Composition Analysis

Emotion Expression

Color Strategy

Text Strategy

The 'Click & Watch' Mindset

Retention Engineering

Packaging & Authenticity

The Perfect Intro Formula

In the next minute alone, there's going to be over 2500 videos uploaded to YouTube. That's over 2 million videos a day. So, if you're someone who wants to start or grow a YouTube channel, how do you stand out? We've asked that question to hundreds of professional YouTubers over the past 10 years. And we pulled out 38 minutes of the best advice from the Colin Spear Show.

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 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 ideiation.

I recently had a channel in our accelerator program, Ian Lur Astro. He's an astrophotography channel and there was nothing terribly wrong with how he was making the videos. Like the videos were pretty good, but they were doing 2 or 3,000 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. 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 the total potential market the video can hit. 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 just a video just with astrophotography at different time levels and it was built on a format that had worked for other people like 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? 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 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 seeing how different things take different amounts of time or investment. Mhm. 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. But those little differences can just have such outsiz returns which I it breaks my brain sometimes.

We worked with this creator uh his name was Tim Gabe and he had a video which was six UI hacks 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 ended up getting 40 times more views per day. 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. Sometimes it is about just like realizing where you need to invest more time and focus and just improving those little details.

If you want to be a successful creator, you have to embrace the fact that your audience is not only the final audience, but they're also your focus group. Traditional media, you've got the focus group and then you've got the intended audience. That distinction goes away. They are your fans are your focus group and if you don't listen to them, you're you're not going to be a successful creator long term. There's two aspects to your your content. There's the product and there's the performance. And a lot of really, you know, creatively purist people can never accept that the performance of the content. And so therefore, like the marketing, the title and the thumbnail are important and potentially just as important or more important than the content itself. Now, we've always said the content is king and we want to have a great product and we're never going to let that suffer. But getting people to watch that is such an important part of it. If you don't embrace the the quality of the product and then the performance itself of that product, you it just can't happen. It's you're going to lose too much steam.

We have like the most uptight process for launching a new YouTube channel that I've ever heard of. And we had basically, for lack of a better term, like an actual playbook. And it comes from just an overweening amount of preparation ahead of time. We research every vertical that we go into. We watch everything in that vertical. We understand how the hosts talk to the audiences. We understand the colors they use, how long they episodes are, how often they post, what their opening lines are, whether they have a theme song or not, what their titles include, do their titles include punctuation, do their thumbnails involve a white stroke on the outside of everyone's head, whatever it is, we know everything about the vertical before we even decide to go into it. And then from there, we decide, okay, can we play in this space? Where um where aren't people saying the things that we would like to say? Are there enough collaborators in this space that we think we could be part of a community in this ecosystem? And then from there it's like okay what would we actually say? And we come up with literally a year's worth of content titles and log lines if you don't have if you don't have and I mean maybe more than that. It was about 100 titles and log lines. Yeah.

And then from there you know going back to the playbook idea it's once we've kind of developed all this list once we've done all this research and once we're kind of got the go-ahad. We have to launch with five videos, like day one, five videos. It's not launch on an empty channel. It's not here's the only one. It's five videos that within those five videos give you the thesis of the channel. Here are the range of things we're going to talk about. Here's how they're going to look. Here's how they're going to sound. Here's an episode about hygiene. Here's an episode about clothing and personal style. Here's an episode about, you know, a real life experiment where we do something wacky like try to kill you with a high heel, you know. And here's something did really well. They did great. People were really excited to kill things with with high heels. Yeah.

And when we're when we're going in for an actual channel launch, we also focus all of the attention on it, right? Um Style Theory is a great example. We got to a million subscribers in 62 hours, right? Yeah. Because we intentionally sent people to a channel with everything we had from every other channel. We pointed straight at it and said, 'Go watch this right now. ' And we when they landed there, they landed on five 20 minute episodes. If you make it through all those episodes, it's a 100 minutes of watch time on a brand new channel. We actually got we got got flagged or something. YouTube thought we were like spamming. They like tried to demonetize the channel. There were like problems early on because YouTube's like internal systems like couldn't handle all of the watch minutes that were suddenly flooding to this new channel. That was that's super interesting.

I think we have like some principles of a good YouTube intro. From what we've seen, upon click, the first seven seconds of a video is about confirming the click. It's just like, is this matching my expectations or is it clickbait? You mean? Yeah. Yeah. So, basically our first rule or even is it just slightly off? Got it. Right. Like, did they stretch just even a little bit further than what I was expecting? Cool. So, or is Mark Robber not there kind of that'd be a good example. Exactly. Or is Mark Robber on Zoom, right? I'm going to send him a recipe and see that immediately that's a different pizza that's exploding like a volcano in the thumbnail, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so then in the first 7 seconds basically I see, okay, Mark's actually there with you. That's super important.

The next like 10 seconds we talk about making it personal. So like why are you the one to make him a master chef? So you're about to take him to an intense super culinary boot camp. you're in the chef's coat. If I don't know who you are, I immediately assume, all right, this guy's a legit chef. And then basically by, you know, we typically say by 30 seconds, but you do this at 15 seconds, you have to introduce a new hook. Yep. And so what you do here is you say, and we're going to take him through three tests that he has to pass. I think important too that the audience now knows what they're waiting for. Yeah.

There's uh we were just in New York and we were talking to uh Max Joseph. He was talking about how every great story needs an A to Z. So the audience needs to be informed. What is A and what is Z? Yeah. And Z meaning like when is the video over? And so you introduce these three challenges and you go once he does these three, that's when the video is over. If he hasn't done the three, the video is not over. Yep. And we're seeing this a lot. Like Robber does it uh Jimmy does this a lot in his videos where we call it like the video game map. Yeah. where they kind of zoom out and they're like, 'But that's one of six challenges that we're doing in this video, right? ' And they zoom out and you go, 'Oh, cool. I want to get there.

' Yeah. The the A Toz map. Those graphics like people are using those kind of flashy intense I I I don't take it quite that far where I'm doing the really crazy VFX and that kind of thing. But I I mean I think it's really cool.

Everything is a list. Um this is some like you know in I think this is advice from like non-fiction writing. Fundamentally, every non-fiction book is a listical. It's just like sometimes packaged up in a non-listical kind of way. Atomic habits is a listical. The four habits of behavior change. The four Work Week is a listical. Everything is a listical at the end of the day. Interesting. Um and so this is something that we we say to our students in the YouTuber Academy. When in doubt, just think about list. If you were talking to yourself from two years ago, what is three or five or seven? Well, we like we like odd numbers. Three or five or seven things you would have wanted to know and then just talk about those things and that's it. Everything is a listical at the end of the day.

It helps you organize your thoughts stories and then for the audience you have to get to the end. Yeah.

You know, one of one of the philosophies that we teach on our YouTuber academy, which is like my whole philosophy of YouTube, is find a way to systemize it as much as possible. It's completely unsustainable if you're having to reinvent the wheel every single time. Yeah. Which is why I don't envy entertainment YouTubers because they are having to reinvent the wheel every single time. But as a educational YouTuber, all you need is a title, a thumbnail, and a list. And title, thumbnail, list with like a reasonable hook or promise. I I I don't even like the word hook because it sounds too like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Just like a promise. Um what is the video actually about? You know, the title is 17 purchases that save me time. In this video, we're going to talk about 17 purchases that save me time.

Number one is a padlock. But I I like that framework of like, you know, all you need is is a idea, thumbnail, or you say title, thumbnail, and a list. Yeah, that's so good. That's so good.

I think number one on the laws of writing good videos. I would love to hear the laws of writing good videos. Uh, law number one, control the scope. Make sure the point isn't too broad. Mhm. Keep it narrow. Keep it focused. Love that. Number two, don't waste the viewers time. It's almost the same one again. What is the point? Make your point as concisely as possible. Um, number three, load up the learning outcomes. And this one's really important to me because I feel like our role is to make you feel at the end like you got more than just um you know like marshmallows and and cheese whiz you know like you got something of substance after you consume our content.

Plan for flow. Some ideas will have a natural order. Um you know it could be physical outside to inside. It could be temporal beginning to end. It could be conceptual. Start with the background info. current events, future speculation, you know. Um, but make sure that you have a clear idea. Five, make it personal. Provide context. It's not always obvious how good a screen is, how impressive someone's subscriber count is, right? Remember who you're talking to. You know, not every video is for everyone. So, you guys are going to see this a lot, right? Sometimes you guys are going to do a video that's really targeting brand new creators who've never done anything.

And sometimes you guys are going deep into the weeds for people who if they don't have like a million subscribers, it's probably not applicable. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Right.

Plan for the payoff. Really important to me. Tell and show us how to feel, man. And this is part of this is part of the context one too. Provide context when you're presenting to the camera. It captures a fraction of your energy. It captures a fraction of your emotion. So you have to overdo it. If you don't overdo it, you end up just flat and boring. Number 10, have fun. The audience is detector. It's like finely tuned. Yeah, finely tuned. If they can tell that you don't give a why should they give a.

What process or structure would you recommend for someone who maybe has never even written scripts before? You're basically just thinking about how do I rehook them every time we move from one segment to the next? where how do I make it completely clear at all times what this particular segment is going to be about. So is essentially you know the transition between each segment is that essentially introducing a new problem. So like a rhythm of problem and solution. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. That's a really good way of thinking about it.

So if we take it another way and think of uh an entertainment thing, someone like Max Foch is trying to break into an aquarium or something and we will have it set up that the first segment is but first I needed to get myself a giant fish costume or something and so we know right okay the first problem he's encountering is he needs to buy this giant costume and then say over the course of the segment he buys the costume he makes his way to the aquarium and then he discovers something like but then I realized the the costume was too big for me to fit in the door and then you realize okay so the next problem we're dealing with is how does he actually gain access to the building? Um, and so like I think the way you put it, Colin is perfect. It's like you you you're just continuously raising a problem, solving it, and then immediately raising another problem and solving it. Really, the most key thing when we're talking about this problem solution way of approaching it is that you can't leave the audience in between setting up uh the next solution for too long. So you resolve a problem, you resolve that segment. The audience needs to know what's coming next. They can't be left in that kind of middle ground limbo where they don't know what the next segment is going to be about because the brain will start to wander. That homepage is just one click away. They need to be kept focused on, okay, they've resolved one problem. Uh, and now they've set up the next one. What's coming next?

I think what comes to mind for me is that it's not necessarily about like pace of editing, it's pace of new problems. Like I think people can often confuse pace of editing with pace of new problem. that like it doesn't actually matter if you're moving quickly, but if you don't have a new problem, then you'll lose people.

So, that was actually George Blackman, who's a professional YouTube script writer, and that conversation was from our course called the YouTube Growth Playbook. The YouTube growth playbook is a step-by-step system for growing a YouTube channel. It's based off of our 15 years of experience on the platform, as well as our hundreds of interviews with professional creators. It's all centered around the three rules of YouTube. Now, to help you take what you're learning in this video and put it into practice, we put together a free worksheet that you can download just by clicking the link in our description and putting in your email. All right.

Now, we're going to talk about packaging and thumbnails with Cleo Abram. I I noticed in watching your videos over the last year and a half that your thumbnails have changed a lot, and I feel like they've improved a lot like in the quality of the graphic design, in the composition, in the clickability of just like telling a story between the title and the thumbnail. What was that process like for you? What did you learn about YouTube titles and thumbnails that has taken you to where you are today?

I sort of feel like a machine learning algorithm in this way where I'm just like pattern matching and like it's hard to describe exactly what the steps were. Um, but maybe it was you guys, maybe it was someone else. The three step the three things rule that you want to have three things in quite a bit. Yeah, that's been really helpful thinking about the thumbnail as part of the story. like noticing what I like. I have a big deck. Um it was a lot of titles and thumbnails that I admire and then I just looked through and I tried to articulate why I admired them so much. And a lot of it had to do with like um Tom Scott's relationship between his titles and his thumbnails and the way that he's like in action in many of them and there's an arrow that's pointing to something specific and I love that. Sometimes it's tricky because I'm trying to maybe include my own face probably because it's sort of a signal that this is a show that people have uh clicked on before. Um but also include something that is not necessarily like me in action in the field. Sometimes I'm in the field but sometimes I'm not. Um and then also I think there's a certain amount of creative confidence that it takes to make something I mean first something on YouTube in general but also to put out a title and a thumbnail that doesn't try to be everything. and sort of assumes that you're going to create that curiosity gap and that people will click it and that it will work. I think very early on I was trying to like put the whole video in the title and thumbnail and now I'm a little bit more relaxed about it and that's actually helped and so it's an exercise in choosing those three things and like making that actually work.

Something really interesting about your thumbnails and we were speaking with you yesterday about this is that realism is really important to you. Yeah. And that is not necessarily the YouTube meta. Like that's not really what's fully happening across YouTube. Realism. Mhm. How much do you think about that, care about that? Where the the brand of being a creator goes? Yeah, that's I think it's super important. I think for a while it's something that I thought was just like assigned to me. Like the idea of oh, I'm if I want to be a creator, I have to be like Mr. Beast and ZHC. Like I have to have a logo as my channel name and my channel like profile picture. And I actually did that. that I like changed my profile picture to like an eyeball.

What does that even mean? What is what does an eyeball have to do with me? Um, and I did it because I was like I was thinking it's one of those correlation is not causation type of situations where I was like looking at the top and and seeing what they do, not realizing that I'm just a human being. I'm like not planning to build an empire. I don't want to build an empire or anything. I I just want to connect with people and make videos I love. And so it is important to be intentional. Like I think about even how fonts communicate to people. Like I I changed my font from being somewhat more corporate to something that's like so normal that's just on everyone's computer and it just feels more like me. And I think that like if creators can find those little things like what song just feels like me, what font feels like me, what video feels like me and it comes down to realism too like with the thumbnails. And I found that realistic thumbnails just feel like me. It feels like Yeah. If my face is not like then I feel more connected to the to the thumbnail if I'm just making a very subtle face that's like cuz it's realistic and I'm like oh that's that's legit.

Also the concepts that you do are rooted in realism like they don't feel sensational. The titles might be somewhat sensational like I spent you know 24 hours in in the world's quietest room or loudest room like there's a superlative there right that that fits into what performs on YouTube. Then when you watch it, a lot of it is rooted in the relationship you have with the guy who runs the the room, right? Or like the people you meet. You've done such a good job of creating characters out of those people. One of my absolute favorites is the underwater hotel. Yes. It's so fun. The guy you meet. Yeah. What's his name? Daniel. Sweet Daniel. Yeah. Sweet Daniel.

Hello. Hello. Have dinner. No way.

Now, another thing is in your sensory deprivation video Mhm. You also showed this moment of really vulnerable raw emotion. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the decision of keeping that in or or not keeping that in? Yeah, that was wild. So, I I got in the sensory deprivation tank and like at first it was lights and and floating and sound and then u hour two I turned off the light so it was just floating and sound. Hour three I actually put earplugs in so it was just floating like those earplugs were crazy. some nice earplugs. And I had a moment in there where I actually felt like I had these like recessed memories about my grandmother and just like the last time I felt super super still. And it was just taking a nap with her one summer when in like 2008 when I was just super young. And it was wild cuz I literally started crying. Like I started balling. And it's so funny because Zach helps to edit the videos and normally I'll like help talk I'll like kind of talk to him through the video and be like, 'Dude, that was funny. Like that was cool. we should definitely like put that in the video.

' And with that, I felt so uncomfortable because I knew Zach was going to watch it and I was like I just didn't say anything for like 5 minutes. I was like, 'Anyways. ' Um, and so we actually talked about it afterwards and he was like, 'Dude, we should put this in the video. ' Those are the moments we crave even like off camera in a human level. We crave those like real emotions, real conversations. And so that was a huge like turning point to me to realize like I'm a human being. Like I I have a YouTube channel, but those are the moments that matter. And so many great comments came from that just like empathizing with me and people sharing their experiences the last time they felt still or like how their grandparents impacted their lives. So cool twist.

When it comes to retention, obviously there's things you can do in the first 30 seconds, the first minute. Are there checklist items you have to get people to 10 minutes to 15 to 20? Yeah, I mean it's very hard with a single storyline if you're doing like a double digit minute video to just have that one thing grip their entire attention throughout the whole video and pay off at the end. Um, so typically if you're doing a longer video, you should introduce like a side story and like re you should have some plan halfway through like to re-engage them so they don't just get bored. You know what I mean? Like if I just said like if I hand you a camera and I had a camera, it's like okay if he tags me he gets 100 grand and then I just run and that's it. It's just me running through the woods and him just running through the woods after me. You can't make a 15-minute video out of it. You know what I mean? But if I do that and then like 3 minutes in, I pull a lever and a bear comes out and starts chasing him and he has to get away from the bear. I don't know. Obviously, we wouldn't do this, but kill the bear and then he starts chasing me and then 6 minutes in I jump across a lake and as he goes to jump through I press a button that shoots him to the moon. Whatever. You know what I mean? Like now all of a sudden it's interesting and you're watching, right?

And that's it, right? One is just a single story and it's boring. The other has side stories that like re-engage people.

What is the recipe to a like successful Try Guys video? If you look at it and you're like, I know right now what's going to work or what what performs. We don't make as many classic Tribe videos. We, you know, food has been our best successor, but there's a through line in all of them, which is uh we are going to do something that is related to a commonly held passion or identity. So whether that's ballet, oh I grew up doing ballet or my little sister did or I've always wondered what that's like or making a pie and then we have an expert who is going to be the source of authority and now we get to be the crash test dummies. Then there's a lot with how we craft that as well which is um you know contrast editing. So expert says, 'Now, no matter what, don't do this. ' Cut to Keith doing this. Right? That's And also, we like to have uh an arc. Most of our best videos will follow a three-act structure. Um we have a first act break. At the second act break, we do have the Dark Knight of the Soul where the character is at their lowest so that we can then see them triumphantly rise and use something they learned earlier and succeed. Um, and I think a lot of our best videos also have to have some stakes, whether that's a performance or got it, feeding what we've done to that's also a sense of reveal.

Um, but we've learned a ton on how to structure our videos based on audience retention. And that's learning that once they see the big reveal at the end, the video is over. So now we've gone through this incredibly transformative emotional experience underneath and during the final performance, the final reveal, whatever. Because once we're done revealing, you got 30 seconds, video's over.

When I pitch to a brand, I always talk about like the psychology of consumption. This is now this is some cringe stuff. All marketing. Um I don't know if you guys know like this the principles of influence. Let's hear them. How we consume things and are influenced by things. Every bit of feeling and emotion we evoke can be categorized into one of these six things. Scarcity. When you say someone is mysterious and has aura, that's what psychologically you're trying to describe. Like you upload once every eight months and it's like a big deal. That's a Michael Reeves. That's like, you know, someone who's uploading highquality low quantity content. That's people like that, right? Consistency. The opposite of that in a sense.

It's like uploading every day. Like it's almost like when you come home from school or work, it's like, 'Oh, I'm gonna watch this creator. Um, I've come to like almost make it a part of my routine. ' Um, and you could also combine those two, right? Like you can upload every year, but you do so consistently. So, you can combine those two principles of influence. Reciprocity. That was a big part of Kid with Crocs where it's like this is a new account and I am Kid with Crocs. I would always respond to fans and like the first thousand people that followed me, I followed them back and like just had full conversations with them. And so now these people are like rooting for me and in a way like I am not like like manipulatively thankful like I'm just thankful like you're here for the start and like I would talk to them and like those thousand people who I like gave reciprocity to were in it from the first second to the last second and like now they're like fans of what I do and like that's such a like lovely feeling both ways, right? Consensus or social liking. This is super important. It's like you are more likely to watch a video that already has a million likes because it is that social proof like oh it already people already like it, right? It's the same reason why it's really hard to go from an account with, you know, zero followers, zero likes to a thousand likes, but it's pretty easy to go from like a million likes to a million and a half likes, right? Because yeah, I mean that's kind of an obvious one.

Similarity, it's what we talked about before. It's like you want something that feels similar but is ultimately different and creative. That's where like creativity comes in, right? You need to be able to understand how people consume content and then like innovate on that, right? So, it's like, you know, there's best practices like having your face in the the first frame and like having text on the screen, but also like if you follow every single thing in the rule book, people won't care. It's already been done, right? Um, and that's where like some of my weird creative urges come out where it's like I have a character and I animate and I make music for the videos, right? And then authority, it's like if you it's like if you're a doctor, like Dr. Mike, right? Like people care about that. Or if you're already a big creator, you already have that like pos, right? Is that like a smart word, chat? Is that smart? I'm seeing some nods in the back. Let's go.

Right. Um, sorry to yap. So those that is how I think about how culture and consumption works. And this has all been deep rooted in my brain. And I learned this in AP psych back in like sophomore year of high school as I started like making content. And this set of guidelines has like not failed me.

You one time told me about hiding the vegetables. Mhm. I'm curious if you can explain that concept 100%. Um, hiding the vegetables is like one of the core principles we have for how we tell stories, which is, you know, you give someone a plate of broccoli, they're not going to want to eat it. The wholesome and the intentional and and kind of important premise in the story is a little bit hidden. you know, when we used to 2016, 2017, we do these videos that were very positive and the thumbnail inspirational. Yeah. And like, you know, helping a mom for, you know, Mother's Day and like nobody clicked on it, you know, but now instead of thinking about it that way, you know, we might come up with an experience that is more outward- facing and feels more flashy and interesting and helping the mom would be a part of that experience, but it's not the title and thumbnail. It's the the the intentional and um you know caring part of the storytelling that is super important to us. If we feel like the video doesn't have any vegetables, it feels like it lacks that deeper level of connection that I think our audience has gone used to having when they watch our videos. And so, um, I think it's a really smart thing to think about as a creator, you know, and because I think there is a level of needing to be mindful of of your ideas that you distribute to the world for people to be interested in watching them. And if you're only distributing vegetables, I think you can you can build an audience, but they're going to by default be a lot smaller. And once we figured that out, like our growth and everything changed. Positivity by itself will not sell. Goodness on its own will not sell.

So, how do you actually take these things that are the core of what we do and make it more consumable uh to uh to an audience of someone that might not care?

Yeah. Is there a rule that you think it's okay to break? I feel like some of the stuff we're talking about of like ending with failure that in the beginning I would not have had the confidence to attempt that. But I think from beginning till now, you take risks along the way and and then you're taking notes as okay, that was like a risk takingaking collecting data. Oh, never take that risk again. Got it. Okay, took another risk. Oh, that one. There was more of a response there. I remember the first song I ever did was for the jetpack video. [Music] cuts. We're making a champion. Why? [Music] Huge risk in my head. I'm like, I can't make music for a YouTube video.

That breaks the rules. Like, it it completely broke the rules in my head. Uh, and then the comments were very affirming of like, that was weird and fun and we like the song. But I think it's only come from like slowly building the confidence to take more risks and feel like I'm comfortable looking dumb. If you're not comfortable failing publicly Yeah. It is. It is so important in this weird job they have. Yeah. Yeah.

There's this clip where the creators of South Park are speaking to a class and they said that a really bad story will go like this. It'll go this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. And you think like that's that's an extremely boring way to intake information. Yeah. And what you want is a story that goes, this happened, but then that happened, therefore this happened. So you want some causation between the beats in your story. And I think that's something that could exist completely in a tech video where you're saying, 'Here's this new phone that was just launched. ' History has shown us that it's been really incredible. It's been an incredible line of products, but this one is different. Therefore, you should think differently, right? And if you can keep that going throughout, you'll hook people and keep them longer.

Unfortunately, when you invent something or you create something, it will inevitably be copied. As much as you know we can be honored that people like admire something that we did, it can mess with your head and it can and it can uninspire you. It also though pushes you to do something new. Like I remember first watching your stuff and being like whoa this is this is different, you know, like this is insane. Yeah. Like you zoom in, zoom out, your head was like exploding at times. Like were you aware that you were doing something unique? cuz the amount of videos on YouTube that are like learn how to edit like Emma Chamberlain or like how many people then did that exact style.

Um were you aware that you were creating a style? Like what was what was that era for you? Actually I don't think I've ever told the story. Maybe I have. Um in high school my friends and I used to do these like dance routines. Like we'd make dance routines. I was a cheerleader. Some of my friends were cheerleaders, some of them were dancers, whatever. But we'd make these like funny dance routines. We'd film them on the webcam of my laptop during lunch and then during my next class, which was history, I would edit them on iMovie. I mean, this was just simply for my friends and I's enjoy enjoyment, right? The reason why I zoomed in was so that you could see it better. It wasn't like for emphasis or for this or for that. Then I started to become obsessed. I was like, 'This is so fun.

' And like editing these dance routines is what makes it funny. Like zooming into one of my friends faces, doing this, doing that. And I don't even remember how that happened. It was such an automatic thing. From there, like I didn't do that on YouTube at first. My dad gave me the advice. He was like, 'You should treat your YouTube channel how you treated those videos that you used to make with your friends. ' And I was like, 'Oh. ' Something clicked. And then I was like, I'm just going to take that editing style over. And the editing for me was very intuitive. It was like, this needs to be emphasized. This doesn't this like there's no formula. It was just like, what's going to make this funny to me?

Short form content is driving more algorithmic discovery. I would argue that like um at the beginning before you found media market fit like the most the best strategy is no strategy. It's like speed of iteration. Try a lot of things. See what you love. Find your voice. Find yourself.

Step two. Again, if I'm thinking about how to do it as a creator in 2025, you have to move beyond shorts. Um, now you don't have to, but there are dangers if you don't. Um, it becomes harder to build a directto fan community and a directto fan business. There are creators who have figured this out, but because fans are less willing and likely to pay for short form content. And because when you're at the ultimate top layer of the internet, you are more subject to the whims of the platform's direction of traffic. There's a it's it's a more volatile environment to build a long-term sustainable business versus finding a format like you guys have found where you've got this repeatable long- form thing that your audience enjoys every week and you have these, you know, you have like these long conversations and people are listening to them and building loyalty to you and building loyalty to the format. I think there's a key step if I'm doing it as a creator is like find my audience on shorts and then figure out after that how do I build a long form uh uh media format and and a tighter community around that format. I would say that's step two.

Whenever people ask about starting out, they're like, 'Oh, I really like tech. I want to make videos about tech. Any tips for starting? ' Make sure you really do like tech and you can make videos about tech every day for the next year. and maybe you'll kind of get sick of it. Like that's that's real. That's a real valid feeling to have. And so I often equate becoming a a professional video creator in tech or in any product related thing uh kind of like becoming a professional athlete. Everyone can have fun making videos and everyone can have fun let's say playing basketball for example, going to the park with your friends, playing basketball, whatever. But turning it into a job requires not just a high level of skill, but like an extra level of time, dedication, and like actual resources being poured into it to get to the very peak level to be able to turn it into your job. Yeah. And that's the same thing with with making videos.

I love what you just said because at the beginning of my own personal channel, and I think a lot of creators experience this, you just want to throw as much stuff at the wall, see what sticks, and you're really going for views. Or at least I was. you you do what you can for views. But then I sort of got to this point where half the content on my channel was stuff that when people recognized me on the street, I was like, you know, I don't know if I I want to be known for the other stuff I'm doing, not not this category A. I want to be known for category B, which for me was these deep intensive challenges I was doing. So my goal was to reduce as much of category A and pump it all into B. And now I I only want to do content I love. And I think that it's a it's a tough investment to make because you might see a you know it's hard to avoid the lowhanging fruit, you know, when you see an opportunity for, oh, I can make that video or that short and it'll do super super well and to say no to that and invest in something you care about more. But I've actually found that the return on that investment is even better because brands respect you more. um over time subscribers respect you more because they really have they know that they're coming for high quality every single time because you know a YouTube channel is a resume but it's a very interesting resume because when a brand or anyone you know potential partner even a potential subscriber comes to look at it you can't control what they're going to click on and that one thing they click on could make or break why they decide to work with you or subscribe to you and I want to make for every single piece of content, even if it doesn't have a ton of views, is one that shows the quality of the channel.

All right, if you like the advice from this video, then I think you'll like this video where Colin and I workshop a video with a creator, taking her from averaging around a,000 views a video to this specific video doing well over a 100,000 views.