- I've been on YouTube for a long time now.
Started in 2006,
over 14 years now.
And I've been teaching people how to grow a channel for over
10 years now,
through Video Creators and other companies and businesses
I've worked for.
And here at Video Creators,
we've had a lot of success doing it.
I've done three strategies for Disney, Warner Brothers,
eBay, Budweiser, HBO, MTV, Twitch.
YouTube themselves has put me on their stages in New York to
talk and present to brands like Levi's and
McDonald's and Walmart.
And we have helped our clients successfully generate over
17 billion views.
Views that we can actually take credit for it.
It has been a crazy wild ride.
I love it, but I'm ready for a change.
I've really loved what I've been doing here at
Video Creators to create educational content,
to help careers like yourself,
find success and grow your YouTube channels.
To can reach more people change their lives,
but also grow your businesses and meet the goals that you
have for the content that you're creating.
I often feel this tension between making videos
that I want to create.
Videos I'm passionate about.
Topics I think you guys really need to hear.
And making content that gets views.
And the way you get views in any niche,
but especially here is like you got to make content that
reaches the broadest widest audience possible.
I've made over a thousand videos here on this channel on how
to get more views,
how to get more subscribers and how to make more money.
And most of that on the very introductory level,
the people who haven't pressed record yet,
the people are still trying to figure out what
cameras should I get?
People who are just in their first hundred,
maybe first thousand, something like that,
subscribers like they're just getting started.
And that stuff is great.
But my team and I are finding that our sweet spot for where
we help creators the most as with channels who have several
thousand subscribers, 10,000 subscribers,
they have their eye on that silver play button or that
gold play button.
It's not really with the creator
who's just getting started.
There's a lot of money to be made there.
And it's certainly brought us audience,
but it's not who we feel like we serve the best as,
as a company.
There's plenty of other people on this platform already
great friends of mine who are doing a fantastic job at that.
And I support them 100%.
The next level creator has a very different set of problems,
of issues, of roadblocks, of challenges, of questions.
It's very different from the type of content that we
normally make here on this channel.
It's stuff that I really enjoy talking about,
but the people who want to grow and be successful
is like big.
The amount of people who actually work hard enough to start
seeing some results, is significantly smaller.
And then the number of people who are actually going to
dedicate what they need to do to get it to that next level
is even smaller still.
And my experience is that these people,
aren't always going to YouTube to find solutions to those
types of problems.
That's why I feel this tension.
Here's the value I want to provide.
Here's what actually gets views.
Anyone else feel that way on our channel?
I think there's an untapped need there.
And it's where my team and I thrive and do our best work.
And so I'm really, I'm willing to make that move.
Even if it means like we're not going to reach as big
of an audience. Ultimately at the end of the day,
what we want is to serve the people that we feel like we
serve the best.
Now, I thought about this from the perspective of
people who are more on than beginner level stage,
who actually do want the next level type of tactics.
They want to know like, what are the secrets?
If you don't do the basics,
it's like any musician or athlete or actor.
As soon as I learned the advanced stuff,
that's where the growth really takes off.
I grew up as a wrestler.
All through Peewee league and middle school and
high school and then to college.
And then I coached a high school team
for a few years after that,
I couldn't take any wrestler who didn't understand
the basic moves.
I couldn't show them advanced stuff.
It wouldn't help them. It wouldn't do anything for them.
It'd actually make them mess up and actually hurt them.
So what I want to experiment here in this channel
are those of you guys,
who already have your 10,000 minimum subscribers, followers.
'Cause this is a little bit bigger
than just then just YouTube.
Like these principles that we want to talk about
apply almost to any platform because
when you get to that point,
you're no longer at this platform specific strategy
where like, Oh, here's an extra button
I didn't know to click on
in YouTube that gets me an extra 10 thousands subs.
That button doesn't exist.
So we really want create content that serves that 10K
creator really well.
This person has a vision for where they want to go for what
they want to accomplish, what they want their content to be,
who they're trying to serve.
Typically that person has figured out a thing or two about
how to grow their audience and attract people to
their content online.
Often the next question they're asking is,
well, how do I monetize this?
We love coming in and helping that person create a business
model around their channel.
It's a lot harder to get people
to figure out how to consume paid content from you.
If you haven't figured out how to get them to consume free
content from you yet.
Getting them more views and more subscribers,
That's part of growing the business,
but also start getting them down the right track of figuring
out how do I start growing a team and creating products and
services and integrating that into my brand and serving
people even better than I could have before and going from
just the revenue I'm earning through YouTube's
monetization systems,
which are great to now having my own monetization systems
with my own business that are completely eclipsing
the revenue that YouTube's products were making
for my channel.
So that's kind of what I'm thinking.
And I just wanted to communicate that with you guys to be
upfront and kind of share with you
where I am at with all this.
But I don't think it's smart to just
make a sharp left hand turn.
You're gonna leave everyone else in the dust.
Let me show you the process I'm going to follow me.
Maybe this will help some of you guys
who are maybe thinking about
pivoting on your own to.
Number one,
is this the right time for, to do it
and that could be based on the metrics
You see the analytics, your own interest level,
the people you're working with the direction your
business is going.
It could be a lot of different things.
Number two,
consider doing some research on what your audience's
interests might be.
Here at Video Creators
we do a big annual survey of you guys here through the
channel and our email lists and other platforms.
And we see that the creator who's at that 10K
mark and above has,
they asked significantly different questions
and problems and roadblocks
then the people who are under that 10 K and it was just like
completely two different audiences.
Right now I feel like we're kind of doing
a mediocre job at hitting
either one of them, just to be totally honest,
based on our analytics and our data,
because some videos are for that beginner person.
And this other video is like,
we really want to make this because we think it's important
and really valuable.
Number three,
I think it's really important for us to consider what are we
actually really interested and
passionate talking about.
I've worked with I don't even know how many creators
who have come to me in a session and been like, Tim,
I started my channel talking about this thing.
I don't really want to talk about that anymore.
Like, I'm kind of stuck now.
And I often say like, yeah,
go to this other direction, communicate it,
let people know what's going on.
Like I'm trying to do with you guys right now and be open
and forthright about it.
But I think it's important to consider like what our
interests are because otherwise those creators who'd never
pivot and they just stick to the thing that gets them views
and subscribers and money and that kind of stuff.
Eventually they burn out and they lose interest and their
channels plateau and decline because I think there's,
that comes across in their videos and then their content
people can pick up.
Like, I don't feel like the passion's there.
Number four.
I think it's important through this process that you keep
your audience updated with. What's your thinking,
Ask questions,
run some surveys that we already talked about,
but also be like guys,
here's what I'm thinking, what do you think?
And that's part of what I want to do here with this content.
With this video.
Is those of you guys who,
if you're still watching at this point,
you're obviously a committed member of this community.
And regardless of what your subscriber level is like,
I really want to hear from you in the comments below or the
tweets that you're going to send me or the emails that
you're going to send me or my team@videocreators.com.
I really do value your input in hearing from you guys as I
consider making this move.
'Cause I know a lot of the things you guys were thinking
right now are things I've never thought of before.
Like I am actually not in your shoes.
I am on this side and I have data you don't have access to,
but I know that you have thoughts and perspective that I've
never considered before.
Number five,
this is actually what step we're on right now.
And that is to let your audience know that
it's an experiment.
This isn't like made in stone concrete thing.
This is like me just sharing some of my heart and feeling
with you guys.
We're testing new things,
trying new content out,
and we're going to be paying attention to the feedback,
paying attention to the analytics and the metrics,
paying attention to what happens on the business side and
also paying attention to what's happening inside of us.
Are we doing work that we just really love?
That's really impacting the people who are
taking advantage of it?
And so it's just a matter of time until some people who are
currently here,
end up abandoning what we're doing and other people start
discovering it and be like, (gasping)
this is exactly what I've been eating my whole life.
Like, have you been right?
And you're going to see a lot more content coming up that's
more on the business side of how do you monetize
your audience after you've kind of figured out already
how to get them to consume free content.
What are the next steps after that?
The biggest thing we saw in our data was like, time.
Like those of you guys who are at the a hundred thousand
subscriber range, you're like,
if I can just push to that point,
this will replace my income.
This will be my full time gig,
but I don't have the time to make that awkward transition
because I still got to keep the full time job
to pay the bills.
And it's like that awkward spot that's where
we do our best work.
Sorry the sun's coming up,
it's getting really bright, but we're going to keep going.
'Cause it's just like a community video for us.
Number six, you needed to determine ahead of time
what metrics you're going to evaluate
that'll help you decide,
are we moving in the right direction or not?
Problem is if you just kind of do an experiment
without determining what metrics you're going to
evaluate before forehand, when the experiment's over,
you're kind of left thinking, like,
I don't know if that actually helped me or not.
Things that we're going to be looking at here is we
expect to see a higher unsubscribe rate, views go down,
retention go up
and average view durations go up.
We should see a higher percentage of conversions from that
content into email lists, into consultations,
into some of the more premium things that we offer.
If we are indeed actually hitting that audience.
If we're not,
then we're probably just abandoning a whole bunch of people
and not really serving the people we want to serve as well
as we thought we were.
That's why I said experiment.
Maybe you've seen,
we've already started experimenting with a little bit
talking about the seven different skills
you really need to turn your platform
that you're building into a sustainable online,
successful business and things like that.
But we're going to keep going over in another month or two
and experiment with more of that content.
Personally, I'm really excited.
How do we grow audiences and turn it
into successful businesses.
This past year, before COVID kicked in,
I taught a high school class on business entrepreneurship.
I wrote all the material, all the curriculum myself,
it's like a whole year's worth of content on how do you
start a business from scratch all the way through to
employees and scaling and growth. It was a lot of fun.
I learned a lot.
And one of the things that kinda surprised me was how much I
really enjoy teaching and talking
about business, about entrepreneurship,
mostly because I believe that it is one of the best ways to
serve as many people as possible
and change as many of the lives.
That's what business does at its core is
it helps people solve their problems.
It's like a win, win, win, win situation.
I can help you make more money.
I can help you really win your dreams and your goals.
You can support my family and the people who are working on
my team who are also trying to serve you the best we can.
I love it.
And then what I really love about it is that when your
business grows,
not only is that same thing now happening inside
your business,
you are now helping other people in bigger ways than you
ever could have.
If it was just like online courses or it's live
in person events,
or if it is like creating services that you're going to like
start consulting with people and changes people's lives and
really, really big ways,
especially when you are doing something that you
believe is meaningful.
Not just like some paper pushing type of stuff,
and you get to give meaningful work to other people
who otherwise pushing paper in a cubicle,
but now they can come work for you,
and do something that they find fulfillment and in
a much deeper level than just taking home a paycheck.
I feel like I'm just preaching right now, sorry.
I was just kinda surprised over teaching now, the course
over the year, how much I really enjoyed that.
I feel like that's something in me
I want to try experimenting with
that I think could scale and help you guys
in much bigger ways.
I've done it for myself multiple times
with different online businesses.
Video Creators is probably the only one you're familiar with
because the only one I really talk about publicly here.
My online businesses have generated millions of dollars and
we've helped other people significantly grow their online
businesses to millions of dollars.
And I'm not at the point where I don't think
I'm an expert yet.
I think I've got a lot of work to do before
where I can get to the point where I can predictably
reproduce results for other people.
From 10,000 to a hundred thousand,
a hundred thousand to a million, million to
5 million subscribers on YouTube.
We've been able to reproduce that
very consistently for people.
The business side, though, we're gonna start
talking about it.
We're gonna start experimenting.
And we'd love to have you guys come along for the ride
as we start to dive into some of this.
I am fully aware that this entire experiment completely flop
could completely backfire.
People who are already successful, and getting momentum.
It's possible that those types of people don't really look
for content like this on YouTube, or maybe they do,
but they don't look for it from me.
I don't know.
That's why it's an experiment.
I'm not committing to this forever.
And I'm really looking forward to hearing your feedback and
your input on this.
Comment below.
I definitely will be reading every single one of them.
And if you are thinking about like, how do I grow?
I actually made a guide for you right over here.
If you haven't downloaded it already,
it's completely free.
It'll cost you your email address,
but you can click it,
download it and look forward to reading your comments and
then hearing your response to that guide.
See in the comments below.