What skills do you need to be a YouTuber? Having some skills will be helpful if you
want to be successful. I mean, if you don't have any skills, I guess you could still be
a YouTuber and just not succeed. I produce over a dozen different channels and I've developed a
good list of what some of the skills are that you'll need to succeed on YouTube.
So, this isn't like those other videos that talk about the gear and the actual technical
steps of what you'll need to do to start a YouTube channel. But in this video, I'm
talking about the personal skills that you need as a YouTuber to be able to succeed. So, we're
going to go through six different areas that if you don't have these attributes or skillsets yet,
you will need to develop them. Let's dig in. So, there are lots of different types of YouTubers.
And so, if we're talking about what skills you need to become a YouTuber, let's narrow down
what type of YouTuber I'm talking about. So, I'm talking about a lead generation YouTuber. Okay,
somebody who uses YouTube to generate leads for their business. So, we're not talking about promo
videos or commercials or advertisers on YouTube. We're talking about people who make how-to
content. They have expertise, right? They're answering questions or making how-to videos and at
the end of the video they say, "Hey, if you found value here, I've got a free gift for you" such
as a book or something. "Go ahead and click the link below", right? So, the videos pull in people
and they give them value and then at the end, they click the link and they go to their website
and they generate leads for their businesses. Okay, the next skill we're going to talk about to
become a YouTuber is pretty important in my world. The type of YouTube channels that I create are for
experts, right? So, you need to have expertise. You have it maybe you don't understand it yet.
But you have expertise, you've had experiences. And so, all around the world, the people that
are going to google, going to YouTube, they're asking questions, you know the answers to many of
these questions. So, think about it, do you have people that have come to you for advice? Or have
you written a book? Or have you created a course? In those cases, obviously, you have expertise and
you already know it. But for those of you who are wanting to create a YouTube channel like I teach,
you want to focus that channel around your expertise. You don't need to be a jack or a
jill of all trades. When you have a weakness or you don't know the answer to the question,
it's actually better to say, "Actually, I've never tried that before. I just don't know." Like,
if people ask me about Twitter, I'm like, "I don't know. I'm a YouTube expert. I'm an outsourcing or
hiring people in the Philippines expert. I have never figured out how to make twitter work or
how to use it as a tool for my business. I just don't know." And let's talk about outsourcing
for a minute, okay? I've been outsourcing for 11 years but it was only a few years ago that
I really saw myself as an expert. You know, I have a mentor, John Jonas. He's the one that taught me
how to hire and find and train people in the Philippines. But then I noticed a lot of people
are asking me questions about how I hired them and how I trained them and what I did. And I'm like,
"I do have a lot of good answers." And so, I started making episodes on this channel
teaching people what I do. Let's talk about the ideal way to talk on video. Because I could be
in a presentation voice. *Alright, the best way to talk on video is to pretend....* I don't know.
Some people are really good at speaking on stage. They're speaking to a huge audience. You know,
they're performing. But when you're on YouTube, you're talking to one person at the time. I'm just
looking right into your eyes right now. So, I'm just talking to you. It's so much more important
to be relatable, to be able to connect with one person and just have a conversation. So, much
more important to do that than to perform, than to sound sing-songy or to sound like an official
news reporter. Although you're not meeting them in person as they watch this YouTube video,
and although I haven't met you, we're looking into each other's eyes and we are building a
relationship because I'm giving you information here. I'm helping you out. I'm teaching you.
I'm giving you value. And you have expertise. When you film these videos, you're going to be giving
value to your audience and you're going to be building that relationship with them.
The more value that you give, the more grateful they'll be for that, the more trust they'll have
for you is they feel like they've gotten to know you better. So, you don't want to be flashy,
you don't want to be over the top. I'm thinking of a friend right now who started out his
videos being very relatable. Just having a conversation, "Hey, coming into my home and
I'll answer these questions. I'll share with you some of the knowledge that I have". To recently,
he's been starting his videos standing on top of a sports car with the top down. You know,
putting his foot up on the windshield saying, "Hey guys, if you want to learn..." His videos
aren't performing near as good as they used to. There's a certain type of people that like that
but it's so unapproachable. And my recommendation for you is you want to be approachable.
If somebody were to ask you a question, right? They call you up on the phone and they say, "Hey,
can you help me answer this? I'm trying to figure out how to do this." And you're like, "Oh, yeah.
I've got some great advice for you." And you're just having a conversation talking to one person.
That's how you should sound on the phone. That's what I'm trying to do in this video is just
talk as if you and I were having a phone conversation. Okay, the next skill or attribute
that you really need to have to succeed as a YouTuber is discipline, okay? So, my strategy
is certainly not for the faint of heart. I mean, I teach... Maybe I'm giving away the secrets here.
One of the ingredients that I teach is you've got to post 5 episodes per week, okay? That
sounds insane although we only film once every 4 weeks. Okay? So, you got to learn my strategy.
And there's a reason why you've got to do that much. There's a specific result that
you'll get that is so worth it. But you've got to discipline yourself. You've got to have discipline
to follow all the steps and do it in the right way and do it consistently. And when you start
feeling burnout or you start wondering like "Is this really working", you've got to stick with
it. You've got to be disciplined. Another skill that will really help you succeed as a YouTuber
is leverage, okay? Learn how to leverage. Learn how to leverage time or other people's time.
And I'm going to go back and talk about hiring people in the Philippines again because I
hire editors. We'll use that as an example. Filming 20 episodes in a day for my channel
or for the dozens of other YouTube channels that I produce, that's a lot of editing work that I
would have to do if I had to do it all myself. But I've learned how to leverage the skills of other
people and I can hire them to do the editing for me. Now, if you've never hired somebody before,
the thought of it can be daunting. It might seem scary or overwhelming. I know that I felt that
way. Here's one thing to help: To hire somebody full time in the Philippines, sometimes they're
only looking for a few hundred dollars per month full time. And they've got a college education.
The standard of living, the cost of living in the Philippines is drastically different. Now,
in my experience, you can find a really skilled, really loyal really talented video editor for $450
per month. So, think about that for a minute. Somebody full time, what time could you free up
for yourself if you had somebody working for you 8 hours a day. Now, to explain what I mean a little
bit more about leverage, think about the franchise model that Ray Kroc created with McDonald's, okay?
I'm not a fan of McDonald's and their food. But their business model is pretty awesome.
What McDonald's is is more than a fancy or gourmet restaurant. It's a system, okay? And everything is
systematized every little procedure, every way that you flip the burgers, how much catch-up you
add. A system has been created. And so, they can hire high school students to run it. So,
if you systematize your business, you're better able to leverage other people and still deliver
quality or the results that you want in your business. The next skill that would be really
helpful for you to have to be successful on YouTube is creativity. You could probably imagine
why this is good. You want things to be fun you want things to be interesting.
You want to mix things up and keep people engaged. You want your backgrounds to look good, you want
your lighting to be good. You want to be creative on your outfits. I mean, we are called creators
so we better be good at creating things. That's what creativity is. I've seen many examples and
I found it in my own experience that if you just do things one way and keep doing that one thing,
you will get predictable results but you won't have the exponential unexpected results. So,
I love systems. I love efficiency and when I find something that works,
I'm not saying that you don't leverage that and that you don't stick with a system that works.
But always try and be creative how can I make this better? What can I do to make this more fun?
What can I do differently? But really, I imagine that if you don't have a creative mind,
you're probably not interested in creating YouTube videos or becoming a creator. If you were to see
2 different videos, 2 different YouTube videos that were really similar. Let's say two people
filmed the same thing and you're at a gauge which one is more creative. Do you feel like you've got
a good eye for creativity? Like, "Oh, I like what you did there. That's really creative." That's
the type of stuff that will help your YouTube channel perform better and better. Okay, one
last skill that I want to talk to you about that will help you really succeed, I mean, let's say
you succeed at this level to take it even higher than that, you've got to know how to interpret
analytics. I go into the YouTube analytics daily. And I've been using it for many many years and I'm
still learning new things that I can do. There is so much data there. YouTube really provides
us nearly everything that we need to know how to succeed and how to get better and better results.
The cool thing is they simplify it the stuff that they show you on the dashboard or the first thing
that they show you on the analytics screen. Just start there and try to understand, "Okay,
what is on the screen here and what does it mean? How can I use this to make my next video perform
even better?" I know for myself the better and better I get at interpreting analytics,
the better and better i can help my channel succeed. One more skill that I want to talk about
and being a successful YouTuber is you need an audience that engages YouTube tracks engagement.
So, likes, comments, subscribes. Anything that you can do to encourage engagement or involvement
from your viewers is going to help. In fact, some of you haven't subscribed.
I really encourage that. It really helps my channel. I commit to continuing to make great
content for you. So, go and hit that subscribe button now. I'm an expert at getting youtube
videos ranked on the top of YouTube on day one. The video that I want you to watch now, I share
my secret of how to find low competition keywords for youtube. Go ahead and watch that one next.
you