YouTube for Business- How to Grow Your Brand and Get More Clients - Drew Hitchcock

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Frost. Drew, what's happening, man? Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for being here. I, uh, I know you and I connected, uh, over the great Dan Martell's Elite Coaching Group. Yep, quite the, quite the community over there he's built. Quite, quite the community. It's, and it's ever-growing. It really is. It really is. I can't— but somebody asked me yesterday, how long have you been in the program? I said, uh, November 2024. Wow, that seems like eons ago. Yeah, life just, life just seems to fly by, doesn't it? Yes, it sure does. It sure does. So, um, I love telling people stories on this show, hence the name of the show, Beyond the Story. Uh, but I always like, for context purposes, to go back for a few minutes, um, to the beginning of the story. The beginning of the story is different for everyone. To help our listeners better understand where this all started, I know YouTube is your game. I know that you help brands large brands, uh, establish, grow, scale, et cetera, uh, their, their presence on YouTube. So we'll get into all that, but let's spend a couple minutes talking about where this all started. Yeah. So for me, honestly, it's, it's been, it's been quite the like circle journey. Um, we started, I actually started a YouTube channel back 2012, 2013 timeframe. I was really big into the, uh, StarCraft II scene. So I, I basically wanted to be a shoutcaster. That was, that was the dream. Uh, started a channel, grew it to a couple thousand subscribers. It was around, honestly, it was, it was around the thousand subscriber mark where people started poking me up, asking me if I could like cast a tournament or two. So I did that for probably 2, 2 and a half years. Um, and it kind of like culminated in, uh, I, I ended up casting with a buddy who lives out in Boston. Uh, we had a $10,000 prize pool that was given to us by a Korean investor, which was kind of crazy. Um, we both got paid to basically cast for 4 days straight, uh, Korean primetime. We had the top 16 players in the, in the world. So we had 8 Koreans, 4 US, 4 EU. Um, and this now obviously like 2012, 2013 livestreaming-wise, like this is like early, early days of livestreaming and to have a finals with like 12,000 people concurrently watching you. is a little like crazy. Yeah. And you know, it's like, uh, so anyways, started, started my YouTube journey back then. Um, got out of the StarCraft, uh, world and really just fell in love with this whole like idea of, you know, running a business online that led me into a world of other things. Uh, I did Amazon retail arbitrage for a while. Um, and then ultimately landed in kind of the consulting world, uh, started out as like general marketing, uh, and then I, it's funny, I found myself sending cold DMs to people that I followed for a number of years and ended up connecting with an author based outta Salt Lake City. His name's Garrick Gunderson. He had 57 subscribers at the time. He was posting regularly for 4 or 5 months, and I'm like, I feel like I can help this guy. And thankfully I had a connection, a direct connection through his brother-in-law. Who connected us, started working on his channel. Basically, initially it was an offering for free. Like, hey, I just want to help. I think I can help you. Took him from 57 subscribers to over 100 in the first month and then doubled them again the next month. And then the third month actually took him from, it was like 250-some subscribers to over 1,000, at which point he was just like, hey, you're the only one like putting any effort into this and clearly you can get results. Like, what do you charge to hire? And that was kind of where the YouTube consulting began. And I worked on his channel for about 5 and a half years. That then obviously led to other opportunities, which then led to working with some of the greatest in the thought leadership space, people like Mel Robbins and Ed Mylett and that sort of thing. And basically I've kind of turned into, uh, the guy that you hire when you need to figure out the whole monetization thing. Um, cause I feel like that is ultimately like where my jam was. Uh, a lot of people have hired me specifically for like, hey, I've got this great engine. It runs really well, but for whatever reason, I just don't make any money with this. Uh, so really being able to help kind of deep dive into what their strategy is. Um, Monetization optimization on YouTube has changed dramatically over the last like 4 or 5 years. And I would say the various strategies have always shifted, but I mean, the fundamentals of YouTube stay the fundamentals of YouTube. So as long as you're, you know, really focused in on kind of like the core things like packaging and making sure that your intros are on point, that ultimately is Ultimately, this is the game. Love it. So you kind of fell into it and then found out exactly where your niche was at. I have a similar, similar experience in the world of social media. Did it for 6 years and realized, I don't want to be all things social media to people. I need to niche down. And somebody called me one day and said, hey, can you help me start a podcast? And that was, well, 11 years ago, and the rest is history. So, uh, sometimes it, uh, it's— we start one place that is relative to where we're actually going to end up. So let's talk about what you actually do, uh, for YouTube channels. You took somebody from nothing to something, from something to larger, to something substantial on there. How does this all work? I've got— I've been down the YouTube journey for the past— I would say I started in 2000, right around 2019, and, uh, we're at about 7,000 subscribers. My biggest problem is that I don't record and post videos. consistently because I get lazy. But, um, for somebody listening to this right now and they're like, no, I really been thinking about that YouTube thing. What, what are some things that you help people do? Yeah. So, I mean, it really depends on like where you're at. I would say for the person who's like just starting out, like a lot of the conversation is really deep diving into like, who is it that you're trying to serve? And just trying to understand like how, like what your plan to engage with that group of people is. So many people get on the chain of just going and finding titles of popular videos and recreating them for themselves because they think they're going to attract the right person. And it's like, at least what I have found, at least in the early stage, it really is about dialing in who it is that you're talking to and just making content that is going to be relevant to that person rather than trying to go super broad with your topics. And That sort of thing. Once you get into the later stages, you know, you've got 50,000, 100,000 subs, the game is much different. You can start to play in the world of like, how do I make sure that my total addressable market on my videos is as big as possible and really focus in on that? But most people try to go that direction way too early. And that ultimately puts people into kind of the pigeonhole of, you know, basically releasing videos and getting 10 to 50 views on it and not feeling like you're really getting anywhere. So being very intentional on picking your person and creating content for that person, that is the— I probably spend the majority of my time with most newer people focusing on that. In your case, it's kind of interesting when I look at your content, I feel like one of the things besides the consistency factor, one of the things that you probably should work on is just how do I get my videos to be a little bit longer? Um, we still live in an era where watch time is still pretty important as far as, like, YouTube giving you distribution. And at least in all the testing that I've seen and done, like, as soon as you get below 10 minutes, you're in a world where your videos are competing against a lot of, like, entertainment-type content. So, Your distribution is generally like pretty minimal. So it's like being above 10 minutes, usually ideally in the like 12 to 17 minute range for any piece of content. Obviously you can go longer, but being longer so that you can capture that watch time. And ultimately like the goal is to build out a community of people who want to engage with your content. And if you're giving them only short stuff, then they're getting the quick hit and they're out and— Yeah. moving on to the next thing. So those, those tend to be the, the core things, uh, in the early stages. All right. That's good. That's good intel. Cause I always like, let's just get this over with. All right, cool. 8 minutes seems long enough. Um, and I haven't really ever, other than, you know, structuring, finding out what's already out there and what people are actually looking for and then structuring the, the, you know, the, the, the video accordingly. I use a, I use a great analogy. Grab, relate, educate, actual proof, tell them to be able to plan them out. Or at least I was when I was creating them. And now, now I've got a whole new pep in my step now that we're having this conversation. Yeah, I'm mildly discouraged that I have to shoot 12 to 17 minutes. But I mean, it's one of the— it's one of those things where like, yes, it can, it can seem daunting in the beginning, but once you, once you get your groove and actually get used to doing it, it really isn't that big of a deal, right? So, and that leads me to the next question. So when you're going out there and figuring out what you want to talk about, how are you finding topics around what you do? We can use me as a case study here. I'm looking for 7 and 9-figure business owners that want to start a podcast because they network and they depend on new business opportunities and leads for business. So a podcast can help them, you know, create and provide that. So I want to educate them, um, on how the whole world of starting a podcast for your business works. Yeah. So in your, in your particular niche, just because you've kind of like very heavily defined who your person is, um, quite honestly, your strategy might, might be a little bit different because obviously like the how-to space, like there's lots of opportunity as far as gaining traction and getting viewership and that sort of thing. In your case, you might actually consider doing more of a, um, like a B2B podcast approach where Rather than focused on being super focused on attracting them on the YouTube side, you actually find the people, do the interview with them, and just kind of interject what you're doing in the conversation. Yeah. Like ultimately, like when somebody tells you their story of like how their business works and the things that they're doing, the question that you need to then figure out is, is how do I link what they do and how they do it And how could a podcast help them accelerate or do things faster? And that is going to ultimately— so you, you no longer care about how many views your, your piece of content gets. It's all about like attracting the person to come onto your show to potentially be the person that would say, oh my gosh, I need to hire you. Right. And I do that already. I do that with this show. This is the main lead generating platform on there, but YouTube has nothing to do with all that. How does that How does YouTube start to correlate with what I'm doing here on Beyond the Story? Does that require a new, a new channel? Because that sounds daunting. Well, I mean, you don't necessarily— I mean, first off, it really just boils down to like, how broad do you want to go with the channel that you've got currently? If you're going to go more how-to and be specific to, um, kind of like the just getting started folks of a podcast, obviously you're going to attract kind of a wide slew of people. Whereas the type of person that you're focused on is a little bit different. So yes, like if I were you, those 2 podcasts are obviously, or your main channel and your podcast are probably 2 separate channels just because the audience, one is more narrow focused and might not necessarily matter to the people who are watching the Podcast Launch Lab channel. So to me, it's a, Who are the people in your space who are making content? Trying to understand like where are the true gaps? I mean, a lot of times if you go on some of these, if you go look at videos that have significant amount of views, you just go mine through the comment section. The comment section is like the most valuable place that anybody has and most people just ignore it. So it's like if you're, even if you're not getting necessarily getting a lot of traction on your channel, what you can do is you can go mine other people's comment sections. And then that gives you a place, once you've made that piece of content, that gives you a place where you can go like, hey, here's the answer to your question kind of deal. Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways to approach it. It just boils down to what are the things that people are specifically looking for in this space? Obviously, like you had an episode a couple, like 4 episodes ago, like turn episodes into income. So to me, You only talked for about 5 minutes, but you really only explored one core way of getting income. And with podcasting, there's lots of different ways. You can do brand sponsorships and that sort of stuff that may or may not apply to every business, but it's still a way. And I think a lot of people miss the opportunity of, with my content, how could I make this all-inclusive where I'm not only talking about the specific thing that my type of person is looking for, but what are the other facets and other, you know, it's like YouTube, podcasting, the whole content game is like a choose your own adventure, guys. And ultimately you've gotta figure out what games do you wanna play as far as like driving revenue and that sort of stuff. Some people, they really wanna go, how do I go as wide as possible? I want AdSense to be my main source of income and then maybe brand stuff as I get bigger. There are other people who are like you and me where it's more business focused is I want this to be my lead generator. I have a, I have a client right now who's in the insurance space. I've, he's been a client since he's, uh, was it what, 2,500 subs? He's at 107 right now. And YouTube is his number one lead source. Like when I look at all of his tracking and all of his data, two-thirds of his, uh, of his leads that get through his system all came from YouTube. And why is that? Why do they? Because YouTube is the only place where you can post a piece of content and it lives forever. And you're basically educating— it's like for him, he does a concept called infinite banking. It's a pretty— it's an intense topic to get your head around. And because of that, the buyer cycle is considerably long. It usually takes 2 to 3 months before somebody even would raise their hand and say, yes, I want to do this now. So having the education and having that all live on YouTube and just continually hitting the same topic from different angles to attract different types of people is ultimately for him the strategy that then converts people into getting onto his email list, watching his webinar, and then booking a phone call to actually have a conversation of like, what does this look like for you? Yeah. Okay. I love that. So you're either casting a wider net or just trying to say the same thing you've already said, a different way to cater to different people versus the how-to people. Because it's happened over the course of 7 or 8 years. Um, people have called and said, I found you on your YouTube channel. And it's a solid— it is a— it is probably one of the most solid leads that I've had. Now, I ran a new YouTube ads campaign, spent $20 grand to do it, got one deal from it, and the rest were a bunch of tire kickers. So yeah, um, riddle me that one. I, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So, so let's, let's hit on the ads thing just, just a little bit, only because, uh, a lot of people use ads as a crutch to grow their channels. Do not do that. For the love of God. The number of channels that I have worked on that decided to go down the ads rabbit hole to help move things along with their channel and grow their channel, ultimately, as soon as the ads turn off, the organic basically just disappears because you essentially have a colder audience who is showing up. And obviously, like when you release a piece of content, your core audience, the people who are subscribed are generally the first round of people that see your content. And thusly, if they're colder and not necessarily as interested, then now you find yourself in a situation where the number of views that you're getting on your videos is considerably lower than your subscriber amount. And people look at that and they're like, is this guy real? Like, what's going on here? So it's from a trust perspective, it's a little, it can be a little challenging. As far as using ads from a conversion, like where you're basically doing like a pre-roll or mid-roll ad where it's an unlisted video on your channel, specifically unlisted. Yeah, that's what I did. Yeah, that's what I did. Like you can do You can do kind of like more of a direct response type advertising campaign. However, you do have to understand that that will influence a little bit of how the organic works, you know, depending on how much volume you're sending through that ad. Just because typically when somebody watches that, it also depends on how you're running the ad. But when people watch that, your channel will start to get recommended to those people, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just if your targeting wasn't appropriate, it, you now find yourself in a situation where you're probably showing your content in front of a person that it doesn't necessarily make sense for them to watch your content. So they pass it by and now you've got a problem where the click-through rates on your videos start to decline. So it's kind of that— ads are one of those like you gotta play it, you gotta play that game a little bit. Like don't go spending a bunch of money real quick on a small channel. It just, just generally doesn't end very well. Um, one way to get around this is set up a separate channel, a separate channel that is specifically ads-focused. What you can do is you can take the ads account that's hooked up to that channel, you can hook it up to your main channel so you can use the data from your main channel as far as people who are watching and that sort of thing to create your audiences, um, but run the ads against the separate channel because Then you're basically siloing out like, hey, only recommend— the only recommended content is going to be from this other channel that most of the videos are probably unlisted anyways. So that's one way to kind of get around that. Yeah, we ran— it was ads on other people's videos. So all those knuckleheads that went, hey, stop scrolling for a second. Yeah, yeah, if you have been— I was one of those guys for a little while. We ran it for like 3 or 4 months and then we were just bleeding cash and I— we're generating leads and booking calls. but they weren't qualified enough. And I think we ended up closing one deal, made our money back, and I pulled the plug from it. That was a good 2 or 3 years ago. I don't know if that's affected the growth of the channel, but I think between that and then my lack thereof— I mean, I just looked, my last video was 3 months ago. 3 months ago. It's been a hot minute. Yeah, we— I mean, we post Shorts every day, uh, but that's, that's, that's the extent of it. And I haven't seen a check from YouTube in a minute. And we, we used to consistently get between$150 and $200 a month. from YouTube, which isn't anything to write home about, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a hot stick, you know. And at least it's— At least some sort of revenue. In fact, I have the revenue that's generated from YouTube goes into an automated account that I haven't— that sometimes I actually forget about. And I think there's about $5,000 in there that we've made from the channel, from the lifetime of the channel. So I'm pretty proud of that. So yeah, but so that leads me to, to, to ask, so based on my negligence— and we're using me as an— as a great example because you can just rake me through the coals here based on everything you know. I've— I went through, hired the coach, launched the channel, did the whole thing, tried to lead gen, not to grow the channel, but for lead gen for the, for the podcast agency. And the channel's kind of gone dormant other than posting Shorts. Is there a way to reignite this thing, restart this thing? I don't know what the word I'm looking for here is. Yeah. So, I mean, so the question really becomes, one, do you feel like the people that you've attracted, so the 7,010 subscribers that you have, How many of them are truly there because of the podcasting stuff? Like, do you truly feel like the audience that is there is like spot on? Yeah, we started at zero. So all we've ever talked about is growing up, starting, starting and growing a podcast for your business. My question, my question then, my second question would then be what percentage of the subscriber base has come from Shorts versus long form? Because a Shorts audience is a much different audience than a long-form audience in that Shorts get shown against a wide variety of interests during a scrolling session. And because of that, a Shorts audience tends to not move over to the long-form side of things. That's just been my experience. So if the majority of the subscribers are primarily captured as a function of Shorts, you're gonna have a much harder time driving viewership on the long-form side of things. So do you recommend to your clients that they do Shorts or no? So it's on a very case-by-case basis. I would say for 90% of people, Shorts don't make a ton of sense until you've hit like at least 10,000 to 15,000 subs. And the reason for that is, is like you want to make sure that the base is solid because a long-form base is going to be much more sticky than a Shorts base. I mean, I had a Uh, client of mine who his son started a YouTube channel. Um, he was a TikTok dance kind of guy. Um, got a channel up to 150 subs or 150K subs. And that was like over the course of like 3 months. Started putting out long-form content. And one, he can't keep a positive like subscriber growth. I think, I think he's down to like 120 now. But because he's tried to make the shift over to long form, like I would say he gets 100-some-odd views per video on 150,000 subs. And you just sit there and scratch your head and you're just like, yeah, you better keep making those Shorts. Otherwise, this ain't going anywhere. Yeah. So Shorts, especially in the education space, at like, it's just a much different viewer. So you just have to like Be mindful of that. So when you talk— we talk about YouTube being the world's largest search engine out there, it still is, right? Yep. So, so I think that people have found me, they've either binge-watched my channel— I've heard that before, hey, I was on your channel, you taught me a lot, it's overwhelming, I need your help— or they're searching for podcast coach, podcast, you know, launch a podcast, start a podcast, and my, you know, mug pops up, one of my videos shows up in search results on Google on there. Is that still in play right now? Yeah. Yeah. Search has never really died. I mean, it just is a different game. Like, so right now, at least as far as the way that your video content is showing up both in YouTube and in Google, Google just recently made a change. Obviously you get the like AI thing at the top now with Google, but there is definitely a wider leaning onto YouTube videos and that sort of stuff for search queries. Yeah. So I mean, I've got a handful of channels that some, every once in a while you get a video that like rocks in Google. And I mean, I can think, I could think of a handful of videos that within 48, 72 hours got 100,000 views specifically from Google. And you sit there and you're just like, well, clearly I got a very high searched query and my video showed up for whatever reason. Um, the, the only, the only downside to search is one, search viewers are very intent-based lookers. And because of that, usually your watch times on videos will be considerably less, which means those videos that are focused on search are not going to have any opportunity or minimal opportunity, uh, winning in browse or suggested. And because of that, you're basically like, Those videos are siloed to search and search alone. So it's just how you play the YouTube game. If you want to play the search game, it can still be very beneficial, especially for buyer intent keywords. But our general recommendation is you start kind of focused on browsing and suggested and sprinkle in search as you go along rather than being 100% search out of the gate. So, um, how does— speaking of AI, you mentioned that with the search results and everything, and it's— we're living in this AI world now and everyone's AI this and AI that, and AI is going to take this and AI is going to take that. What— where— what's a— what is AI, in your opinion, going to do? What's the most drastic change coming to YouTube because of the onset of AI? Obviously, so with the introduction of AI, uh, I would say Video delivery now is much different than it was even 18 months ago. I don't know if you're familiar with Semantic ID. That has become kind of like ultimately how YouTube is doing distribution now. So basically the way that Semantic ID works is every video, when you upload your piece of content to YouTube, it's going to analyze every frame and every word that is said in your transcript, and it is going to ascribe semantic keywords associated with that. And what it will then do is a viewer will get shown your content relative to what are the core semantic IDs associated with that viewer at this point in time. So what it creates is a really interesting dynamic where as people's interests shift, those viewers could, you know, you could have a regular viewer one day But if their interests shift enough, then for whatever reason, if your keywords are no longer showing up in their kind of like bag of semantic IDs that are associated with their account, you may stop showing up against them for a period of time. So it's, it's a much more fluid dynamic. Um, and it creates a, it's, it's both a blessing and a curse in that it's a blessing because you will always have new people cycling into your IDs. Mm-hmm. However, the downside is, is because it's more fluid, keeping a core base of viewership becomes more of a challenge. Most of the channels that I work on that are a little bit more seasoned usually— so there's now a metric in your backend where you have like new viewers, regular viewers, and casual viewers. And the way that it's defined is new viewers, this is the first time that they've seen your piece of content. Casual viewers are, they've watched more than one piece of content over the last like 6 months. And then regular viewers are, they've watched you every month for the last 6+ months. And most people find themselves in around 50% in the new viewership, 30 to 35% in the casuals, and then 10 to 15% in the regulars. And Basically what you wanna ensure is that your new viewership as people cycle in still hovers between 40 and 60%, 'cause ultimately like everybody wants to grow their subscriber base and that sort of thing. But there's, like I said, that floor of how many views you're going to get is going to be very much dictated by kind of your total addressable market for whatever category you find yourself in. Okay, great intel there. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure that the listener right now is going, wait a second, where do I even start? When I look— the idea is to have a smorgasbord of YouTube information here, both past, present, and future on number one, giving you some real-life examples. That's me. And then, you know, what, what with the onset of AI and new technology, etc., because most people don't know where to start when it comes to YouTube. And the last thing I want to talk to you about is a very, very controversial Uh, topic and conversation, and that is podcasting and YouTube. Um, and, and, and before I get into all that, if you're listening to this right now and you're overwhelmed, good. That's the goal. The goal is to get— help you better understand that YouTube is not just you shooting a video, uploading it to YouTube, and hoping to God someone's gonna find you on there. It is in fact a strategy. There is a science behind it. There is a system that must be put into place and plugged into YouTube in order for you to have results. Otherwise, it's all just vanity of, hey, I'm on YouTube, and that's really all that it's going to amount to. All right, Drew, so the term video podcast— somewhere along the line, some knucklehead made up this oxymoron of a term and started saying, well, yeah, it's a video podcast, which makes absolutely zero sense to me as a longtime seasoned podcaster of over 15 years. I've, I, I've, I've— it's my understanding that a podcast by definition is an audio file uploaded to the internet to be consumed auditorily. That means you listen to it, people, just like you're doing to this episode right now. Now Spotify came along and said, well, we can throw a video component, and now Apple has stuck their toe in the video pond as well, and now they've coined the phrase video podcast. I can only venture to believe that this has started because of gigantic names, which are not most of us. Gigantic names. Your Joe Rogans, your Theo Vons, your Call Her Daddy or whatever her name is. Can't even believe she's famous anyway. Define famous, by the way. Um, I understand wanting to go watch a video, a show on YouTube of maybe Joe Rogan, and they're doing, uh, Save Our Parks, and all the comedians are in one room. It's kind of fun and entertaining to watch. It's entertaining. Yeah. For comedians, for crying out loud. But for the average business owner recording their podcast, there isn't— now there is a video recording of your podcast. I agree with that. All of our clients do have a video rolling just like we do right now for this episode so that we can repurpose that content, um, to utilize on socials for reels and content, promote the show and yada yada yada. But for me to take this episode and put it onto YouTube and think for a second that someone is going to stop and spend 30 minutes of their day actually watching the recording of this podcast episode doesn't track with me. Why? Because I'm not a gigantic name yet, um, but, and, or, and, or a celebrity on there. So it makes no sense. Vanity purposes, sure, it's there, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. I did test the theory out with my— on the Podcast Launch Lab YouTube channel, youtube.com/podcastlaunchlab. And I did take my other podcast, Podcast Suck, and I said, you You know what, let's add the RSS feed for shits and giggles and let's just see what happens. What happened was my entire channel was blanketed with every single episode I'd ever recorded with just my cover art. So you couldn't see any thumbnails. It was— it aesthetically looked deplorable and I couldn't undo the process fast enough. So I'm gonna end my rant right here and let you enter the conversation because you are the guest on this episode, of course. Um, but I'll finish by saying, in the industry of podcasting, the RSS feed is extremely sacred. Why? Because an RSS feed has no judgment behind it. You can't go to my podcast and go, well, only 10 people listened. This guy must suck. It has no vanity metrics on there. They're behind the scenes on there. Number one. Number two, the, the art of audio. I can do anything listening to something. I can be at the gym, in my car, on a plane, on a train, going to sleep. Waking up, wherever. A video, my brain says, well, shit, I got to sit down and watch this right now. So I'm going to end my rant and let you reenter the conversation here, Drew, because I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, so I agree that most podcasts, the viewer experience is as you described, where it's more of a passive listening experience. Most people who are putting on a podcast on their computer or on their phone or wherever with the video, they're throwing it on a second monitor and putting it off to the side. And fun little stat, right now TV, I believe, has taken over tablet, mobile, and like on a percentage basis for most podcasts has actually taken over mobile or mobile and desktop as well. And it just goes to show that there's a shift specifically for video podcasts where most people are still consuming the content in a very similar fashion that they would on An audio podcast where it's getting thrown on a TV, it's put on the side and you hit the play button and you let it run. That's why most podcasts have some of the best retentions. I can, couple of notable 3-hour-plus-long podcasts that I've seen the backends to, I mean, to have an hour and a half to 2 and a half hour long retention is not uncommon, which is wild to me. Yeah. Because there are some shows where you look at their retentions and 20 to 30 minutes is about all they can squeeze out regardless of length. So I mean, I guess what's in your eyes, what's the main question is like this video podcasting thing, is it like not real? Is that the main question? I think the main question is who's it for? Celebrities, no question. Large names, no question. The average business owner? It just depends. Like the, the way I look at video podcasts, like whether you're doing it on Apple and Spotify, I don't really quite understand how their search mechanics work, but at least as far as YouTube goes, the reason, the reason why to put your video on YouTube, whether, whether it's a podcast or not, is YouTube has the only distribution platform that is going to put your thing in front of new people with you not having to do any extra promotion to send traffic there. So to me, there's no reason not to put in the effort to like do the video podcast. It's just all the ancillary Spotify and Apple, I would say it's still too early to tell like how effective and valuable that's going to be. Now, There are a handful of shows. I've got a buddy, his name is Eddie Pinero. He lives in Arizona. He runs a channel called Your World Within. I think right now the channel name is Eddie Pinero, but for him in his business, he primarily grew on YouTube. When Spotify added in their video stuff, he migrated a lot of his content over to Spotify and basically took the money that he was getting from YouTube, his average monthly recurring revenue there, and basically doubled it. Because on Spotify, they have a couple of mechanics specifically on the creator side where you'll get like a, you know, if you're big enough, you will get a dedicated person who will chat with you once a month. And occasionally they'll reach out and be like, hey, we would like to do a feature on some of your content on the main page. And you can basically get wider distribution just by having that asset there as well. So depending on your size, it could very well make sense. But for most business owners who viewership isn't necessarily at its peak, you know, you're only attracting like a core niche. It's still, Probably too early to tell whether or not it truly makes sense. But for me, the YouTube side definitely makes sense because ultimately you're attracting new people to find your stuff. Even with 10 subscribers? You would be surprised. I've had a couple of folks who had less than 1,000 subs who, because their content was on YouTube, got speaking engagements as a function of it. Interesting. Well, it's better than like, it's kind of like that. It's like, it's better than not being there at all. Yeah. Well, I mean, like people are naturally going to look you up. I mean, over, if you do something long enough and it's enough of a priority for you to be consistent with it, then to me it's a, like, you don't necessarily have to hire a YouTube coach or any of that sort of stuff. Um, especially in the early stages, like to me, unless you're 100 videos in, It's not worth talking to somebody at a high level because usually your first 100 videos suck. Got it. So just get in there, set up the channel and post and pray. Yep. I mean, like, yes, you can go and do research. Like here, I'll give you the 80/20 of getting started. First off, packaging. So your thumbnails and titles are probably by far the most important thing out of the gate. Look, looking up a couple of tutorials of like, what, what are conventions for titles and thumbnails? What are the things that I need to be doing there? And I can give you some general best practices right now for thumbnails. One, if you're doing a podcast where you've got 2 people, you have one of 2 options. You either just have one face on the right-hand side with text on the left-hand side, which is like your hook. And then basically your hook, the way I look at it is the thumbnail attracts the the viewer to read the title. And then the title is ultimately what sells the video. And then the first 30 seconds of your video is ultimately what gets them to say, yes, I'm going to get the thing that the thumbnail title promised. As long as those 3 things are congruent, then you've got that piece taken care of. The next thing that, from a metric standpoint, as you release pieces of content, is what does your retention look like? Usually our, our Gold standard, the video has a halfway decent hook is at the 1-minute mark. If you're usually between 50 and 70%, your hook is not the problem for your video. If you're below that, then we have a hook problem and we need to kind of go back to the drawing board of like how we're editing our intros. Click-through rates out of the gate. So click-through rate on your video, you want to be somewhere between 4% and 7% in an early channel. If you're anything lower than that, then you really need to focus on your packaging. Because ultimately, like, you know, YouTube will show your videos to, you know, a number of people. And based on how people interact with that will determine how much more distribution you get. So Higher click-through rates usually on release. And then once you are a week into a video being live, you'll be at what I consider steady state. And then you can look at, look at your thought. Usually I'll look at the click-through rate compared to like, what's my channel average? And as long as that video is above my channel average, then I'm good leaving it for a while. But if it's below, then I need to go back and look at how I position that video from a packaging perspective. Yeah, love that. Well, listen, friends, if you're listening to this right now, you're probably overwhelmed, which is fantastic because that's the goal here. We wanted to help you better understand what you don't know that you don't know about the world of YouTube and what to expect. But at the same time, I'm even optimistic as I would consider myself somewhat of a seasoned YouTuber. I've now got a new refreshed outlook on how I can come in with YouTube 2.0 for the Podcast Launch Lab. And you should be too. If you're just getting started, you're confused. Like, I don't even know where I want to start. then this episode has been for you. Drew, you've been a wealth of information, man. I really appreciate, uh, your time and, and all the information you decided to share with, with our audience and both myself as well too. So, um, and with that being said, any— you gave us some good, good final tips, but any final thoughts for our listeners today on YouTube for business? Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, the way I look at the social media landscape as a whole YouTube is the only place where you can post a piece of content and it will live forever. Like, yes, you can get a lot of traction with Instagram Reels, TikToks, and that sort of thing, but YouTube is the only platform where people actively go to get educated and ultimately find the people that they want to work with and help them solve the problems that they're looking to get solved. So if you're not on YouTube, To me, it is probably, you know, it has been the new frontier for longer than most, most will admit. And it's really just a matter of like, how do you keep it super simple in the beginning so that it is sustainable? And then once you start to get some traction, then you can start to ask the questions of like, okay, how do I upgrade my setups and that sort of stuff? Like, to me, I feel like You know, folks like Sam Gaudette probably have it right as far as like, just start with your phone. It doesn't have to be complicated. Like you can get perfectly good quality video out of the things that you already have. And you know, like YouTube is the long game, play the long game. Yeah. So love that, dude. Hey, thanks again, Drew. I really appreciate your time. These episodes are normally 12 to 15 minutes, but YouTube long form, baby. Long form. So we had to go a little bit longer, and I sure do appreciate your time and all the information you had to share. And, uh, keep rocking and rolling, dude. What you're doing clearly matters, clearly works. And, uh, the proof is those 47, uh, YouTube plaques you got right behind you. Those of you listening, YouTube sends you plaques when you receive— when you achieve big, big, big, like gigantic milestones. I don't have one, if that puts it into perspective. So, well, Drew, keep rocking, man. It's great to be connected with you, bro. Yeah, always a pleasure. Thanks, man. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast launchlab.com studios, we'll talk to you next time.