The Secret Strategist Behind The Biggest YouTubers

Summary

Highlights

• Patty Galloway, dubbed the 'view maximizer,' helps channels grow exponentially by focusing on the right YouTube strategies. 🔍
• The secret sauce lies in ideation—putting more effort into planning can lead to explosive growth. 💡
• Even the smallest thumbnail change can increase views dramatically, emphasizing the power of first impressions. 👀
• YouTube has become a massive platform for various types of content, from podcasts to music and more, evolving into the new TV. 📺
• The conversation explores how brands like Red Bull and Philadelphia Eagles use YouTube as more than just a dumping ground for videos, turning it into a strategic tool. 🏈

Key Takeaways

• Packaging is key to a video's success. How you present it can be the difference between 1 million and 28 million views! 🎨
• YouTube is no longer just a video platform; it's the biggest streaming service globally, like the new TV! 📺
• Your title and thumbnail are your first impression; make them intriguing! 😲
• Don't just copy the competition. Innovate by borrowing successful formats from other niches. 🚀
• Brands have a unique position and can leverage their competitive advantages to create engaging content beyond traditional advertising. 🎥

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Background of Patty Galloway The chapter provides an introduction to Patty Galloway and highlights his significant impact on YouTube, totaling approximately 50 billion views in his career. The discussion revolves around the effectiveness of YouTube titles and thumbnails, and how their packaging can drastically affect view performance, from just a few million to as much as 28 million views. Furthermore, the conversation touches on the nature of brand YouTube channels as corporate video repositories and teases a recent upload to a target YouTube channel.
• 03:01 - 09:00: Evolution of YouTube and Future Insights This chapter delves into the insights shared by YouTube expert Patty Galloway. It highlights Patty's analyses of successful creators such as Mr. Beast, KSI, and Ryan Tran, offering an understanding of what makes their channels thrive. Patty's scope extends beyond individual creators; he collaborates with brands like Red Bull and the Philadelphia Eagles, advising on effective YouTube strategies. The discussion offers a glimpse into how brands can leverage YouTube's platform effectively, making this segment a blend of creator success stories and brand strategy insights.
• 09:01 - 10:30: Strategies for YouTube Success This chapter explores successful YouTube strategies by discussing insights from leading creators on how to grow their channels. Key topics include generating good content ideas, effective packaging techniques, and predicting the future direction of YouTube. The conversation features guest Patty Galloway, who shares extensive knowledge and experience in the field.
• 10:31 - 13:00: The Balance of Creativity and Strategy The chapter discusses the identity and role of a 'view maximizer,' someone who focuses on increasing views for YouTube videos. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding one's strengths in the industry, as they identify their primary skill as generating more views. This niche capability is highlighted as their main contribution to their work and the collaborators they work with, reflecting on their career focused on maximizing viewership.
• 13:01 - 25:00: The Role of Brands on YouTube The chapter discusses the longstanding presence of YouTube and its evolution, highlighting personal experiences of the speakers who started as creators on the platform nearly two decades ago. They reflect on their journey as early adopters, emphasizing the significant duration of YouTube's existence and its impact on their connection and careers.
• 25:01 - 30:00: Importance of Titles and Thumbnails The chapter discusses the evolution of YouTube over 20 years, reflecting on its potential to become a modern version of television and the platform's initial assumptions compared to its current state.
• 30:01 - 40:00: Experimentation and Brand Channels In this chapter, the discussion focuses on the evolution of YouTube as a major platform. Initially perceived as just a repository for internet clips and vlogs, YouTube's significance has grown over time. It has evolved from a place known for prank videos to a platform hosting creators like Mr. Beast, who engage in elaborate stunts. The chapter emphasizes the strategic developments YouTube has undertaken, as signaled by insights from Neil Mohan, to position itself as a key player in the digital content space. The narrative reflects a strong, optimistic belief in YouTube's potential and current standing in the media landscape.
• 40:01 - 50:00: Viewer Engagement and Strategy The chapter 'Viewer Engagement and Strategy' discusses the prominence of YouTube as a leading streaming platform, equating it to the modern-day television or Hollywood. The CEO emphasizes the high production quality of YouTube videos, comparing them to movies. A surprising statistic is highlighted, revealing YouTube as the platform with the highest podcast viewership in the U.S., likening it to the new radio.
• 50:01 - 60:00: Conclusion The 'Conclusion' chapter emphasizes YouTube's growing dominance and potential as a key player in the future of entertainment. The discussion highlights YouTube's vast influence, not just in video content but also as a major platform for music through YouTube Music. Despite the competitive landscape, YouTube's position as a comprehensive entertainment hub indicates its robust standing and potential for future expansion. The ability to host diverse content such as major podcasts alongside countless other videos exemplifies its extensive reach and utility.

The Secret Strategist Behind The Biggest YouTubers Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 You are responsible for 10 billion views on YouTube. Is that right? If we added it all up in the history of me doing YouTube, probably pushing 50 billion views. Wow. Can you break down why that title thumbnail works? I've never been more confident on uploading YouTube videos I was with that video. Really? But how we packaged it could be the difference between it getting a couple million views and 28 million. Brand YouTube channels are corporate video dumping grounds. I'm going to tell you guys the most recent upload to the target YouTube channel. Great. WA. Today on the Colin Mirror Show, we're joined
• 00:30 - 01:00 by YouTube expert and strategist Patty Galloway. Now, we first came across Patty Galloway as fans of his channel. He was uploading breakdowns of creators like Mr. Beast, KSI, and Ryan Tran, talking about why their channels were so successful. Now, one of the most interesting things about Patty is not only is he working with creators on their videos, he's also working with brands on their YouTube strategies. So, for example, he works directly with Red Bull on their videos as well as the Philadelphia Eagles. It's one of the most fun parts of this conversation is talking about how brands are going to
• 01:00 - 01:30 now occupy space on YouTube. In this conversation, we dive really deep into the strategies that top creators are using to grow their channels. We talk about ideas and what makes a good idea for YouTube, how to package it correctly, and we also talk about where YouTube is heading next. All right, now for our conversation with Patty Galloway. [Music] All right, Patty Galloway, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's It's been a long time coming and I'm excited
• 01:30 - 02:00 to be here. You refer to yourself as a view maxer. Is that right? Yeah. View maximizer or something. View maximizer. You know, we get views. That's our kind of catchphrase for everything I do. Um I think uh in this industry, it's important to like know what you're good at. And there's so many different things I could describe myself as, but when I really trace back what I do with the people we work with and what I've spent the bulk of my life doing, it's getting more views for YouTube videos. So, yeah, the view maximizer, I'll take it. You've
• 02:00 - 02:30 also been doing this for a while. You were a creator yourself on your own channel. That's how we got connected. That's how we met. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we exchanged DMs so long ago. Yeah. I mean, this is going to sound crazy and this is like a a beautiful thing to think about how long YouTube has been around, but I believe I posted my first video in 2006 on like a the first channel I ever uh built and that's nearly 20 years ago. So, it's like kind of crazy to think that YouTube's been around for that long. And I know you guys as well started in the same way. Like so long ago, you know, we've both we've all been
• 02:30 - 03:00 on the platform for over a decade obsessing over it. So, yeah, it's a it's a beautiful thing. And we're actually this year we're this is 20 years of YouTube now. Yeah. Like so so it's super interesting that we're at this 20-y year mark. And I think it's an interesting place to start about the evolution of YouTube. When we first uploaded our videos onto the platform to what it is today, I think there was there was this assumption when we first started our channel that maybe this could be the modern version of television. But for that to play out, it actually took a
• 03:00 - 03:30 really long time to get there. But where do you think YouTube is today? I mean, I'm going to sound like a kind of very bullish person on YouTube, as I'm sure we all are here at this table, but I really think for the longest time, the mainstream sort of looked as YouTube as like this kind of like, oh, place for internet clips and like, oh, now there's vloggers running around doing pranks and oh, now there's this thing and now, oh, now there's Mr. Beast doing all these like big stunts. But the more you kind of look at the play YouTube is making and you even listen to what Neil Mohan
• 03:30 - 04:00 the CEO is saying like YouTube is the biggest streaming platform in the world. So YouTube is TV nowadays the production level people are putting into their YouTube videos at the highest level it's almost like movieesque. So YouTube is kind of Hollywood. Um and even the stat that surprised me was that YouTube is now the platform with the highest podcast viewership. more people watch podcasts on YouTube in the US than any other platform, which also means YouTube is kind of the new radio. So, I am very
• 04:00 - 04:30 bullish on YouTube just being this kind of major winner in the whole future of entertainment. Uh, and I think that's like the exciting thing about being still so early in it in my opinion. You didn't even mention music. Yeah, YouTube music is massive platform. So, yeah, I think you're right that it is this like one-stop shop for entertainment that does make it harder to compete. right? Like like when you're living in a world now where you know a massive podcast gets uploaded on the same day as thousands and thousands of other videos.
• 04:30 - 05:00 I think there's a stat that we saw that only 12% of YouTube videos crack a thousand views. That doesn't surprise me, but that's crazy to think. It's crazy to think about that. And so I think it's a it's it's a good place to start of like in today's world, what can break through? Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I think to me we just look at like where YouTube has come from a few even like 5 10 years ago I think it was still so focused on individual personalities that
• 05:00 - 05:30 maybe they were just early to do YouTube and they were doing it at a decent level and they built an audience through that and lots of them are really talented like I'm thinking of a Casey Neistat um but in more recent years I think it has become more of a a strategy space like you have to really dig into like the strategic sides of YouTube it's not enough to just be funny and interesting on camera that that goes a long way. But nowadays, you look at the top creators and they're actually like, you know, they're entrepreneurs, they're data analysts, they're um managers of teams, they're
• 05:30 - 06:00 leaders altogether. And I think when uh when we think about how competitive it is right now, that is true. Like there's probably never been a point in history of YouTube where there's more good videos being uploaded every week. But the eyeballs is also bigger. There is a bigger total audience. And I think the YouTube algorithm as well has got so good at allowing the cream to rise to the top and become such a meritocracy versus maybe how it was 5 10 years ago
• 06:00 - 06:30 that I see this all the day in the work that I do. These smaller creators when they start to focus on the right things and put attention on the the kind of new things, the new rules that are working on YouTube, um they can see crazy results very quickly. So, I think it's more competitive than it's ever been, but it's also if you can deliver a really interesting title, thumbnail, and video, the kind of multiplier effect of YouTube algorithm and how far that can reach even as a small channel has never been greater. So, it's kind of like a
• 06:30 - 07:00 balancing act where competition is higher, but also I think the algorithm is so much more sophisticated and there's a total market that's bigger that when you hit it right, it's pretty frightening how quickly you can you can grow a channel. What does it take to hit it right? Like when you say hit it right and you're working with creators or you're working with brands, what has to come together so that you've hit it right, you've maxed all your views, what's happening totally. So I think the interesting thing and and I've said this before, but I think because YouTube is a video platform, people do look at it and say, well, it's all about the video.
• 07:00 - 07:30 It's all about the content. It's all about, you know, the cameras and the production. Um, and I know this is not a talking point that's particularly new, but YouTube is not a video platform. It's a it's a click and watch platform. It's a platform that people have to decide what to view. Even when you compare it to other video platforms like Tik Tok, Tik Tok feeds you content based on your algorithm, based on your watch history, and they're really good at it. But YouTube long form at least is still a decision platform. So to me, like the first step is always just like really
• 07:30 - 08:00 nailing down what ideas we're going to make for a channel. So when I think about these smaller channels that are growing really quickly, it's usually that they have actually invested more time into ideation. And just before we went live, we were even talking about some examples, but like I recently had a channel in our accelerator program who was doing 2 or 3,000 views a video. His name is Ian Lure, Ian Lure Astro. He's an astrophotography channel. And he was making content and there was nothing terribly wrong with how he was making the videos. Like the videos were pretty
• 08:00 - 08:30 good, but they were doing two or three thousand views a video. And I'd love to take a lot of credit for it, but the reality of it is is we were just like, "Hey, like spend more time on ideation, study what's working in other niches, try to build a video that we define as having a CCN fit, which is it hits the core audience, hits the casual audience, and it hits the new audience all at the same time, which sounds easy, but it's actually quite hard because sometimes what's really interesting to a new audience alienates a core audience. And sometimes what's um really interesting to a core audience is just narrowing the
• 08:30 - 09:00 the total potential market the video can hit. So he just used some of these frameworks around ideation and just spent more time on his packaging. He changed it from maybe being a situation where he was spending 5% of time on idea title thumbnail to maybe spending 30% of time on idea title thumbnail. And he made a video that got a million views and did I think 270 times his average viewership. What was that video? That video was uh photographing um I think it
• 09:00 - 09:30 was photographing the Milky Way in one hour or in 10 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours, something like that. I'm sure we can show it on screen, but it was yeah, just a video just with astrophotography at different time levels. And it was built on a format that had worked for other people, like 5 minute haircut versus 50-minute haircut or, you know, whatnot. So, uh it was really interesting to see just how big of a multiplier YouTube can be. Can you break down why that title thumbnail works as opposed to like I photographed the Milky Way? Yeah. Right. Like instead of in 10
• 09:30 - 10:00 minutes, an hour and 24 hours or whatever it was, I think because immediately that poses like an interesting question of like what do the different levels of time investment look like for this thing? There's also like a clear comparison and like I think just naturally viewers are interested in comparisons. Like whether it be a body transformation, whether it be like a $1 jet versus like a hundred billion dollar jet or whatever. I think viewers are just fascinated by comparisons and
• 10:00 - 10:30 seeing how different things take different amounts of time or investment. Mhm. So I think that just it built on a format and also that format makes for a really interesting thumbnail because you can show the different levels of effort and how that photo ends up coming out. So I think it just takes it from being like realistically this is the beautiful thing is there's not that much difference between that video and a video where you just say like taking a photo of the Milky Way or whatever. Yeah. But those little differences can just have such outsized returns which I it breaks my brain sometimes because you
• 10:30 - 11:00 know we've had a situation as well where we worked with this creator his name was Tim Gabe and he had a video which was six UI hacks um or something like that user interface hacks for website design and someone on my team helped advise him on just like a tiny thumbnail change and the difference between the thumbnail he had before and the thumbnail he had afterwards was I would say maybe it was like 30 40% better the one afterwards. Like it wasn't a huge difference, but the video
• 11:00 - 11:30 ended up getting 40 times more views per day just because it was a little bit better with a lot more people and then YouTube just snowballed it from there. And that's what breaks my brain and I think what a lot of creators like fail to realize is how much of a difference those small details can make. So often like I think people are looking for this complete like tear down and like everything's wrong, we need to build it up again with this new strategy. Sometimes it is about just like realizing where you need to invest more time and focus and just improving those little details. Do you remember what was
• 11:30 - 12:00 30 or 40% better about it? We made it clearer. We can actually give you the the title thumbnail so you can show it on screen for the viewers. But it was just a simple thing. It just made it a little bit clearer. It was easier to to look at. We removed some of like the the excess busyness. Just made this really clear thumbnail. I think we put like a little cursor on screen so like you're clicking onto the for the UI elements. And if you just look at them side by side, it's like a little bit better. But yeah, 40 times more views per day after that change. It is interesting how exponential it is. And just just back to what you said about like YouTube being a
• 12:00 - 12:30 click and watch platform. I think that's a that's a really important note. So we we built a program called the YouTube growth playbook and it's centered around what we consider the three rules of YouTube. So I'm going to pitch them to you and see how you feel about them. Uh the first is obvious. It's if they don't click, they don't watch. And it's something that Jimmy said to us on our show that ever since he said that I'm like that is such an obvious statement, but it is it is the first rule of YouTube, plain and simple. The second is once they've once you've earned
• 12:30 - 13:00 someone's click, the second rule is respect their time. Which means like now that they're inside of the video, you have to really respect the fact that they gave you that time and essentially introduce if the the thumbnail is a question, you now have to introduce a new question that allows them to to stay until the end, right? There there has to be a reason for them to invest that time and get value back. And the third rule is uh a question which is do you want more stuff like this? So basically every video that you upload has to answer the
• 13:00 - 13:30 question of if I asked you if you if you liked one of my videos then I have to ask you well do you want more stuff like that? My next video is like that too to basically allow you to to jump. Right. So like you talk about that space photographer of going from you know that format. I'd have to imagine he repeated that format. Yeah. In his next videos. Yeah. And it's not necessarily just repetitive of like, hey, just make the same video over and over again. It's actually empathetic towards the
• 13:30 - 14:00 audience's experience. The majority of our viewership comes from uh browse and suggested. So it it's beyond even just being a click and watch platform. It's where are the surfaces that they can click. Mhm. And the assumption I think the base assumption when people are coming into YouTube is that it's the channel page, you know, or like if I put out the video then maybe but it's it's actually not it's not there. It's on the home screen. Yeah. Or more importantly, is the right bar next to the rest of
• 14:00 - 14:30 videos. So you actually have to reverse engineer and go, what video are they watching right now that would get them to click on my video? Yeah. Right. Yeah. We always say too with if they don't click, they don't watch that the goal is that your video should be familiar to the audience but also unexpected. So this creator who's making this aerospace photography video, I'm sure there's a lot in that thumbnail that looks like other aerospace photography videos. But the element that's unexpected is the the way that the thumbnail is divided into three, right? That's what's unexpected.
• 14:30 - 15:00 So like within that sea of aerospace photography, if I'm looking for a video to watch, ooh, there's the one that's unexpected. It's familiar to me, but it's also unexpected. I'll click. You're using like a classic YouTube, right? Johnny Harris has a great video, too. A great thumbnail that's similar. Let me pull it up cuz it's exact. Uh, let me show you guys having different income levels. Oh, I saw how your life looks and feels and operates differently across those income levels. So, Johnny's video is called 25,000 versus $25 million. And it's a
• 15:00 - 15:30 three-step with 25,000 and then in the middle 100,000 and then at the end 25 million. But that is just like a clean classic YouTube example of the titles and thumbnails don't necessarily exactly match, but they suggest this like three-step framework that just works. I think what's uh inspiring to me or at least makes me hopeful is that no matter what your medium is or what your topic is on YouTube, you can use that format.
• 15:30 - 16:00 I even think about us like could we do interviewing YouTube creators with zero subscribers or like a thousand subscribers up to a million a million million that's good like 1,000 or 10,000 or something a million and 100 million and something you just done there by like hearing me talk about this talk about that video just come up with an idea for your channel right I think what's so interesting is when you start to realize that as a creator you're not limited to what is happening in your niche so so often like I look at how do you ideate with let's say a channel
• 16:00 - 16:30 there's just like one focus there. Let's say it's golf. They're like, "How do I ideulate?" And it's like, "Oh, like currently I go look at all the other golf channels and see what's working." And it's like, "Well, are there any other niches that have like a certain level of adjacency to golf?" Like, is there other niches where you could take formats from that? Like even our format here of like maybe it's a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club or something. Like you can apply formats in so many niches. And it's honestly, it sounds simple, but so much of our success through my
• 16:30 - 17:00 consulting company, through the other things we do, it's just seeing what is working in all these different niches and what are niche, what in our niche that we're currently focused on, what is a format that other people are not doing yet that we could bring over and adapt. And also, I think there's always like this feeling of like, well, we want to be original, we want to try something new, but there's a big difference between taking a format in your existing niche and doing it yourself cuz then that competing channel might be like, hey, I did that first. or one of your audience members is like that's not original. If you take like if you're the astrophotography channel, you take that over, it feels fresh. It feels new. And
• 17:00 - 17:30 maybe in other niches that's now saturated and it's not as interesting. So, it's so interesting how you can kind of take things over from different niches. There's this method that we talk about quite a bit uh called be a magician. And it's because one time we had a conversation with a magician who said to us, "I don't have to come up with new tricks. I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven't seen them before." There we go. And I was it like kind of blew me away because I was like that that's true. Like the space audience may have never seen that format
• 17:30 - 18:00 before. Or you before the recording we were talking about permaculture which is a massive genre on YouTube that I did not even know about. Um and you have a student from your accelerator who had a video with 15 million views by using essentially a versus framework, right? Or a before and after framework. Can you talk about that video? Yeah. I mean that's that's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. So I think it was in cohort two of our accelerator program which was close on two years ago. Uh this channel Andrew Millison is the name
• 18:00 - 18:30 of the channel and he was just in the cohort and you know he was pretty active but like we didn't directly like tell him which video to make or anything like this was on his own accord. So not trying to take any credit for this cuz this is him and his work but I think he just realized from being around these other creators and hearing me talk about how we do YouTube at the highest level. He was like, "Wow, like I could probably package these videos to be bigger, broader." And yeah, he made this video about how the UN is holding back the Sahara Desert. And I think earlier I
• 18:30 - 19:00 mentioned that idea of the core casual new audience. If you think about the core of like permaculture, horiculture, it's pretty small on YouTube. But if you attach it to like okay, the UN and the Sahara Desert and then you add like a really interesting thumbnail, which you know, we can show that up on screen, but that thumbnail is like so irresistible not to click. Half of it is like a completely aid desert and the right is a desert that has been completely uh transformed. It's green. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost unbelievable actually. And I think to
• 19:00 - 19:30 his credit, I clicked on the video sort of skeptical of is that real? Like is that an AI thumbnail or what is that? And the first frame is the lush green sort of desert that you see on the right. So it confirmed to me, okay, like this is actually the video I thought it was. That that what you just described there of like seeing a thumbnail that like almost you have to be like no way and they click it. That's what I'm always trying to create. Like I want something that feels like maybe somewhat exaggerated and like so like wow that looks impossible that you click the video but then we deliver on it in some
• 19:30 - 20:00 fashion so that you just feel like actually I made the right decision by clicking this video. All right, hope you guys are enjoying this episode with Patty. Wanted to tell you about something real quick before we continue. So we want to give a hundred of you our 50 and5 YouTube ideation sprint totally for free. This is our five-day ideation sprint to help you come up with better ideas for your YouTube channel. Here's how it works. You click the link in our description, you put in your email, and every day for 5 days, you're going to get a video that teaches you something about titles and thumbnails, and you're going to get a
• 20:00 - 20:30 prompt to push you to write 10 ideas for your YouTube channel. By the end of the 5 days, you're going to have 50 new ideas for your channel. So, if you're interested in that, we're giving away a 100 seeds totally for free. Just click the link in our description or go to colinsmeir.com/idas. All right, now back to the episode with Patty. So, you are responsible for 10 billion views on YouTube. Is that right? Or more? Um, the latest we checked, it's it's around 10 billion views uh a year. 10 billion views a year on YouTube. The the current
• 20:30 - 21:00 clients we work with is around 10 billion views a year. If we added it all up in the history of me doing YouTube, it's probably pushing 50 billion views. So, there's a video that one of your, you know, one of the clients that you work with is Red Bull. Yeah. Yeah. And Red Bull's probably at the forefront of a brand operating like a creator, right? Like and and that most likely will become a trend that we see to continue to rise on YouTube is brands operating like creators. But um I bring up Red Bull because of those 10 billion views a
• 21:00 - 21:30 year, there's one video that has 28 million views on Red Bull's channel that has this kind of versus framework that we can pull from, which is world's fastest camera drone versus F1 car. Uh and it's a really clean and simple thumbnail. Can you talk about just ideating within that context of Red Bull this video? Like how do you bring that forward? Why did you know this was going to work and why does it work? I I've never been more confident on uploading YouTube videos I was with that video.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Really? I didn't think it do 28 million because we were like averaging maybe a million views a video at the time, but I was so confident that would work. So, I think if you go back, all these videos have like an origin story. And the first video u I ever gave Red Bull any advice on was this video they did which was mountain bike versus um world's best camera drone or something or world's best FPV drone. And that ended up doing really well for them. It did like I want to say like five to 10 million views in
• 22:00 - 22:30 that sort of range. And that was actually before we started working with Red Bull. That was like three years ago now. Um and I think that planted a seed just internally that hey this versus format's interesting and drones like fast camera drones are interesting. And we also looked at the channel and we saw what's working on the channel. Formula 1 content is obviously very popular and was working really well on the channel. And then building into like another component which we can talk about which is like trying to identify competitive advantages if you're a brand. This can also apply to to creators and even small creators like what is something unique
• 22:30 - 23:00 that you can do that other people can't. And it's like well we have access to F1 cars. We have access to the world's best F1 driver Max Staffin. We have access and resources to be able to build a really fast camera drone. you start to put these pieces together and you're like, "Well, how interesting would a video be where you race the world's fastest driver in an F1 car against the world's fastest camera drone and try to actually get it to keep up?" But the interesting thing about this video, and this kind of goes back to your points earlier about like maybe the title thumbnail feeling almost like a little
• 23:00 - 23:30 bit exaggerated or not even like could this be real? That video when you actually look at it, it's actually not a race. It's the drone following the car. But if you think about that as a title, imagine the title was like, uh, world's fastest drone tries to keep up with F1 car. That's interesting, but maybe that would have got 4 million views. It's also kind of the end of the story cuz it it like the way you titled that didn't work. Tries to keep up with. Yeah. You're like, didn't work. Yeah. Moving on. Even for a thumbnail, then maybe you show the drone following the car. But
• 23:30 - 24:00 like just seeing that format which was actually built and lifted from a format that works really well on the Red Bull channel but also for other channels which is like the drag race format which if you ever see the channel Carw Wow they do these things like Bugatti Veyron versus Ferrari F-150 or something and it's like these races uh with this behind camera angle. So we were like let's take inspiration from that format that works really well. Let's put them together. Let's put a drone on the track. Let's put an F1 car on the track. And I mean it's just it's a beautiful
• 24:00 - 24:30 thumbnail in my opinion. So how involved are you in the process of of that video? Are you there and your team there from ideiation all the way through completion like looking at edits? Yeah. Video like that. I like to think about it is like we are strategists. So we don't do traditional production like we're not there on the set. We weren't there on the set of that video. Um, but we'll take we'll work on the ideation like we'll work alongside Red Bull like coming up with these ideas and working on those ideas. And I believe that original idea like was born internally
• 24:30 - 25:00 at Red Bull from one of their producers, Callum. Um, and we just worked with it to make sure that it's adapted to be able to hit the viewership they want, you know. So, we actually took their original sort of semblance of an idea, figured out and make it broader. So, we'll advise on like the packaging, the title. Before the shoot, like the producers will meet with my team and myself and we'll just go through the shoot beats and just figure out how we're going to structure the video and what we're going to show. And then we'll do like edit reviews. And then the final thing for me is always like working. We
• 25:00 - 25:30 actually make the thumbnails for Redbull. For most of our clients, we don't make the thumbnails for Red Bull. We we make the thumbnails. My amazing designer Britney, shout out to Britney. Um, and I say my designer, but she works for a lot of incredible creators. Um, and my my like biggest thing that always leads to the most friction with clients is usually like I have a very strong opinion on what the title thumbnail should be. And I will like argue that case. And I even remember for that specific video like I was like perhaps one of the other titles and thumbnail combinations they were suggesting. I was like it's good but it could get a
• 25:30 - 26:00 million views. My one I think can get 10 million views. I remember saying that you know cuz it's it sounds so small but like even for a video that's so well executed, such an incredible piece of content. everyone that was involved in that content just did a phenomenal job, but how we packaged it could be the difference between it getting a couple million views and 28 million. So, I think it's a really interesting exercise to uh this is actually something Jimmy said to us the first time we ever went to Greenville. He told us with our packaging, he he said, "Pull it to the most exaggerated version of what it is
• 26:00 - 26:30 and then pull it back to what you're comfortable with." but but explore the most exaggerated version of the concept. Uh and and I thought that was a really interesting mental framework and exercise. Um and one of my favorite videos, this is not necessarily exaggerated, but one of my favorite title thumbnails on YouTube is from Veritassium and it is why are there 96 million black balls on this reservoir banger? It is. It is an unbelievable
• 26:30 - 27:00 title thumbnail. has 102 million views. And and I think, you know, on the opposite end of what's the most exaggerated version of this, you know, he could have maybe gone like the 96 million mysterious black balls. I don't I think the title is perfect, but you can also go the other way and go, what's like the most boring version and let's make sure we don't do that. Like that video is actually about how LA protects its water supply. So you you which would have just been a brutal Yeah. title with a much smaller total addressable market.
• 27:00 - 27:30 So you said 103 million views. Yeah. If we had like we came in and we were the anti- strategists. Let's say we start a company, our job is to get the least amount of views possible. We'd go in and we'd be like, "Oh, like interesting. How about we title it like how LA addresses its water shortage problem, right? That video on even beer's channel with millions of subscribers might have got 500k views, but maybe yeah, with that title of 103." Wow. Yeah. It opens up a curiosity gap, right? Which is like the most important thing is like we need a curiosity gap.
• 27:30 - 28:00 And I think what's interesting is we're starting to talk about I think for the audience to latch on to like there are some really interesting frameworks to start with when it comes to ideation. Like one is superlatives. So fastest, biggest, smallest. You see these a lot on YouTube and I think superlatives are really easy visual words to latch on to and I think that's that's important, right? The other is versus is a classic like Ford F-150 versus Rivian, right?
• 28:00 - 28:30 immediately you peg two things against each other and then we just talked about like the three-step that that we talk about quite a bit the like $1, $10, $100, right? Those like three steps. So I think you start to the most important thing there's a Seth Godating quote that says in order to be seen you must learn how to see. And I think spending time on YouTube just clocking what is the framework like what are they using in this framework to capture my attention
• 28:30 - 29:00 is is the most important and just writing it down being like oh interesting world's smallest X. How many times do I see superlatives show up like that? Yeah. Another one that I I've been seeing a lot that we've had some success with over the years is like getting exclusive access or getting access to something that most people don't get access to. M so there's a creator, an Irish creator, shout out Irish creator called Darata who does these videos where like he investigates these like secret islands or secret like military bases that have like pollution and you
• 29:00 - 29:30 know he has to wear like a gas mask when he goes there. Um another example is like we work with the creator Jesser who's biggest basketball creator like he'll do like getting access to the NBA, getting exclusive access to the finals. We did a video recently with um a a wildlife creator called Forest Galante and that title was called um private tour of secret Indian billionaires wildlife sanctuary and that got like 9 billion 9 billion 9 million everyone in the world watched everyone 9 million
• 29:30 - 30:00 views 9 billion in the future not quite yet but like it's that format it's like even for maybe viewers listening they'd be like well I don't have exclusive access to like an Indian billionaire's private wildlife sanctuary but it's like Maybe there's some things you get interesting access to or you can showcase that other people can't. And I actually think going back to like our original points of like how do creators stand out in 2025 and beyond, I think it's becoming more important than ever to just lock in what your competitive advantage is. And for each of the the clients that we work with, like we actually have it internally in a
• 30:00 - 30:30 document, which is like what is their competitive advantage? Like what do we see as the thing that makes them be able to make something or create content that other people can't make? And I think a lot of people just go to oh it's money oh it's like access or these things and yes that can be a competitive advantage but quite often it's just like unique experience or like a unique authority to speak on something that other people can't speak on and things like that. So you know anyone that's actually an interesting point with like even with the content I used to make on YouTube um when I used to do these breakdown videos they did really well but technically
• 30:30 - 31:00 anyone can kind of make those. Yeah. But if I make a video talking about how I got 10 million views with clients or how, you know, we work with clients that do 20 million a year in revenue or something directly from YouTube, there's probably only a handful of people in the world that can actually say that as well. I also find that even if you don't have the money or the access and let's say you're going with a title, thumbnail, and a concept that's more about your personal experience and your personal knowledge, sometimes that adds enough tension in itself of like, let me
• 31:00 - 31:30 see if I believe you as an expert. like here's 10 things you can do to like improve your fitness or something or whatever. Like I know that there are a lot of those types of videos, but occasionally I'll see one I'll be like, "Okay, there's actually tension here that's going to make me click cuz I want to see if I believe your expertise." Sometimes like that itself will bring you through the door. What do you think about lists? Like six financial tips or six, you know, like what do you think about lists? Ali Abdal is like a very
• 31:30 - 32:00 forward list man. Yeah, Ali, if you're listening, hopefully you like that I called you a list man. He refers to himself as a forward thinking list man. So he I mean he said to us, he was like a YouTube video is is a title, thumbnail, and a list. And uh I thought that was a really interesting perspective. Um what do you think about like titles with like a title framework with a list in it? I think if the items you're like showcasing are feel unique and interesting for your niche. So, if you're, let's say, in the finance niche and you made a video which is like seven money tips, you know, to grow your
• 32:00 - 32:30 wealth, it's kind of a bit generic and broad and probably lots of people covered it before, but if you say like seven underrated saving tips or seven money tips the top 1% are using that you don't know. So, like I think there's nothing wrong. I think the actual formative list and listical is is really effective and it's very easy to consume as well. But I think if it's a low number, so like between like three things and like 10 or 12 things, I want there to be a really unique thing. If it's a really big number, sometimes that
• 32:30 - 33:00 can be just like a bit more generic cuz you're just getting so much in one video. So you see these videos which are like um 40 pieces of life life advice I learned before turning 40 or something. You see this like real quick fire like life advice type videos. So I mean even I always think about list listicles as well. If your if your listicle is like under 10 I think you can start to see it as less of just a listical but more of like a puzzle. So I actually look used to look at my YouTube videos like that. I would say I'm posing a question. How did this creator grow this fast? And my
• 33:00 - 33:30 listical is basically every video followed like the three steps. People used to like joke about it. They're like Patty's fourstep formula. Patty's genius strategy. Um, and basically every video would follow a listical format, but it was like a puzzle list. So you'd piece uh pieces of the puzzle together to give the full picture. So I would say, "How did this creator grow?" Let's say, "How did Mr. Beast grow?" And then I'd be like, "All right, here are the different components that led to his growth." And then the structure of my video, I would connect those points together. So I'm like, the first thing he did was this. But without this other thing that we're
• 33:30 - 34:00 going to talk about next, it wouldn't have made sense. So next we have this and then we have this and then we have this and we're piecing together the full picture for viewers instead of it being like how do M grow random tip random tip random tip cuz that's like a bit chaotic and hard to to follow. So it's like building a story into a list of I really like but yeah it's definitely a format that works. I also think you can define who the list is for. I I love this channel speed right now. And he'll make a video like seven cars for cool nerds, right? And and that's where like the
• 34:00 - 34:30 tension and the interestingness comes from or like seven cars for cool nerds under 25 grand or something like that. So, we're talking a lot about, you know, frameworks pulling from what works on YouTube. Um, and I think the uh the the challenge is nothing exists in a vacuum. So, you do want to fit into the world of YouTube. You want to be familiar. You want to be unexpected. You want to make sure it's unique to you. Once you find something, it is pretty common that your category will just adopt your visual
• 34:30 - 35:00 language. I think your thumbnail is a great example. I think our thumbnails are a great example. We are hardressed to go on YouTube and see an interview that doesn't look kind of like our thumbnails. Um, and especially in our niche, they look exactly like our thumbnails. They might have a slight change in, you know, color on the on the box that goes over the text, but you know, we screenshot a lot of thumbnails that look exactly like our thumbnails. And we recognize that it might be hard for our audience to even identify when it's a Colin and Smear thumbnail now
• 35:00 - 35:30 because we're not in the thumbnails. It's guest plus, you know, quote or guest plus name. So what do you think in the direction of how do you advise channels to yeah to to to evolve from that when you found a format that works you've built a brand off of it but now you're living in a sea of sameness. Yeah that's that's a great question. It's it's a big decision because what I think sometimes happens is you have come up with a format that's really successful and that works really well. other people are copying it and then
• 35:30 - 36:00 almost like you get bullied out of the market by thinking you have to change. Yeah. Which is so funny, but I've talked to creators before and I'm like, "Why did you change the thumbnail format? It was working so well." And they're like, "Everyone else in my niche started copying me." And it's like, but it never stopped working. So like you just kind of let like someone who had 10% market share bully you out of the niche, which I I usually strive more towards just doubling down further. like I didn't care how many people like so many people took my thumbnail format like it was it was crazy and also I'm sure like if I
• 36:00 - 36:30 trace back there was some source some place where I originally had that idea from like it wasn't a completely original thought as well but it was my style a lot of people copied it but I never there was times where I got triggered like I'd see like especially when there was one example where someone did the graph their scripting was like identical to my scripting and they even used like the same background music and the same like bridging sentences like but next up like they said it the exact same way as me. I was like this is ridiculous but I think generally I I advise people unless the format is not
• 36:30 - 37:00 working don't stop. So like if you're if you're sort of thinking like hey our format has not stopped working just because other people are doing it I wouldn't stop because of that. But I do think it's some about like what are what are little things we can bring into the thumbnail that identify it as ours. I think people's mind immediately goes like oh little logo in the bottom left. Sure. I don't love that. Like can some work? I don't love it. My mind always goes there. Yeah. And my mind is always like please take it off and he always says absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah. So I I don't love that because for everyone who hasn't seen you, which as big as you
• 37:00 - 37:30 guys are, it's still like a huge audience that has never seen you before. Um they're going to kind of go like, "Oh, that's kind of ugly." Not that your logo is ugly, but they're going to like that kind of breaks up the image and I don't know what that is. And it kind of just adds busyness that I don't like. So I always think of like thumbnail brand as more like, you know, could be color of text. I've I've seen a lot of people like copy your sort of yellow color, but it could be color text, it could be font, it could be just like sometimes I think about even the t-shirt or color that the guest is wearing. Like it's
• 37:30 - 38:00 difficult to control, but maybe in the thumbnail edit you can control it. But overall, I think it's just about trying to drown out that noise. Um, it's hard as a creative to drown out the noise. It's like the creator brain is actually look at what's working and repeat what's working. The creative is how can I be unique? And sometimes those are at odds with each other. Yeah. Right. And it is it is the creative dies inside when you're no longer unique. When you live in a sea of sameness. Uh but the
• 38:00 - 38:30 creator, you're right, if it's working, you're just like, "Oh, okay. Just keep doing that thing." I I think I took this from you guys. You said this on a podcast maybe years ago and it really resonated with me where you said there's like artists and distributors. Yeah. There's a spectrum of artist. I I can't tell you how much I think of that in my head and try to think and place where different people are on that that frame. So maybe someone like Casey is really far on the artist side. Maybe someone like Jimmy is more on the distributor side, you know? And it's interesting to think where where we fall. Like I know that I fall probably further on on the
• 38:30 - 39:00 distributor side. And there's a part of me that has that creative inclination and wants to like always like be original and be fresh and come with completely new things. But there's another part of it which is like hey like if we want to build something sustainable and build a business it's like if you're a band and you have a record that sells really well in a certain genre and then you say I want to be different and switch the genre altogether. You could be Kanye and it could work or you could be all the other artists that like wild artist call out from Patty. Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you're Kanye and it
• 39:00 - 39:30 works until it doesn't doesn't work. But but uh yeah, actually Frank Ocean is a really interesting example there too of like so for people who don't know the spectrum that we're talking about, Colin and I talk about this spectrum of artist to distributor. Uh the distributor is like the studio studio movie executive who's like we got to make another Spider-Man cuz Spider-Man puts butts and seats like keep making another Spider-Man. The artist is like I'm make whatever I want. I don't care if people see it. Uh and and I think creators have
• 39:30 - 40:00 to live uh like probably 75% towards distributor. Yeah. Right. Like and I think I live somewhere in the middle which is challenging. Like the more you push over towards the artistic side, you might even have someone like an Emma Chamberlain who just like doesn't want to do it anymore. Yeah. You know, just like I I don't want to play this game anymore. Um so it's an interesting it's an interesting uh middle ground between like strategy and and creativity. You know what's something I find really
• 40:00 - 40:30 helpful with this is and it actually goes back to a point you brought up early in this conversation as well about like building almost like a bingeable format so they watch one and they can watch another right so I like to think of this framework that I call the 80% rule but it's not like the classic paro principle 80% rule which is like we should aim to interest 80% plus of our audience with every upload. That sounds kind of basic when you hear it said, but it's a great way of diagnosing problems with the channel because you look at a channel and you see them doing all these
• 40:30 - 41:00 different formats and you're like, you know, you're, let's say you're playing this video game, then you're doing this video game, then this video game, and they're they all fall within the category of video games. So you can say, I'm in the video game niche, but like the percentage of people on planet Earth that play all three of those games is probably very, very small, you know? And it's the same even like when we went into like a brand channel like Red Bull, like they have all these different sports. They have like skiing, snowboarding, basketball, Formula 1. And like there's very few people on earth and most of them work at Red Bull who actually enjoy and do all those things
• 41:00 - 41:30 at the same time. So I always say the 80% strategy rule says you should try to aim 80% of your audience. But the second part of it is 80% of the time. So you try to aim to interest 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. But you do that 80% of the time. So you get one in let's say every five videos that you can just try something different and go and break that rule. And I think that's where you kind of innovate because if you just there are channels that just focus down on like milking a certain format so much that then when
• 41:30 - 42:00 that format dries up they don't really have a a bridge to cross to go to another place. I will say from a strategy perspective I'm always more in favor of milking something than underming something. It's like someone's like what if I milk this too much? was like, "Well, what if you don't milk it too much and everyone else copies it and you've just wasted all these, you know, views." The view master is not going to tell you to stop. There's a term in American football, which is run it till they stop you, which literally means run the run the play until they can like run the ball uh until they stop it because like if it's
• 42:00 - 42:30 working, just keep doing it. Yeah. For us, I mean, you talk about experimenting. We always say that like you should have an engine as a creator and you should also have room for experimentation. For us, the show is the engine. Like, it's consistent for us. We can put it out on a regular basis. And then we've started to actually set goals of like, oh, you know what? We want to do one video a quarter that is a total experiment. And that way we can look back on the year with some structure to that uh to make sure we're doing both. You know, the engine that we know works and the experimenting to see like maybe
• 42:30 - 43:00 what the future of the channel could look like. Yeah. But can I ask you this? that experiment. Are you going to measure it against the success of your other videos or are you going to view it in isolation? That's a really good question. Um, this is the biggest thing I see as a problem with like even YouTube's ranking system which a lot a lot of people want to get rid of. I still like the ranking system personally, but you know, again, the view maximizer. I love anything that gives me data. I definitely don't want to get rid of it. Yeah, I think it's important. Yeah, I think it's important. And I think there's a quote from a a movie executive who said, "The day I
• 43:00 - 43:30 stopped caring about the box office numbers is the day I should be out of the business." Yeah. And I I I always feel that about the one of 10 ranking of like the day I stop caring about that is the day I should be out because that is that's the game. Like that's the game we're playing. And if you don't care about that game, then you're you're not in it. Yeah. You know, and you you might have fallen out of love with it. Um it is painful. It's a painful game, but it's it's uh you have to love it. I think for us it's a little bit difficult
• 43:30 - 44:00 because I generally always know the experiments will work. Sure. Because they are documentary long form behind the scenes uh with either Jimmy or Mark Robber or some big creator and it's visual like it's made to be watched right on TVs. It's made to be clicked on immediately whereas I know a three-hour podcast episode is probably not going to have that initial velocity, right? So I think for us it's it's a little bit diff difficult. Maybe that's a problem. Like maybe if you feel like all your experiments are you already know they're going to work. Maybe you should try
• 44:00 - 44:30 something that you're like a bit more uncomfortable with. I think the interesting thing I I always notice with creators and it's just like we're all like this. But someone's like this is an experiment. It's an experiment. It's something new. We don't know how it's going to do, you know? And then they upload the video and it's an 8 out of 10 and they're like disaster. Change thumbnail. Change. What's happening? This is my channel's declining. Everything's gone down the drain. It's a rig. YouTube is rigged. It's a rig. It's like guys like we we said this was going to be experiment. Like I have to deal with that. Part of my job is working with creators who are emotional people.
• 44:30 - 45:00 I'm an emotional person as well, but like it's like calming them down and being like we knew this was going to underperform, you know, which I know is not the most reassuring thing to say, but like a thing like a little hack that creators can do is before they upload a video, just get a Google sheet, get a notes app, and just give a prediction for where you think it's going to come out of 10. I call it like an expected outcome. Like where do we think this video is going to fall? You have to like use a bit of your go bit of maybe previous data of how videos have performed before, but just give yourself an expected outcome. So when you upload the video, if you have in your note or your sheet that it's going to be
• 45:00 - 45:30 probably around 8 out of 10 and it's an 8 out of 10, it's performing as expected. It's not underperforming. But it's like imagine a business launches a new product line which is the equivalent of a YouTube video experiment and compares it against their flagship product. They'd be like, "This is performing terribly. Why did we ever do this? This is disastrous." But if they compare it to like a new product or how that product performed when it first came out, they might be like actually there's something here. If it's a five out of 10, it's a big hit. Yeah. Right. We have to look on such long time windows, but we're not able to, right? Cuz like if that's an investment, a new
• 45:30 - 46:00 format is an investment in the future. So I think um we also have started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible, but like who reached out after we made that video? Who was in our inbox? who DM'd us, who when we're out at an event, what episodes are they talking about, right? Like last year we made an episode uh about hot ones and about like the uh them going up for sale and kind of some of our predictions and our thoughts on it. It's not our biggest
• 46:00 - 46:30 video ever, but it's it was the most talked about of the year. Uh and and it created the most conversation and that's a metric that we really value. So, of course, there's the classic metrics that go alongside those rules that we just talked about where it's like, okay, did people click? That's, you know, clickthrough rate. Did I have a high clickthrough rate? Did people watch till the end? AVD. Uh, did people watch another video? Right? Is there a returning viewer rate that we can connect to here? Those were obviously tracking. But then there's the anecdotal brand feedback that I think some creators forget about. like we're
• 46:30 - 47:00 building brands and that metric comes from how the industry perceives you or how your peers perceive you or how the world perceives you. And I think brand perception is something that is incredibly important when you're building a a media platform or like a personal brand or when you're now talking about blue chip, you know, major legacy brands like Red Bull, views might not be just the only thing that matter there. It's going to also be like the perception of the Red Bull brand, right?
• 47:00 - 47:30 And those those are sometimes can be at odds with each other. Yeah. Like maybe me as the view maximizer for that 28 million view video. I'm like look at this. Look at the view count. Look at the ranking. Look at the lead it has over the two out of 10. Look at the retention curve for 28 million views to still hold this well. That's amazing. But the executive at Red Bull might be like look at the top comment. It says, "Wow, only Red Bull would pull off something this great." You know, cuz that's all the all the comments are like that. So sometimes like I mean the screenshots of the comments in that video is a great case study of why brands should be doing YouTube because
• 47:30 - 48:00 it's just like people they don't just see that as Max forappen drone form car. They see as Red Bull like rebel did this for us. They brought this for us and that's so much more valuable than 28 million ad impressions. Like that is people living with your brand and living with your your content. So yeah I think what you've described is really important but the difficult thing is I think it's so hard for people to measure. Yeah. So, you're saying like you go to people like people that go to events, stuff like that. It's just like a feeling. Yeah. It's it's very hard to measure. There's no like corporate KPI
• 48:00 - 48:30 against it. It's just like a feeling. Yeah. You have to be careful to let that sway you too much. What the feedback is. You could also just have a dude who's like, I loved that. I mean, when we were first starting on YouTube, anyone who told us they loved that one video, we're like, let's make another one of those videos right now. Like, that dude at the coffee shop said he liked it. Um when when I used to work with the quite large Minecraft channel, we had a discord server with maybe like two or 300,000 like fans in this Discord server and we had a individual channel which was like contribute with video ideas. So imagine all these like people watching this Minecraft content like your audience
• 48:30 - 49:00 contribute with video ideas and it would be like 50 or 60 a day. So like those build up, you're getting hundreds of video ideas per week. I don't believe we ever made one from that list of people. Well, and that wasn't to dismiss our audience's feedback, but it was nearly always do this again or like, you know, it was never actually like the signal. Um, but one thing that's interesting on this, and I maybe if there's like a YouTube employee watching, I've said this to you before, but like I would love this feature. We know that on YouTube it's about clicks and it's about watches, but it's also about
• 49:00 - 49:30 satisfaction. It's also about how satisfied you're making the viewers. And still today, I just feel like it's very difficult to measure that. You can look at like to dislike ratio. You can look at comment sentiments, but imagine we had a situation where like YouTube gave us like a satisfaction score for a video. That might be a really interesting way of measuring. I know with Twitter, how I measure satisfaction on Twitter. It's maybe not perfect, but I look at the bookmarks. Yeah. Cuz I was like, how many people were like, I want to bookmark this. I've had tweets that have done 500,000 views that have 100 bookmarks. I have tweets that did
• 49:30 - 50:00 100,000 views that have 3,000 bookmarks, you know? So, I like to look at like how many people are bookmarking on Twitter. The YouTube equivalent of that is quite difficult. You could look at shares, you could look at likes. I just wish there was something in studio. Maybe it's impossible because they measure against so many variables, but I wish there was something that showed your video got a 78% satisfaction score or something. That would be amazing. So, if we talk if we talk about like the evolution of YouTube and the evolution of media, you just mentioned like that video from Red Bull, the comments are all about like
• 50:00 - 50:30 this gift that Red Bull gave to the audience, right? and essentially making a equivalent of a TV show. Like the Red Bull channel is like Red Bull TV, right? And I I don't think I anticipated that when we first started YouTube. I I kind of anticipated that maybe the individual could become the modern media platform. And that has played out, right? Like individuals are more trusted from a media perspective than major corporations, the NBC's of the world, the CNN's. They're not as trusted as the
• 50:30 - 51:00 individuals who put out content on YouTube, but brands stepping in and becoming their own media platforms is interesting. And it's still not fully all the way there. We're at like very early stages with Red Bull probably leading the pack. I mean, this conversation is so incredibly niche. Yeah. Yeah. When you think about it, like some of the tips that we're throwing around, some of the verbiage that we're throwing around, like you'd be hardressed to find people from a marketing department at a brand who truly like understand what we're talking
• 51:00 - 51:30 about and why they would need this. But I do truly believe that like 5 10 years from now, they will be extremely wellversed or they will have someone who is wellversed. Like is Nike going to make their own show on YouTube? Is is McDonald's going to have their own version of a show? um you know what what does the future of brands look like? And I'm curious if you could speak to right now how you think creators and brands differ on YouTube and and just your perspective because you you have a front row seat to how brands are treating
• 51:30 - 52:00 YouTube like if we play this out like what are they the next like big studios? I mean that's really interesting. I think creators and brands like the biggest difference is most creators, not all creators, but most creators when you really dig deep, they just want to grow their audience. Not always, but like you know, especially if they're coming to someone like me to work, it's usually because they want to grow their viewership because if we grow their viewership and like we have a great stat that we quote internally, but
• 52:00 - 52:30 first 12 months of working with a a channel, long form viewership growth is around 350 to 400% year-over-year. So the 12 months before we took over, the 12 months after, it's around 350 to 400%. And especially with big established channels, that's like a pretty big difference for creators. Great. That's what we want. You know, give us views, view maximizer, like grant us more views, right? The brands, it's like we want views. We want to grow views, but also we want to like be in front of the right viewers. We don't want to just get views for the sake of it. We also don't want to do anything that puts our brand at danger or in a
• 52:30 - 53:00 bad light, you know? Um, and those are things that like a traditional YouTube coded brain like mine, maybe I first go into a situation like Rebel and I'm like, "Oh, like let's uh race an F1 car versus like Neymar or let's like do all these like huge ambitious ideas." And some of it is like that would get views, but that's not what we care about, you know? We don't care about views alone. Like we care about the connection. They they want to grow the viewership, but they look at it as like how can a lot of people see our brand in connection with
• 53:00 - 53:30 aligned with good content and just feel like this brand brought the this situation to us. So I think the biggest difference is they just optimize for more things which actually makes it sometimes a bit more difficult. That's what I learned from first working with like Rebel was the first brand we work with. You know we work with the Philadelphia Eagles now the football uh team, the Super Bowl champions. Uh we work with like a big car manufacturer, one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world, which I can't name, and like some other brands here and there as well. And like all of them have their
• 53:30 - 54:00 own things. They're not just views. They want to like showcase this side of the business. They want to use it. I think some brands look at it as like almost a recruitment driver. Like come work with us cuz this is how cool it is to like, you know, make content here or like work at these companies. So every brand is different and that's like the biggest difference between creators is they're they're optimizing for so much more than just views. M do you ever have a brand that comes to you that you're working with and says, "Okay, we have a product launch video and I want to put it out on the channel." Brand, you can see me shutting my eyes with frustration. Brand YouTube channels
• 54:00 - 54:30 are corporate video dumping grounds. Like they just treat it as like this is, oh, I have this place where I can put videos there for it's almost treated like a Vimeo. Like it's like let's just host videos there. We can put on the website and stuff. So, you know, you can look at like any big company and even companies that you might think would be better at this, but like I was even looking at like a huge like uh cyber security company recently that's got like a $50 billion valuation or something. Go on to their channel and it's like all just like letter from the CEO or like launch video or like what
• 54:30 - 55:00 we're doing to connect with and it's just a yeah corporate video like don't be ground. You're trying basically to not be seen at that point like with titles like that, thumbnails like that. strategy the YouTube strate like yeah you keep doing that keep making corporate videos just don't even think about title thumb I'll just put like video one like which actually might perform better honestly just like video it's mysterious screen with video one would do better the way it is true though so many brands do that where you'll even go to their Instagram or
• 55:00 - 55:30 their Tik Tok and it's really well programmed it's well funded they've thought it out and then you go to their YouTube channel and it's like it's like tumble weeds it's just like weird remnants of of corporate videos you know it is in my opinion I think a lot this is just my opinion is because for some reason YouTube hasn't had as much commercialization in the B2B space like with like people providing YouTube level service to brands that like they will end up working with these big agencies like the big traditional like social media agencies marketing agencies and
• 55:30 - 56:00 they've got a pretty good dial on like Instagram, Facebook, you know, maybe not Tik Tok but they've got a bit of a dial on it so they can make content and it's it's relatively easy to make like decent Instagram content, decent Tik Tok content. YouTube, I think they still pay those same companies to do their YouTube. And I don't think those brands, agencies really have YouTube expertise in house. Some of them do, I'm sure, but the majority don't. You like firmly cannot consider YouTube in the same conversation as Instagram and Tik Tok. Like I I I can't underscore that
• 56:00 - 56:30 enough. I think like to do YouTube right is the first step honestly that I would do is have a like a YouTube strategist but like a like a writer who's like writing a format that makes sense for both your brand and the channel. Like I think about Shopify a lot. Shopify is like a very present brand in the YouTube ecosystem, but they still do a lot of like corporate uploads to Shopify or you know they do tutorials and stuff like that. But I was watching this um this video like there there's a lot of videos that are like starting a million- dollar
• 56:30 - 57:00 business in 24 hours, right? Like that that could be a format that Shopify produces on their channel, right? And like that could be a show that's just repeating. I I mean like you a ton of people would watch that. There's a creator I think called Starter Story. Have you ever seen that creator? Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. And he does like how this guy like started a business in his his living room. How this guy makes three million a year from faceless YouTube channels, right? These different things. I think you're so right. Shopify could be making everyone those videos. They have like the database of all these interesting people. They create like a existing they all they need is really
• 57:00 - 57:30 like a format, a title and a thumbnail and they could be printing views for their same thing with car companies. It's amazing. I know you're working with one, but it's amazing to me when I look at the YouTube channel for a major car company and it's corporate uploads and releases of certain cars and things, tutorials, because there is such an unbelievable ecosystem of car videos on YouTube that don't rely on like a big name being in the car. Like the car and the journey the car goes on is the star
• 57:30 - 58:00 of the title thumbnail. And it's so easy I feel like for car companies that something crazy. So, a car is like the second biggest purchase decision you make in your life, right? After a house, usually for most people, I'd say the average car price in America is 25 to 40K probably. Um, when people are buying a car, there's research that shows that the platform that they go to for for research of what to buy is YouTube. Yeah. More than anything else, more than ads, more than like magazines, more than newspapers. So, like people are going to
• 58:00 - 58:30 YouTube videos to make this purchase decision, which is like 30 grand. Yeah. For a YouTube video. Like we're not just selling fidget spinners, we're sell like we're selling cars for $30,000, which is why Doug Demorro has the business that he does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's crazy that like the interesting thing is earlier we talked about competitive advantages. Well, what's a competitive advantage for like these big brands is like when they're releasing a new product, they have access to it before anyone else. So why aren't they doing the first video revealing it? as like an influencer or a creator and I don't want to take these these views away from
• 58:30 - 59:00 creators too cuz I think it can benefit the whole space of brands do this but like the brand themselves should be first but if you also like so if we just take a step back on this concept of like brands becoming producers of content Apple is a great example right like when I first bought my you know my first ever Mac computer or iPod did I think that Apple was going to make something like Severance no right like Severance is one of the greatest TV shows and it's funded by a company that is not necessarily an entertainment company. They're an
• 59:00 - 59:30 entertainment company that's funded by a different product. Amazon Prime Video is another great example, right? We we're already seeing it where producers of content are rooted in a different type of business. And I think that's going to play out on YouTube pretty significantly where it's like, hey, we have the funds. Um, we could probably engage our audience better if we make a show. But I think the misguided understanding of YouTube is that it's a it's it's a like like your YouTube channel is a place to upload videos. But if you think about
• 59:30 - 60:00 your YouTube channel as a show, it feels really different. And that's where like that third rule that we talk about of do you want more stuff like this? It's like if something hits, think about like respect the audience to go their expectation is that this is a show. Like Amelia Demoldenberg's channel is Chicken Shop Date, right? The kind of like network model of a channel or like a channel being like a ton of different things I don't think really works as well as it used to. There was a time in YouTube where that did work where
• 60:00 - 60:30 BuzzFeed could upload 10 different shows and they'd all kind of hit, but I don't think that works anymore. Like when BuzzFeed was hitting with that show, Worth It, right? that was a format. It's like or the Try Guys, all those shows had to spin off to their own channels because they couldn't live in this environment anymore. And I think brands should look at that and go, "Wait, we can't upload like a ton of different things. We're actually just looking to make one show, a hit show." Mhm. Yeah. And a show that will compete with other shows in the genre. Yes. Not just like a
• 60:30 - 61:00 hit show for hit show's sake. A show that will be directly pegged and placed next to all of your competitors. Now, I think this is a really interesting time because I think that independent creators will likely like there's there's enough amazing creators who understand YouTube and the internet now, but I think of that subset there's a lot of them that don't want to do the advertising business. Meaning that the the independent advertising business of selling brand sponsorships
• 61:00 - 61:30 uh themselves, right? Managing their own. But if they got hired as like a show creator for a brand that they're interested in, things change, right? Like if you're a cooking creator and all of a sudden, you know, Lake Crus comes to you and is like, you know what, we love what you're doing. Can we just kind of like acquire you into this and you're our like make this cooking show, but make it through the through the context of Lake Crus. That's really interesting. And especially creators that are maybe like they've hit a point with their channel where they want the new challenge. Maybe they're a bit burnt out
• 61:30 - 62:00 and they're doing a lot themselves. a big brand is like, "Hey, like come develop this show internally with us and like we'll give you everything. We'll make sure like you, you know, don't have to do all the editing, all that kind of stuff." I could see that. And if you think about uh a brand like Target, so Target has a YouTube channel, right? And we talked about this a bit before recording. I want to look at it. Is it good? It's not good. No, it's not good. And Target's a massive brand. And you think about this context of Target. It's like, how does Target not have Supermarket Sweep as a show? Yeah. How did they not do the thumbnails right
• 62:00 - 62:30 there? The like, you know, whatever you can put in the cart, you know, you take is is such a clean format. It's very easy. Let alone they have so many creators now who have products in Target integrated into the episodes. Have you seen there's a channel called um The Deal Guy? No. Have you seen that channel? They just do I think it's Costco. He just does like a monthly roundup of like Costco and it's like what's a great deal in Costco this month and whatnot. That's so good. Like why doesn't why does a shopping brand do
• 62:30 - 63:00 that? I'm going to tell you guys the most recent upload to the Target YouTube channel. Great. It is titled The title's too long so it doesn't fit. So let me open the video. It's titled Target Accelerators Presents semicolon retail fundamentals dash introduction to mass retail. 634 views in 9 days. And the thumbnail looks like a Zoom call. Look at that. Whoa. Like that is just such This is why I said I didn't want to see it. That is crazy. This is such a massive missed opportunity for the
• 63:00 - 63:30 amount of access that Target has and how how common place a Target is to everyone in the US and so already accepted and comfortable. It's an amazing set for a show, dude. I mean, and that video, whatever this video is about, Target Accelerators presents retail fundamentals. I'll tell you what, like it doesn't need to live here. But you know what's interesting? Put it on Vimeo. It can live somewhere else cuz clearly who's watching that cuz no one's waiting for it. Are they just making videos for their own like senior employees to look at? There's a question of like brand
• 63:30 - 64:00 risk with these brands and and to me this is riskier than what we're talking about. Like what was Jimmy's format? It was like anything you can put in the cart I'll pay for, right? Something like that. If Target repeated that format with celebrities, with also with just regular people, it it's fascinating, right? You showed up and it's like, "Here's a Target cart. Anything you can fit in the cart in the next 30 seconds, you keep people choose interesting things. Like I would I would watch that
• 64:00 - 64:30 all the time. You get short form content out of that. Like I I I think if you think about your channel as a TV show, all of a sudden it can change the framework in in people's minds cuz you'd be like, "Yeah, we why would we upload that Zoom call to a TV show? That's crazy." That that what you just said there. I think that's going to resonate a lot with brands like that. Just like change it to would you do this if it was like a TV show? I would love to sit with with with brands in this context because I think brands have recognition, they have funding and they a lot of them have
• 64:30 - 65:00 like sets like we're talking about Target like they have a set for this show and they have production teams and the people in those production teams I would imagine a lot of them are pushing with what we're saying right now like they're probably like guys and like you said the brand risk like the you know the brand sort of like excuse might be like oh it's like risky we don't want to try like it could go wrong which I understand but Like we just started this podcast talking about how YouTube is Hollywood, it's streaming, it's podcast, it is the platform. And in three or four
• 65:00 - 65:30 years, I feel like consumers are going to like kind of look at brands and be like, "What are they doing on YouTube?" And if you look at Target and I can't even remember the title. It is so long, but like accelerator core fundamental whatever. Like if you look at that, it's embarrassing in my opinion to like represent like such a big impressive brand with like that content. But I wonder if it'll just naturally again play out with like brands just picking up creators. Yeah, it could happen. It could be really I mean if you search Target Hall, there are so many videos of like self-care hall at Target in the
• 65:30 - 66:00 last year that have 2.8 million views. Right. Upwards of 3 to four to 5 million views. How does it happen that there's not somebody who does a quick audit of like let's search or or like in your experience is that what we're seeing there? That's just a dep prioritization of YouTube and Target being like maybe hey there's like you're saying there's Target halls all over YouTube. We're already essentially present on YouTube. Why would we have to have our own show? I think it's I think it's just maybe not even understanding like the discoverability of YouTube. Like because
• 66:00 - 66:30 if they did that Target Hall show, they brought in like some celebrities to do it. Like I don't think it's outrageous to say they could be reaching 10 million viewers an episode. But the danger is that they might overproduce it. That's the question I want to ask both of you actually is how do you keep it authentic? Because sometimes if you even even if you bring a creator who's great onto a brand channel, you can tell there's so many bigger forces at play that it doesn't feel authentic. And that's also a huge risk I think if you're going to have a brand YouTube channel. Yeah, true. They need to have
• 66:30 - 67:00 that creator in the room. They need to have people like us in the room. They need to have people that can direct and have actual ownership of that because in my experience and I think I'm very lucky cuz I work with, you know, the like Red Bull team and their YouTube team is phenomenal. Yeah. So, even before I came in, like they were already doing pretty decent content and like we've skyrocketed it with them, but like a lot of that's down to them and how talented their individuals are and even higher level in the company like they're higher executives are really open to content. They understand how important content is. Um, then we work with you know like the Eagles and like my connects with the
• 67:00 - 67:30 Eagles like the person I directly report to at the Eagles like he just sees he watches YouTube. He sees how valuable YouTube is. But I think the problem is that like to your point like maybe you could bring in a creator to make this show format but like if all these maybe senior marketing people who are like really good at their traditional marketing roles obviously but if they start to like pull it around and say like no that doesn't look polished enough or we need to do this this this it ends up looking to uh corporate and a really a bit of a tangent but like an example of this is like you know the
• 67:30 - 68:00 Ronaldo channel. Yeah. when it launched like I was like oh awesome Ronaldo is doing a channel like most famous athlete in history like this is going to be huge and it's obviously done really well but I watched that content we broke all the rules we talked about I was like this is like a great way of putting it is like this is what people think that have never watched YouTube before think YouTube is you know it's like if you've never actually sat down and consumed content you would say oh like they want like these funny like weird edits and like laughing soundtracks and like it's
• 68:00 - 68:30 just like it's almost a parody of what YouTube content is. Yeah, it's like an SNL skit of YouTube. And then there's also like bizarre things like the iPhone videos of him playing tennis with his kids and it's like a 12second clip that like repeats and does like different trans star transition and all this stuff and it has like 60 million views. Yeah. It's like if he's doing that with that like imagine. But that he's he's like a that's a unicorn. Yeah. You know that's a unicorn. It's like I I think actually celebrity channels are at heavy risk of overproduction. heavy risk like the
• 68:30 - 69:00 excitement is actually the intimacy and I think you mentioned access is like you know Chris Hemsworth or something going to like a sick gym is like I've seen it a million times I don't it doesn't unless Chris Hemsworth says something exclusive or there's something uh exceptionally interesting it it doesn't I've seen it too many times at this point. Yeah. So to to explore the um the three questions we try and ask anyone who asks us YouTube advice or even honestly product advice, the first three
• 69:00 - 69:30 questions are who is this for? Why would they watch? And is it unique to you? And I think uh those are just three really simple questions to always ask. And the uh the the the second one I think gets overlooked quite a bit of like why would they watch this? Right? And I think the assumption is because it looks pretty. And I think with celebrity YouTube channel specifically, the assumption is they'll watch because I'm a celebrity. I'm a celebrity. Yeah. But it's not concepted
• 69:30 - 70:00 or titled and thumbnails correctly to actually reach people. So that's like interesting. I think a lot of celebrities do like almost like vlogs. They're just like 24 hours with me in Miami or something. It's like, okay, I guess your big core fan base would like this, but if you're really viewing content as a way to actually broaden your empire and improve your distribution, like I like the idea of like concept vlogs. So, not just a vlog, but like there's a concept behind what you're doing. So, it's like instead of just like um 24 hours me, it's like day
• 70:00 - 70:30 in the life of like an NFL player or something. It's like okay, that's a concept now. Which is something you basically did with the Eagles, right? Yeah, the Eagles did a video um a year and a bit ago that we helped them package that was seven days, an NFL player's life for seven days with Lane Johnson, who's one of their star players. And I feel like if you just titled that like maybe more specific to the player or more specific to the Eagles, it would have performed a lot less than it did. Is Lane Johnson's name in the title? I don't believe it is. I
• 70:30 - 71:00 don't think it's at least not to start. I think it's I think it's NFL player to give it that broader appeal. So, it's not just the Lane Johnson fan. probably hard for people to wrap their heads around, especially like if you're at the Eagles, you're like, "It's Lane Johnson." Yeah, he's the guy. Why are you calling him NFL player? Yeah, I do that a lot with the Eagles. I'm like, unless it's like Saquon or Jaylen, like NFL player. Yeah. You know, which maybe some people would look at as like these are huge names, but it's like to that broad audience. Same with like a Red Bull. Like there's a Max Fappen, um there's a Neymar who these are Red Bull
• 71:00 - 71:30 athletes. There's all these other athletes that are all really really important and like are incredible in their fields, but like do they have like audience recognition? Do people I sort of think of it as like zeitgeist names? Like people see Maxwell Stap and they're like, "Okay, I know that guy drives cars fast, so if I see a video of him driving against the drone, makes sense, right?" But a lot of people like overestimate how important think people are or like how um interested people are in people's names. I see this all the time even with like business channels. a channel like a podcast channel that did this would be like diary of a CEO. So instead of he
• 71:30 - 72:00 could pick this person who's like a huge like well-known figure but he'll call them like the money expert or like we've done this health expert as someone who has a similar type of show. It is weird to look at a guest and be like hm do we use their name or do we use a description of who they are? Yeah, you know, specifically with Jacob Collier, who's this Grammyinning musician, like multi times winning musician. We had him on the show and we titled it we interviewed the Mozart of Gen Z and his name's in the thumbnail, but that
• 72:00 - 72:30 descriptor I think is why that episode found as much scale as it did. It's a great episode, but I think it's one of our my favorite episodes, but had we titled it around just Jacob Collier, I'm not sure we would have gone outside of his audience. I mean, I think we're going to have a bit of a case with this episode, right? Like I think if you title this episode with my name leading, it could work well for your core audience. There's podcasts with my name leading that have maybe 100,000 views, maybe 200,000 views, but if you're going after a bigger view count, you're probably have to call me something else.
• 72:30 - 73:00 You're going to describe me something different. And I won't take any offense. Yeah. And but that's the interesting part. I think what you mentioned is like again, we're building a brand and there's sensitivities at play. And so I imagine also with the Eagles like it might be really sensitive to not use Lane Johnson's name because he might be like whoa what why put my name in the title like what are you talking about right and I think you understand it so we can actually have a very honest upfront conversation about like title and packaging for this video. I think the takeaway is like whether you're a brand or you're a creator and you're
• 73:00 - 73:30 trying to get better at this, like writing titles as a daily exercise is probably the most important thing you could do. Like it is just the whole thing. thinking of titles, writing them, taking a title that you see on YouTube and reshaping it a hundred times, you know, or just like and now there's so many great tools to help you do that, too. But just like getting a high volume of titles through your brain is so important because then you can pull from formats that you have, right? I just want to tell creators like write 30
• 73:30 - 74:00 titles for your video. They're like, Patty, that's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm like, is everyone just experiencing things different to me? Because 30 titles like we can write 30 titles and like we could do that together in like 10 minutes not even like it doesn't mean I think people always think that when we say like come up with a huge volume of titles or thumbnail concepts that they all have to be like great no like it's about like putting things together trying different words seeing what looks interesting studying other people like what are they doing trying to adapt that so for a lot of the clients we work with like we're sitting down and me and my team will
• 74:00 - 74:30 write yeah 30 40 titles for a video and like that doesn't take that long and and five of them are slight alterations of a previous one, right? It's just like one word difference or something. So, it's not it's not like you're coming up with 30 brand new ideas in a row. You're writing one and then altering that and then altering it and altering it and altering it. And like you said, actually, if 29 of them are awful, that's actually totally fine because you'll also start to learn what a bad idea looks like, right? And like that that's also important. Um, so exactly.
• 74:30 - 75:00 Well, one thing I'd say on brands as well is I've noticed about brands is like I think this is just from in my experience. I'd be curious like with your work with brands as well if you've noticed this, but quite often the brands are almost like how do we let creators know that like we're open to collaborate or we're open to do things. I've heard that before. It's like how do we like cuz I think sometimes creators just assume because some brands are so protective like you maybe go to like some sports franchises and they're like no we're not going to give you access to this. No, whatever. But like I know with the Eagles like if you're a large
• 75:00 - 75:30 creator and you have like a cool idea that involves like an NFL team like and they can give you some access or something they're really open to being pitched on that sort of stuff. And the same for Red Bull like if you're a creator that has like an already pretty decent audience and you have like a cool idea with something with Red Bull like they're pretty open. So the brands that are already doing YouTube as well well already almost like want to be like guys like tell us like ideas you want to make with us like we want to almost be part of this conversation and this ecospace. I think you need social proof first. So I think the Eagles have to do something with a creator. They have to go outbound
• 75:30 - 76:00 first. Yeah. Right. So they actually have to pitch a creator an idea. Do that and then use that as the the top of funnel cuz like as creators, as anyone in business, like social proof is so important. You got to be like, well, has anyone done it before? Right? What do you mean? I also think for brands though, it can be overwhelming because there are so many creators. like curation is what they need the most sometimes if they're going to work with a creator. Someone to be able to say, "Hey, this is actually a vetted uh creator. They've been in market for a while. They have an audience fit uh like
• 76:00 - 76:30 they've worked with these brands in the past. This will be a great fit for you." It's something that I I would say a lot of brands come to us with and that we do with a lot of brands is creator discovery. Just like, hey, just who who should I even consider? Right? I think that's a really important process of like what does that look and feel like? But back to what we were talking about when it comes to repeatable formats. Target has that supermarket sweep format, the ask is way clearer. The ask of like pitch us anything feels overwhelming, right? You're putting a
• 76:30 - 77:00 lot of onus on me as the creator to pitch you the eagle something. But if the Eagles were like, hey, we do this format where you come, you answer five questions. Will you come do it? And it creates aspiration, too. Like, oh, now I want to be on the Eagle show or I want to be on Target's show. Yeah. And I think like Kanye Nast actually if we take a step further back Kanye Nast has created some of the most easy to repeat formats on YouTube 10 things you can't live without right or architectural digest or uh the the 70 was it 73 question 72 or 73 73 73 sounds could be
• 77:00 - 77:30 71 weirder. No no I think it's Guys we look this up right now. No no let's let everyone put let's not look it up 73. Everyone saying 72. Yeah, but that that all uh you know stems from uh God, I'm not remembering his name. This one guy at Kai Nast who like really came up with a lot of these uh these awesome formats. Uh and I think when you have that format, yeah, like Colin said, it creates aspiration, right? Like I like 10 things I can't live without the GQ
• 77:30 - 78:00 thing. Like if we ended up on that, I'd be like I'd be like, "Oh my god, we kind of made it." Or like the wired autocomplete. The wired autocomplete, right? And so you like just look at what Kai Nas did and and think about that in the context of your brand. Can you make one of those formats? Because now you can invite creators to come collaborate. And I think that's way easier than going here like we're the Eagles. Do something with us. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then if you do have like a product launch or a campaign initiative, you can kind of just integrate it into your show that
• 78:00 - 78:30 already does well. Mhm. Right. It's so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. And you have full control over it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I think uh I think we will see this, but it's going to require a lot of handholding because it's terrifying. It's terrifying for a brand to like Yeah. make a show, right? But I do think it is like that. It is absolutely the future. I I want to talk about we talked a lot about packaging. I'm curious how much you spend on the first 30 seconds of videos with your
• 78:30 - 79:00 clients. Quite a lot. Yeah. Um, so the the interesting thing about, you know, we talked about earlier with the multiplier. I think the biggest levers to like multiply growth are that title, the thumbnail, the idea. Like it's rarely that a a better intro leads to 270 times more views. But with that said, even with a video, I kind of break it down to like what are the the areas that are worth heavy time allocation. Um, and like if you take a 10-minute video, if you say 10-minute videos, well, how long do you spend on each minute? I think conventionally you would say you're probably gonna spend like 10%
• 79:00 - 79:30 of time on each minute in a 10-minute video, but for our clients and for how we think about things, like the allocation for that first minute might actually be 20 or 30%. It just might be a bit more allocation to really just like spend time on getting that right and frontloading the video with the best value. One actually thing I really uh experienced and learned from our good friend Jimmy uh Mr. beast was like when I was uh working with Jimmy four or five years ago, um it was so interesting that
• 79:30 - 80:00 how like when myself and the lead editor would bring the edit to Jimmy, if the first 30 seconds was great, like he would like find all the rest of the content great as well. Not always, but he'd be much more happy with like how the video feels. But if something was wrong there, it was like, "No, this is like the whole thing's off. Everything everything's off. Everything's wrong." And at the time, I was like, I wonder why he thinks that. And then the more I've like learned and experienced myself, it's like, well, Jimmy's coded his brain to like be a viewer. And if you start your video on the wrong foot, the viewer already has this like you've almost like anchored the video in bad.
• 80:00 - 80:30 So the view the viewer is like, oh, this is already underwhelming or this is already like not interesting. So they they give you less leeway as you go longer in the video. So I really like to think about, you know, intros like I always say like my intro formula is like immediately try to deliver on the promise in in some sense. So, like if you make a promise in your title thumbnail, in your intro, can you deliver on that visually or verbally? Some way to just make like a nice frame I like to think about is like just make your viewer feel like they made the right decision. Don't make them feel like an idiot. Said the same thing.
• 80:30 - 81:00 Yeah. Yeah. Make them feel like they made the right decision. Um, and then it's like, you know, the necessary context, not over context. So, some creators put too much context in that intro. So, what's the necessary context? What are the intriguing like parts of the story or parts of the the video that you can kind of tease or highlight in that intro? And then how do we just kind of flow into the the first story line or the first action point without like this big gap? Like I like being able to look at an intro and say I don't really know where that intro starts and ends. It just flows into the content. Other people have different ways of doing intro. Yeah, that's interesting. We we
• 81:00 - 81:30 have a bit of a different uh framework for that. Basically how we think about it is like the first thing is confirm the click. So you you click in, you have to go, okay, that is the thumbnail that I clicked on. Uh the first seven seconds is establishing the video and kind of laying the context and the foundation for it. And by 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook. So we want to introduce something that you didn't expect from the thumbnail that is going to make you stay until the end and deliver an expectation of value. If you stay towards the end, you will get these
• 81:30 - 82:00 loops closed, right? I like that. So I I think that's something that that's uh yeah that we try and do and explore. Yeah. these different like formats for intros. Like a format I think is really successful as well and works really well is like multiple questions and then a promise of an answer. So it could be like you could make let's just think of an example like you're saying so a megalodon which is like a giant prehistoric shark. So you might say like the megalodon was like the fiercest predator in the oceans. It it was like
• 82:00 - 82:30 five times the size of great white shark. It killed everything it saw on site and yet somehow it went extinct. How how could this shark go extinct? How could this thing happen? And then you you sort of the viewer like, yeah, how could that happen? And then you're like, is there a mysterious reason behind the disappearance of the megalodon? And then suddenly you're like, okay, that's intriguing. And then it's like in this video, we're going to dive into that. Reminds me so much of watching your old videos, like the way that you talk, the way that you post questions. That's my former Which begs the question for me, why don't you ever just make a channel
• 82:30 - 83:00 that's faceless about something like that that has like this massive audience just to see like Well, the answer is I have. Okay. I've had a lot of Faceless channels over the years. It's kind of like people think of me as just my Patty Galloway channel, but I've had quite a few other successful channels over the years that have been faceless behind the scenes that I don't always reveal. Some of them being in kind of music genre that some people watching might have heard me talk about here before, but like the reason I love to work with creators is because
• 83:00 - 83:30 I am not that talented at being in front of camera. I just don't maybe you disagree but I don't think I'm that talented being in front of a camera. So I kind of realized already in my career hey like I'm good at these things but a Minecraft creator is making videos that could get 20 30 million views if they're right. So if I equip my knowledge and expertise with someone who has like the talent and the ability and maybe the competitive advantage I don't have competitive advantage as a Minecraft player like I'm not good at Minecraft but someone who's like really good at building the world's best Minecraft builder or the world's best Minecraft PVP player they might have this really
• 83:30 - 84:00 big competitive advantage. So, I look at it as like I rather equip my um skill set with like a bigger vehicle that can go further than my own vehicle. But I will say like I think a natural evolution as I build out my company and team is I think we're going to invest a bit more into original content and like even with the creators work with now I'm like thinking how can we like have more ownership in in the content so it's not just like consultants but it's partners growth partners with channels. Oh that's cool. Cool. I like that. Do you consult on short form too?
• 84:00 - 84:30 What's your what's your position on because there's kind of this world right now where YouTube is watched on TVs. There's content that's living in the like 22 30. Like if you look at Ryan Tran's channel right now, like he's living in the like 30 plus range a lot. Jimmy's living in the 30 plus range a lot, right? Like we're we're starting to see YouTube videos push 30 40 minutes or Michelle K putting out a an hour long piece of content and then the other side of YouTube is like super short form.
• 84:30 - 85:00 Yeah. Weirdly, Red Bull is actually living in the middle. Yeah, we we crush it with short form there. But I I would say like classically like I'm a long form guy. Like that's always been what I've made. That's like like I was a full-time YouTuber between the ages of like 14 to like 22 23 and kind of to present at different points. Like that was how I made my living and it was always through long form. So like that's what I feel like I'm best at. And I actually think other people who have come up over the last like three years might be better than me at doing short
• 85:00 - 85:30 form. Um, so what we do is like if brands want to do short form, like we'll advise, we actually do ideation for some short form. We give some brands like ideas cuz they're actually really fun. There's a lot of ideas that we brainstorm. We almost have like elimination criteria. And some of those ideas, like one, the elimination criteria is like, is this a short form idea? Cuz maybe it's a great idea, but does it live in like a a 10 minute, 20 minute video? Maybe not, but maybe it lives really well in like a 20 30 second short. So, we do a little bit of that with clients. We don't lead with that. Um, I think shorts is like amazing. I
• 85:30 - 86:00 know a lot of people are kind of anti-shorts or think it's bad, but I think it's really cool. And, you know, there is also a funny thing with like uh shorts inflation of like view counts and numbers though where like you know, even earlier in this episode like we quoted that like 10 billion views a year, like if I wanted to make it 100 billion views a year, I'd just try to like sign every massive short, right? Right. So, it is like a bit of a back though to the like brand and impact and how it's tougher to measure, but making sure you're not just
• 86:00 - 86:30 getting views for views sake. Yeah. Right. That there's some actual engagement here. People are remembering your brand. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I think there's also the question now of like all these other factors as we like continue to go into YouTube. Like there's the there's the creators who are most likely viewaxing, right? With looking at Patty and being like, "How do I Vmax?" And that as we get into this more nuanced world of brands and celebrities, like one person I think about and that we talked about before is Timothy Shalamé. Like Shalamé, how he shows up on YouTube is really interesting to me cuz uh he's like a
• 86:30 - 87:00 movie star. And a movie star, if you think about there there was a time early on when Colin and I were working in sports where we worked with Jeremy Lynn on his YouTube channel. Do you know who Jeremy Lynn is? He's he's a basketball player who was probably the first NBA player to feel like s like very human. M he's very relatable. He was uh but during his run as like Lin Sum at first because he had just like an unbelievable run in Madison Square Garden uh and was not like a starting player but he just
• 87:00 - 87:30 like performed to an unbelievable degree for a number of games but then after that launched a YouTube channel. Yeah. Uh with sketches and just very authentic raw raw YouTube. Yeah. Like truly the first athlete I've ever seen to just go I'm a YouTuber. And as we were working on that channel and being with him behind the scenes and like exploring what he was doing, I was like, "This is so interesting cuz with athletes specifically, there's this difference of humanizing an athlete and then also making an athlete essentially
• 87:30 - 88:00 untouchable, right? So like you go Michael Jordan in his heyday, that was like superhero, right? So you actually don't want a lot of Michael Jordan. You if you look back at it, like I wouldn't advise someone like Michael Jordan to have a YouTube channel. like don't be accessible, be inaccessible and be a superstar. Then you have Jeremy Lynn, like the the humanization. So all this comes back to the the premise of a movie star like Timothy Shalomé who actually I don't know if people know this has early origins on YouTube. Did Xbox controller modifications on YouTube. Uh and now his
• 88:00 - 88:30 modern-day press circuit was on YouTube and that is the modern day press circuit. But I'm curious just to think about like can someone like that come onto YouTube upload less but still have a premium brand should be a YouTube channel. So, I think that's interesting because like movie stars like their life is very like I've never been a movie star, but I would assume it's like work like all day on a
• 88:30 - 89:00 project for months and then like a bit of a break between projects, you know? So, I even heard like Timothy talk about that like how on like the set of um the Bob Dylan movie, he was just like every day, every hour just on it on on it. So, like in that mode having a camera following around or trying to shoot content, I could see that being challenging and that work. Totally. But in those times in between, especially when we consider like I think he's like he's a YouTube kid. Like I think he's the same age as me. Like very close in age to me. He probably grew up with YouTube. Like when YouTube was released, I was like 10 or nine. And he probably
• 89:00 - 89:30 grew up like you know the Xbox controller stuff like the Call of Duty trickshotting. So he probably has a deep passion for YouTube. I think what we would do if three were advising Timothy Shalom is say like okay like what's really unique and interesting about your life that you can show? Probably a lot. Like is it like a behind the scenes at the Oscars? Is it like a you know a recap that we talk about vlogs like failing a little bit sometimes? But a concept vlog about like getting access like night at the Oscars could be interesting. Also like something I see
• 89:30 - 90:00 and it goes back to that NFL player thing is with a lot of these big people. The interest is people wanting to know what it's like to be that person. So like the reason people like NFL player day in the lives is not always about the NFL player. It's about like what does like an NFL player live like? Especially people that see that aspirations like I'd love to be an NFL player. Like how do they live? Like what's this like? So I think about that for Timothy like what are like the day in the life of like on the set of Dune 3 or something. We we always used to ask athletes like what would you talk about if you weren't
• 90:00 - 90:30 being paid and if you couldn't talk about your sport? Like is there anything that you would want to talk about? You'd be passionate enough to talk about even if you didn't get paid for the rest of your life and start there. Like if it is your sport, fine. You can retire and you can still make videos about your sport forever. But is there something that you'd be interested in that's not? And I think with Timothy Shalamé, like I would want to ask him too like instead of covering your life and giving access all the time which will make you accessible
• 90:30 - 91:00 and you might burn out from that and you might burn out from that. Is there anything you are passionate about that you're a community member of that you would want to contribute to that community? That's a really good idea. That's a good idea if we if you took down a celebrity and and asked those things, but then like stop that one cuz I think that would be another issue is like like people are so multifaceted that he's like, "Oh, like this, this, and this." And then before you know it, it's like it would have to be one too much. And I think because the people on the other side would be like, "Yeah, whatever you want. Cool. Let's do all that." I think with Shalomé, if he was
• 91:00 - 91:30 if he wanted to do this, I would I would be very curious about his uh fashion choices. Like I would be very very curious to to watch how he thinks about that. Or if if that's not something that he thinks about and stylist does it, that's fine. But I think even what he wore to the Oscars was like unique and interesting and he is like expressing himself in it in a really interesting way. Or like as a Knicks fan, do you want to do Nick Knicks commentary? Oh, that'd be super interesting, right? Like how interesting would it be that like you kind of would have to watch not because you're a Timothy Shalom fan, but because you're a Knicks fan and that
• 91:30 - 92:00 would make him like such a multia he already is multiaceted but like I think it it makes you that multiaceted person. Yeah. But I also think you have to play the world of like accessibility, right? Of like does it make sense to be accessible which maybe doesn't work but you go to another movie star who maybe wants to be accessible and you go all right yeah maybe there is something here. And I I think it makes it it's interesting how it ties into like the seasons of a career because I think like movie stars like I guess they kind of maybe they have like some movie stars
• 92:00 - 92:30 are just timeless like a Dairo, Aluccino, you know, but like some movie stars like they have like maybe a peak where they're like making all the big films and then after that they want to like take it a bit slower. And with athletes there's like that cut off point as well. Like if you're an NFL player and you're 35, you know, you're like, "Okay, realistically after this, I can either go into coaching, punditry, or I guess just live off my savings, you know, and do whatever." But maybe another avenue of that is content creator. Like I already have a base. People already like me for a reason. Can
• 92:30 - 93:00 I just like, you know, I saw like Travis or not Travis, Jason Kelsey did a video where he's like talking about his like custom car or something. I saw a good video a channel be that's just like Jason Kelsey talking about his car. I think what what I what we tried to do with athletes at that time and what I try and do with everyone who who pitches me like a YouTube channel or format I always say think about this on a 52- week window. Can you make this every week for 52 weeks? Like cuz sometimes like we we also worked with Giannis u and you want
• 93:00 - 93:30 to say his last name at Takumbo. Oh nice. I had to I had to be able to nail it. So Jiannis at Takumbo. some videos with him with Jesser and every time I'm like trying to read out like cuz that one of the videos with him did incredible. So every time I draw read out the tile and like and our video with Giannis with Giannis did really well. No, I'm actually really impressed with him now and I think the way he shows up in Jester's videos are fantastic. I think that format by the way of guess the NBA secret NBA players unbelievable format. Um but like his when his rookie year he was not that into doing the
• 93:30 - 94:00 YouTube channel. He I think he wanted to do YouTube but he didn't have the time and space for it. So it was overproduced, too many too many people on set. I was looking around on the first day of shoot and I was like, if we want to do this every week for 52 weeks, this is going to be super expensive, unsustainable. It's like a massive production every week. And so you try and reduce it down. Again, you look at someone like Ryan Tran filming with his iPhone, you're like, how can we get this into like the simplest form? Is it like Jason Kelsey with this? Marquez's channel um
• 94:00 - 94:30 Autofocus is perfect YouTube to me. It is perfect YouTube. That is like from a production lift perspective. He's holding his iPhone. He films with his car. Sometimes he barely cuts. It's like two cuts. He just rattles it off and that's it and it uploads. And he has like a a thumbnail format for it. Like that to me is is perfect YouTube. Yeah, I love that channel. Have you seen the new intro format they've been doing where they like start in a bush or something and like creep out in the bush? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like it's
• 94:30 - 95:00 intimidating to an athlete to be like title, thumbnail, intro, scripting, blah blah blah, intriguing language, statement plus intrigue. Okay. Ask qu all this stuff to be like, hey, what's something you're passionate about? You know, can you film with an iPhone? Can you go like that? I think that makes a lot of sense. Okay, one more brand channel I want to pitch is like if a airline like a Delta or something or maybe like a more international one uh partnered with or had a creator like a Druinsky and essentially just traveled
• 95:00 - 95:30 to the destinations and did even did like simple formats of like living if if they're a more budget airline, you know, visiting Singapore on a dollar or like you know what what can what can a dollar get you in Singapore, right? And they like use the airline to fly there. Or if it's a more luxury airline, you do the like, you know, $25,000 hotel room in Dubai, right, for Emirates. Like, I think you can you can build out the world like that. But I think airlines have really great opportunity to create YouTube shows. I you just made me think that I feel like a great way for a brand
• 95:30 - 96:00 to realize if there's potential there is to just see like are creators already making content about this thing. So like if we think about staples of viral YouTube content like airline seats whether it's really budget ones or like like the Casey Neistat one from years ago like 60 million views like the Emirates one you think about car car brands like cars you know I think looking at what's working and just seeing like what if like yeah we can sponsor this we can like do whatever but like what if we own this I think is
• 96:00 - 96:30 really interesting. I could totally see with airlines totally. Yeah. And then they play it on the plane. Um, well, dude, we got to make this an annual thing. I think I think we got to keep keep updated because I like there's so much to talk about and so much to explore. And also to to just note like where the industry and where YouTube is. It'd be really fun to make this annual and go like where are we in 2026? Did more brands join? Is the is the quote unquote meta different or is the are there new metas that have emerged? Uh, it's a really fun conversation. Yeah, the YouTube round table. I love it. I love it. All right. Thanks, Patty. Thanks. You got it. Pleasure.