25 people today. So that was essentially like the first six years of struggling. And then two years ago, we looked at each other, we're like, let's go all in. um I moved to the city that he lives in. We rented a studio, started you know investing real dollars and cents behind the whole production and that's when you know we went parabolic and um yeah, went from 100k to a million in a year and then 1 million to two in 9 months.
I'm curious during the 6 years of 30k to 100k what made you guys continue? Why not just stop? Because I'm sure a lot of uh creators are going through those down periods or or just flatline or low views.
How how do you keep going?
Great question. I I think I'm lucky to work for someone like Dan that's relentless.
And when he started making YouTube videos, he committed to 10 years. He told himself he's was going to give himself a 10-year life sentence, right? Yeah.
Where he was going to renew every 10 years. And um, yeah, that was kind of his commitment, right? And so I think we're we came up on 10 years like 6 months ago and we're going to keep going obviously, but you know, Dan's the type of guy that just be relentless about a problem, right? And whether he's getting results or not, you know, he's going to get results cuz the only way you don't lose is if you don't quit, right? And so, um, yeah, if you're a creator out there and you're struggling, obviously like, you know, don't keep throwing [ __ ] at the wall like we did for 6 years. I think you're a lot smarter than us.
Oh, yeah. I totally agree. I mean, this One of 10 podcast is is when I when I started it was like a hundred views per per video a year ago.
You're crushing it now.
Dude, I'm seeing it go up, dude. I see you getting the top creators. I'm [ __ ] pumped for you. That's so cool.
Thank you. Thank you. Now we're in the thousands of views per per video. But when I started it, I was like, no matter what, let's try this 5 years and let's see what happens. Basically. Uh, but in order to do that, you need to keep uploading and keep optimizing, which is what you guys did at uh starting at 100K subs, right? And um, and so I'm curious on the optimization side from 100K subs to a million in uh in one year, what what happened there? What was the switch?
Yeah, I think is the big thing for us was go slow to go fast, right? We used to film a quarter worth of videos in a day. So imagine that like we filmed 12 videos in a day. Because we posted a video every single week, you know, 12 weeks in a quarter. We filmed 12 videos in in a day and then we'd have content for 3 months. So, you can imagine what that does when you learn something the next day about YouTube and you can't implement it for 3 months.
Exactly. Yeah.
And so, right off the bat, let's slow down. And we started shooting every single week, right? And we just shot one video at a time.
Um, and all we did was focus on making the next video better, right? And we built um feedback loops within the company that you know, we're able to implement in real time because I see you know, everything in life is about prioritizing, right? And you know, I see content creation as a pyramid, right? Where things that don't really matter on the bottom, right? The gear you use, the mic you use, the um, you know, the editing style, the um, sometimes even title or thumbnail, right? But what's the most important thing is the topic or what you're talking about and the promise that you're sharing with the audience. And that's a big idea that people forget, right? Because they're so focused on the content of the video, right? The thumbnail, the title, but they don't take a step back and ask themselves, am I actually making a video that's interesting to my audience? Right? Am I picking topics that are interesting to my audience? And that's what Patty Galloway calls, you know, CCN fit, right? Core casual new audience fit, which means that just a quick mention, we recently released the best thumbnail generator in the world. It can create 12 realistic thumbnails in under 60 seconds using your channel's visual style and your actual face. And the best part is it does not look like AI. So, for a limited time only, you can try it for just $1 for the first month in the link below.
The topic resonates with your core audience, your casual audience, and your new audience, people have never seen your face. And so, we took a step back. One, we implemented weekly shooting. And then two, we implemented an ideation process that allowed us to actually pick ideas that we know are going to perform. If I make a a video about getting abs in 90 days or, you know, scaling a B2B SAS company in 90 days, which one's going to get more views? Probably the one about abs, right?
Yes. That hits more total views, right? And so that's a simple idea to demonstrate the point of how can we pick topics and it doesn't have to be, you know, get abs in 90 days, but pick topics that are a little bit wider that also have your core casual and new audience fit. It's interesting you talk about the audience first because we kind of built a framework by working with everybody by by talking to everybody and the number one is audience. Like if I I share screen so basically uh this is the ideation blueprint where it's like first audience then research researching outliers then those outliers you remix for your channel then you validate through a checklist and then after uh based on the on just like the the time of of the interest topic you chose you you you go forward. But number one is always audience. It it's exactly what you said. People always forget because sometimes you you get a a video that goes viral gets a million views and you're like super happy and and pumped and you start doing videos around that viral video. But the problem is you're you're probably going a bit away and away from your niche audience. Like especially if you're in an educational uh content creator,
you want to stay like niche and around but not too far away. And so this is something everyone needs to keep remembering even like every month basically to just like why am I doing this? What is the goal? What are their pain points? And and keep going towards that.
Content creators do this all the time where they're just making core content for their core audience and they forget about the casual new audience and they don't optimize their content to be niche-wide where they can actually get insane amounts of views without you know changing fundamentally their content but just a little tweak on their packaging. And that's why we built oneof10.com, a tool that helps creators like you do the same, but 100 times easier. The tool helps you find viral video ideas already working in your niche. It then analyzes the millions of outliers in the database to help you generate your titles and thumbnails that match your channel. For example, it can create thumbnails in the style of Beluga or even create variations of thumbnails from just a title. And this works in any niche. No more wasting hours brainstorming concepts and designing on Canva. And one creator even used One of 10 to combine a viral idea with a high performing thumbnail concept. The result, her most viewed video ever with over two million views. And the best part, with code pod 20, you'll get 20% off for life. So if you want to grow your channel faster, join thousands of YouTubers and head over to oneof10.com. Now back to the pod. I want to talk about that about changing packaging. But first for ideation, how did you end up coming with good ideas? Basically, what was your process?
Yeah. So, we do this thing called four on four validation. Um, which is basically we pick we find four outliers uh that have at least a 4x outlier score within the last four months, which is our rule for every single video that we make. If you can't find four in the last four months that have a 4x score, um, we will not make that video. And sometimes we do make exceptions if we're like, I know this video is going to crush and we have to pitch it. But when we're doing our ideation process, which is essentially using a combination of tools like One of 10 or even going on YouTube natively using, you know, a plugin One of 10, um, where you can still see the outlier score on YouTube,
um,
then we're able to to, you know, collect ideas and we're able to what I call validate demand, right? Because at the end of the day, like you can do two things. You can do direct interpretation or indirect interpretation. And I learned this from Jamie Rothorne, one of the best, you know, YouTube strategists in the world. Um, you can either copy people's content or you can make it your own. And I'm only interested in the second. I only want to make videos that are indirectly interpreted interpretated from people's content. So all I'm doing collecting those four outliers. It doesn't mean that they all have the same title thumbnail. What it means is they have the same topic, right? And so an example of topic could be AI tools, right? And so I'm going to collect four videos in the last four months that have at least a 4x outlier score about AI tools. And then I'm going to ask myself, what about those videos made it perform? Is it because the promise was about saving time? Is it because the promise was about making money? Is it because the promise was about blowing up your business, for example? Um, and I'm going to pick one of those promises, take a topic AI tools, combine it with a promise, and then that's going to make um our our kind of video. And that's how we're able to get these original ideas through valid a validation process, right? Where you're not starting from zero, where you're, you know, just coming up with ideas and trying to validate them. We're working backwards from the market, listening to our customers, you know, people's, uh, audiences online and working backwards for what they want and then presenting, you know, our unique perspectives.
To hear more about your most popular videos, right? You've had a lot recently. Uh, give me 58 seconds, I'll delete your fear of rejection. That got 7 million views, but that was probably inspired by a previous video inside the channel, right? Like I don't know if it's the 40 brutal truth or the stop wasting your life. How did these come about?
All those videos were 100% inspired by other people's outliers, you know. Um, and what we do is we take those outliers, we reinterpret them them through our lens, right? So, for example,
40 brutal truths I wish I knew in my 20s, right? There was a video on YouTube that a big creator made that was I think it was like 30 harsh truths I wish um I knew earlier, right? And then I also saw another creator make a video on the brutal truth about building a business in 2025 or something like that or 2024 I think was the year. And [snorts] then so we took, you know, two things that we know works, you know, harsh truths that I wish I knew earlier changed, you know, earlier to in your 20s and then took, you know, harsh and replaced it with brutal because I think brutal is more interesting, more clickable. And that was our best video pretty much ever until, you know, 6 months ago until until we made that second video on um on, you know, the 59 second video. And why that worked is because it was a new spin on a topic that was validated, which is, you know, things I wish I knew earlier or things I wish my uh 40-year-old self would tell my 20-year-old self, right? And that topic doesn't change. We just tweak the packaging for it to make sense. Um, then, you know, we go into, you know, the 59 second video, which for me was a complete surprise. And, you know, no matter how much uh YouTube strategy I've done in in the past, you know, 8 years, I still get surprised sometimes because that video fundamentally breaks every single rule about YouTube, which is make longer videos so that people watch for longer periods of time so that people get more value, so that people subscribe and buy your [ __ ] Um, that video is a 59 second video, right? Probably the worst uh watch time uh to to view ratio because, you know, we got 7 million views, but the average view view time is what, like 40 seconds, right?
Um, you know, 45 seconds. Most people actually finish the video.
Um, but what that was was uh a video that was very unique, right? That stood out. And so within the first hour, I was I got surprised because our CTR was, you know, at 15%. Which if you if you know anybody in the education space, that's a very high CTR, especially for a big channel.
Um, which means that 15% of the people that saw your video actually clicked on it.
For context, you know, an average uh CTR in the educational space is anywhere between, you know, 4 to 10%. Right? And so, I knew off the bat this video was going to crush because most people are clicking on it. Most people most people are watching it. And yeah, maybe in the short term it's not going to get a [ __ ] ton of watch time, but people are 100% going to consume it, share it, and that was our best video ever, right? Got almost 8 million views in, you know, less than a year.
And um, and obviously a bunch of people, you know, made that same video over time. But that video was 100% inspired by two things. One was an outlier, and two was uh what I call a pro uh validated promise.
Yeah, that was a great move. And actually, I use your this one. Give me 54 seconds and I'll make you dangerously motivated as an example of a really good title. Cuz I do feel if the word dangerously was not in it like [clears throat] as a power word emotional trigger,
it would not have done so well. Like if like how I use it, let me show you using the One of 10 title generator. Like uh if you take out dangerously, it it just becomes that right and it would not have done so well. And what I like to do here is is what I'll show is add power word emotional trigger in front of motivated. And then now it does this. It's uh unshakable, relentless. But you guys chose dangerously, which really like hits core emotional driver of a person basically want to click. I'm curious how how do you guys think of those words? Like do you have multiple ones or like how how do you go about it?
I call them uh unique angles. Like you can make a video that's like how to be more productive or you can make a video that's, you know, how to be so productive it feels illegal, right? And we've seen that, you know, word illegal uh propagate throughout YouTube over the past like year, right?
And I think they'll ebb and flow. Like, you know, we we tried cheating. It worked really well. Um, you know, how to make so much money feels like cheating is still, you know, one of our best videos. But yeah, you want to make sure that you leverage or find these words that are popping off. Um, you know, like brutal, like, you know, illegal. Um, and leverage them in your packaging, right? Because I always want to have my videos have a unique angle. The thing is is, you know, once they're watched, you don't want to keep doing them because, you know, everybody on YouTube is going to start doing them. Um, so you want to be in that first wave, right? And so I'm always looking for the new version of that, right? Stepping back, thinking about YouTube psychology as a whole, um, there's, you know, four things that you want your audience to do. And this is my 4C framework. You want people to click, right? They they have to click on the video. You want people to get captured, right, within the first 30 seconds. So that's your hook. And then you want people to consume, watch the whole video throughout. That's retention. And then you want people to convert either to a subscriber or uh, you know, somebody that buys your stuff. And so just thinking about the click, right? Get getting people to click. There's four things that I want to focus on, right? And this is what I learned from Jamie Roth also. You want to focus on their hopes, dreams, fears, and blockers, right? What are what are their hopes? What do they hope to do, you know, short term? What do they want to do? Maybe it's make money. Dreams, what do they want their life to look like in 10 years? Maybe it's to achieve financial freedom. Um, fears, what are their what are they scared of short term, right? Like maybe it's that it's going to take too much time. And then blockers, you know, what do they believe about the world that fundamentally isn't true that's stopping them from taking action? An example of that is that, you know, you need to be rich to to have to to get rich, right? You need to have money. It takes money to make money.
We made a video, how to get rich without talent, luck, or trust fund. And it got, you know, over 500,000 views because it was tapping into those psychological triggers behind the scenes of the viewer, right? That they believe they had blockers about the world. They had fears that it was going to take time or money. um, they had, you know, a hope to to kind of get rich or in a dream to essentially uh eventually have financial freedom, right? And so that packaging is extremely extremely sticky because whoever falls on that video, whether it's on the homepage or in the suggested tab, which is the only places I I look for inspiration, they're going to click and they're going to watch.
And uh, I'm curious, packaging wise, the the thumbnail, how how do you go about it? What's your framework?
Yeah, I there's I it's just three elements, right? Big face, big text, and then some kind of uh, you know, icon or background. That's interesting. Um, at the at the core in the educational space, that's like 99% of thumbnails online. You need a big face, you know, big text, and then some kind of element, right? Whether it's, you know, um, something that's blurred out or road map, whether it's, you know, uh, AI tool icons, right? Just having like a third gravitational body, um, something to kind of like have, you know, within um, the thumbnail to make it interesting. That being said, I've also seen just face and text work really well. You know, all that being said, I think with, you know, obviously what you you showed showed me earlier with the thumbnail generation in One of 10 on the AI side, I think thumbnails are going to become even more competitive in the future, right? So, that rule of three elements isn't going to be relevant anymore because thumbnails are going to become so interesting and so creative that, you know, it's a race to the top. And so, that's kind of thumbnails. Now, where I see thumbnails go into the future is how can you communicate the idea and what I call complement the title without repeating the title, right? And that's a big idea because a lot of people, you know, let's say they make a video on how to get rich in 2026, right? They would just put in the title or thumbnail, they would put get rich in 2026 or like get rich, right? Or, you know, a better example maybe would be like get rich as [ __ ] but it's still in the same realm of the title, right? And so when you look at a Mr. Beast video. When you look at any of Dan's videos, what we're trying to do in the thumbnail is relate to the title, right? And not just repeat it, right? We want to kind of get somebody to understand the concept even more by just seeing the thumbnail. We don't want to just repeat the title because that's lazy.
So, we've talked about ideas, style, thumbnails. I'm curious, what's your strategy for hooks to complement that packaging?
There's there's a couple things and this is a combination of what Mr. for BCUs and I I've kind of [clears throat] turned it into my own framework because what works in the education space and what what works in the entertainment space are a little bit different. For example, um, you know, the education space, you need a lot of proof in your hook, right? What like who are you to tell me what to do with my life, right? Where in the entertainment space, you don't really need proof, right? You don't really need proof that, you know, Mr. Beast is the greatest entertainer of all time. You just see it in the video, right? And so there's a three-part framework that I use um in any hook that we we create, right? And so the first part is reassure the viewer, right? Um, reassure that they've clicked on the video um to >> get what they want, right? And so within the first, I'd say 5 seconds of the video, you have to deliver on the packaging, which is, you know, the promise of the video. So, an example, if I if there's a video that's like how to get rich without talent, look, or trust fund, um, and the thumbnail says like, "Fuck it. I'll tell you everything." If I click on that video and Dan says, um, this is how I I would invest my money, um, as a $100 million entrepreneur, disconnected, right? I didn't reassure the viewer. But if I, you know, start the video with here's how to get rich without talent look or a trust fund, then I'm bought in, right? And so, you want to repeat the promise in the first ideally 5 to 10 seconds of the video. Then you want to share proof, right? Who are you to tell me how to live my life, right? And so, you know, Dan would say in that video some something like uh, you know, I've gone rich multiple times in my life, all without talent, luck, or trust fund, um, using different strategies and then we move into the second step, right? So, we reassure the viewer first. The second step is we elevate. Elevate the promise, right? And this could mean, you know, inserting scale, urgency or curiosity, right? And so, you know, Dan would say, um, I'm going to share with you the seven steps of how to get rich without talent look or trust fund. Um, and I'll even share with you for the last step, uh, you know, my exact blueprint of how I was able to, you know, uh, go from racks of riches, right? Or something like that. Or I'll even share with you a PDF that you can steal and implement in your business today. And what that does is it elevates the promise to to some, you know, yes, we're delivering on the thumbnail and title, but then we're adding on to the promise. You you see Mr. Beast do this all the [ __ ] time where, you know, you'll click on the video and it'll be like cheetah versus F1 car, right? He delivers on the promise. In this video, I'm going to show you who's faster between a cheetah and an F1 car. And not only that, I'll I'll even race the cheetah against a bunch of different cars, right? A minivan, a tractor, so that you're actually entertained throughout the video. He scales, right? He elevates the promise by using um, you know, a level of scale that even in the education space, you can you can leverage. So you reassure the viewer, you elevate, and then the third part is you open a loop, right? The whole point of a hook is to open a loop in the viewer's mind so they get addicted to the video. They watch the whole thing. And how you do this, I did it earlier, which is that you share a plan and then you tease the plan. So an example of that, super simple, is this is my seven-step framework to get rich without talent, luck, or trust fund, right? And that way I'm teasing the framework before I even go into it. So that people psychologically, and ideally you show this on screen, psychologically I want to fill in the blanks, right? If I see a seven-step process that has numbers covering the words, I will want to watch the whole video, right? And so, if you follow that three-step process, you will get hooks that um, essentially get people addicted to your videos. And before getting into that, let me tell you about how the One of 10 strategy team can help you grow your channel much faster and make more money. Our team has directly worked with over 100 YouTubers to grow their channels by optimizing their content, focusing on the right strategies. So, for example, here's a video idea title and thumbnail that we crafted for Mike Shake that ended up getting 22 million views and being his most popular video of all time. Another example is a content strategy we built for Callaway, helping him go from 0 to 70,000 subscribers and grow a six-figure business on top of that. And those are only just two of many creators the team has worked with in the past 6 years. So, if you're ready to take your channel to the next level in the next 90 days with daily support, video reviews, winning ideas, titles, and thumbnails, and even two calls per month to answer all your questions, head over to oneofone.com/strategy to book a call.
I like how you're all structured with the with all those frameworks.
I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm just I'm just sure it will work for us. Like, dude, I've struggled with this [ __ ] for [ __ ] six years and then the last two years we've been we went parabolic. And uh obviously I'm not that smart. I learned a lot of these things from other people and I try to credit them where I can. Um, but yeah, I I think it's pretty cool that we've been able to figure this out and this is why I do these podcasts to just give it all back cuz I believe the more I give away all my best [ __ ] for free, the more people win. That's better for us.
Let's go. That's why you guys should subscribe to the One of 10 Pod to hear more of this. [laughter]
You have the best creators on here. If people are listening and they're not subscribed, they're definitely missing out. In the past two years, you guys have gone from 100K to 2 million using optimization. But then what are the mistakes you learn? I'm curious in that growth.
I think the biggest mistake that we made on YouTube was definitely overoptimizing for what the audience want and not what like genuinely Dan wanted to talk about, you know, in in the moment. And we've gone like this is we learned this the hard way. But obviously we fixed it and now like any video that we make is like super aligned with what Dan genuinely wants to talk about in the moment. And I think as a creator, respecting your kind of taste is going to be your ultimate advantage in the new age because that is all we'll have, right? When you can make an AI video using an AI avatar, using AI thumbnails, using AI title, right?
Yeah.
Then your ultimate advantage will be your taste, right? What do you genuinely want to talk about? And all we're going to do is do ideation. And then even that'll get replaced by AI. But then which videos do we pick are going to be our advantage? So, if we skip forward, you know, 5 10 years, um, will Dan still be on his YouTube videos? Maybe not, right? But will he still be involved in ideation? 100%.
And so, you know, he's still going to be able to pick the topics that he wants to talk about and what what he wants to be known for. And I think that that was the biggest mistake we made, especially early on when we were starting to get a lot of views, is kind of leaning into a little bit too much kind of like clickbaity um lots of views but not a lot of trust content where, you know, now we're leaning into more like let's really teach people some really great strategies on how to scale their business or learn AI um and really focus a lot more on the content, less so the packaging and the ideas.
The other vertical I'm curious is shorts. How are you guys playing around that?
Yeah, I mean for us shorts are kind of a side quest. I I'm not going to sit here and say we do it the best in the world. Um, you know, obviously we optimize. I believe in optimization maximization. So right now we're optimizing mostly for our short form content and we're maximizing on Instagram. So like we kind of edit for different platforms and we're prioritizing especially our ideation around Instagram because that's where we get most growth on short form. Um, that being said, our shorts have been extremely successful in the past and they still are. Um, but it's kind of not something we're focused on, right? Because I also know, you know, on average somebody needs to watch, I think it is it's like 7 to 8 hours of content before they buy from you.
Um, and so the more we can make people watch our YouTube videos, they'll get there a lot faster, right? Because that that's the difference between, you know, 10 YouTube videos and like 200 shorts, right? How like how many shorts should should how many shorts are you gonna watch to get uh to that level of consumption? A lot. And so I I think YouTube yeah, it's still a short platform. I'm a big short consumer. I do believe in the platform. I still think the superpower on YouTube is long form content and I try to optimize as much for that. And
I'm also curious what what type of content actually converts the best in terms of revenue for an educational uh content creator like Dan?
Great question. So now we're getting one layer deeper, right? We're getting into kind of what I call content splits. And for us, 75% of our content is wide, right? We go super wide. We go niche-wide. So we go like, you know, we're going to get audience, new audience from this content. CCN fit, right? Core casual new audience fit. 25% of our content on YouTube is aimed towards just our core audience. So you'll see this on our YouTube. You'll see like three videos get 300k views or like a million and then you'll see one video that gets under 100k views and a lot of people think that that's a flop, but for us that's designed, right? That's a design flop. And what we what we do in those videos is we create really deep content for just our core audience,
right? We don't even think about casually new audience in that specific video. Um, because those videos tend to convert people to a customer a lot faster. But I see this also as, you know, fishing with a net, not fishing with a rod, right? I think organic content is really powerful for getting a lot of awareness, right? Casting a wide net. And then once you have all the fish in the net, make those really deep videos so that you can go within the net and just pick the the big fish that you want to kind of pull into your world. Um, and that's kind of a contrarian strategy that I see a lot of, you know, YouTube creators just make content for their core audience and they're just niching down and, you know, they're just being very, very specific where I think there's a little bit of validity in taking a step back and making content uh, you know, ideally 75% of the time cuz um, a lot of people I've seen, they just keep doing the same format again and again and again and just trying to get views, hundreds of thousands of views here and there. But it's always good also to mix in one is the relationship type content like you said closer to to the audience you want create that relationship and number two is experimental formats as well to sprinkle in
one and four or or whatever to to see if that becomes a new format that you can then reuse again like exactly what you guys did with the 58 second video.
Totally. That was a shot on goal. That was a crazy idea. We got we had it. We didn't know if it was going to work, but we allowed ourselves our ourselves to play. And you know, some people would say that video is too wide. I think it brought in a lot of, you know, qualified business owners because that net was so big. But, you know, we didn't not allow ourselves to play a little bit, right? We we really um, you know, thought about how can we, you know, and we still do. How can we make videos that are unique that never nobody's [clears throat] seen before, especially on an education based channel. um and really really focus on, you know, what are the new exciting things that we could do. And yeah, it could be 10% of your your content where you're like doing these experiments. And you know, 70% of the time they'll flop and that's just the name of the game, but 30% of the time um you will get a video like the 59 second video that gets, you know, 8 million views and gets a lot of people talking about you.
I'm curious, the I I tested 500 plus AI tools. These 10 will make you rich. Where what was the inspiration for that?
Well, I'm curious. That's what I call um so there's kind of a format overlap there where we took a format that we knew worked which is I read 1800 books these 10 will make you rich. One of the first videos that got 100k views from on our channel
um organically
and then we took uh the topic of AI tools which we knew was really hot at the times even now today and we kind of combined those two.
That's the game of YouTube basically. Um, and yeah, it's it it worked for us. So, yeah, highly highly recommend looking outside your niche sometimes, right? Because you know packaging or formats on you know an entertainment based channel or even like a productivity based channel or even you know uh economy channels like I'll take that as inspiration because I know the reason why formats work is because it taps into those hopes, dreams, fears, blockers and I can sometimes interpret it through the lens of you know Dan's unique perspectives and take that format and then run with it on our you know topics and get [ __ ] that performs really really well.
I guess based on the last word you just said, [ __ ] and [ __ ] is all over the thumbnails. I'm I'm curious, is that something that actually worked out for you guys? Like what's the
Yeah, I think you have to do it with taste. Like I wouldn't do it on every single video, but you know, swear words, especially when they're
um censored, do tend to draw the eye. Um, and so we try to leverage that as much as possible, but try not to overdo it cuz
you don't want to be, you know, seen as kind of like the the crass kind of like Yeah.
Um, but Dan ALS, it's also like what is what is what resonates with your brand, right? And so, you know, for Dan, he swears a lot, right? I swear a lot, too. And so, we show that on the on the thumbnails and titles. Luckily, it works. But, you know, I wouldn't I would never optimize around that if, you know, Dan wasn't somebody that, you know, swears a lot as a person.
Uh, last question is, um, if you had a a channel starting today in the educational space, what would you give as advice to blow up in 2026?
If you want to blow up on YouTube in 2026, you have to understand the phase that you're in. And so, if you're just starting off from zero, you're in phase one, right? So, I wouldn't try to make videos for everyone, right? I would try to make content for what Kell Brson calls a niche-wide audience, which we talked about early in this podcast, which is um, you know, picking a niche, whether it's, you know, productivity, business, or even AI, and try to make videos for that person, right? But also making packaging that's wide enough that it's going to resonate with your casual and new audience. Um, then you can move into phase two, which is, you know, bringing uh what I call a creative director um, you know, into your world, somebody like me to help you with ideation and scripting, right? Because if you're a creator that's just starting off, you don't want to build a team, you don't want to start spending money if you're not getting results um, but once you're you are getting results, you want to bring in somebody like me to kind of help you with uh content strategy. One time I sat down with somebody on Mr. team and I asked him, I showed him my process and I asked him what should we do? And he said, are is the person doing the production and coming up with the ideas the same person? I said, yes. He said, you're you're messing up because sometimes the ideas that have the highest upside aren't necessarily the easiest to execute.
And so if you want to get insane results, 10x results, you have to separate ideation from production, right? So if you're in phase one, getting to phase two is getting a creative director and separating yourself from the ideation process, right? And they're going to bring crazy ideas and you can always say no. But the opportunities that I've seen on the other side of separating ideation from production is insane.
Um, and then phase three is what I call having um, kind of channel owners, which is, you know, having people that own certain aspects of the channel. So um, you know, people that I have somebody that owns analytics, right? I have somebody that owns um, you know, the scripting. I have somebody that owns uh, you know, the editing process, the post-production process, right? I have somebody that owns ideation, right?
Your team is really how big?
So, we scaled up to 25 people. Um, you know,
crazy.
Yeah, 12 full-time. Um, yeah, we're pretty kind of heavy team. But also, I think that's really lean for the amount of results we're getting right now cuz yeah, if I talk to anybody. Um, but yeah, just understanding understanding what phase you're in, right? If you're in phase one, like don't overcomplicate it. Just focus on topics that you know are going to perform. Make content for your core audience, but then also think about your casually new audience and you will 100% blow up on YouTube.
Well, Sam, thank you for coming on the One of 10 Pod.
I appreciate you, Richard. This was a fun time. Long time coming and yeah, I'm excited to uh keep this going.
This is good good value. Good value. And uh, you also mentioned Jamie Rosstor. So, if anyone wants to watch uh my interview with him on how to blow up your entertainment channel or educational channel, you can click on this video
right.