Evan Carmichael: Easy means you're only doing things. You know how to do like
you just photocopying the same day over and over and over again, you want to
grow, you want to learn. And that has to come with some dose of fear. Otherwise
it's a lifetime of regret. So why YouTube one, your content list forever.
It's the hardest game to win at. It's harder to win at YouTube than Instagram,
than any other platform. Then Tik TOK then than anything, but your content
lives forever. So the video that you make today in a year in five years in 10
years is still getting new views, signups, traction, awareness, attention,
meanwhile, something from a week ago and Instagram is dead. Nobody's going back a
week, right? So I like the long game. I love that. That if we take a clip of
this and put it to YouTube, that that will live for the next five years and
help spread the message. I want my work to last, right? So none of the other
platforms do that, not even, even, uh, even a podcast, doesn't really do that.
Sure. It lives there, but nobody's actually going, your hardcore fans will
go back and listen to it. But nobody's actually going back and listen to the
old archive on podcast where YouTube it's getting recommended to you.
Five-year-old videos was still get recommended to you. If you have
evergreen content that can serve people. So YouTube is the only place where the
content lives forever. Uh, second is YouTube pays you.
They have thousands of salespeople who are selling advertisements against your
content, and they take a cut and they pay you to make content. Instagram is
not paying you to make content. Twitter is not paying you to make content.
YouTube is actually giving. Now you have to have a thousand subscribers and 4,000
watch hours. So there's some bare minimums to get in. But after that,
YouTube is actually giving you a paycheck every week to pay you, to make
content. And so I want your social media to not be a, an expense, but a profit
center that with YouTube, you can fund your entire marketing department for
your company, if you do it. Right? Right. So your content is forever, which
means you're getting paid forever, as well. As long as people are watching
videos, you're still getting paid. Um, 2.5 is that long form is great.
Like if you're good at what you do, a lot of people who go from a lot of
people now are trying to go from Instagram to YouTube and they're
struggling because they're, they don't have the depth of content that making a
15 minute video. They're going to say the same thing 25 times, because they
can't talk. And more than a 42nd soundbite, which is great for an
Instagram video, but they don't actually have the layers of experience that a lot
of you could probably in your industry talk for a day and never repeat yourself
because you know what you're doing. So that actually plays to a strength. If
you're a deep knowledge expert in your industry, if you don't know your
industry very well, then you're going to be exposed, right? But I'm assuming when
you know your industry very well, you are the expert of what you do.
Um, and then the third quick thing is there's a thing called the audience
curve, audience retention curve. I said that quickly, but I'm obsessed with it.
The audience retention curve, what it does is show you where people are
falling off in your video. And so you can see it at the beginning where you're
at a hundred percent and then 30 seconds, then you're down to 80% in a
minute and you're down to 60%. And you just see people falling off your video,
which is great knowledge for you to make better videos, right? Like, Hey, w we
lost a lot of people here. Let's not do that again. Or we gained a lot of
attention here. What happened? Right? Anytime my wife joins in on the video,
my retention goes up. Um, but usually it'd be this downwards curve. We'll
slowly the video sometimes it's flat, which means nobody left.
So if you have two minutes and it's flat, nobody left during that time,
which means whatever you did, there was really good. And every now and then
you'll have this spike up. Well, why, why is it going up? How are people
spending more time now in the middle of the video? It's because they're
rewinding it to watch that part again. So whatever happened in there is really,
really, really good. Now is unimportant. Well, one, it helps you make better
content. So you know what questions to ask and what's really good. But two, if
you're feeling stressed out of what happened to be on every platform, what I
recommend is you make long form on YouTube, look at your audience,
retention curve, and then any spike that you see, you cut that content for every
other social platform. It's like, Hey, cut that line and turn it into an
Instagram post.
Not even the video, just the one-liner that's your Instagram posts for the day.
If you have a 32nd clip of it, going up, cut that. And that's your Instagram
content for the day. So you're only on YouTube. And then you use the data. I
love data-driven decisions, right? It's not like, I think it's better. You think
this is better though. Like our audience says, this is the best part of the
interview. You pull that and that now you, now you can be everywhere on every
platform just by making one 15 minute video, two to three times a week. This
is what it would look like. So you'll see it, you know, it's that a hundred
percent, and then it slowly drops off. But then you have like, what happened
and what happened here and what, what happened in this part? These are all the
clips that then you take for whatever, you know, that's 30 seconds.
That's my Instagram post for the day. This like here, that's my quote of the
day. That's my one-liner. I said something great here. Now we're going to
cut that and take it to Instagram or my tweet for the day. And it doesn't even
have to be you doing this, right? Like this is not that complicated to look at
the curve. This is what people want pull the best part. Social media team go
YouTube different game. Now w people are going for education, uh, in long form.
People say people have short attention span some of the best videos. We're
getting the most traction on our three-hour plus videos. Wow. If you're
good and you know what you're doing, and you're the expert at what you're doing,
people are going for education. Um, so I just was super early. I'm not that
smart. I didn't know YouTube was going to be this big thing.
I just love visual content and wanted to make videos for the 19 year old Evan who
was struggling in his first business, recognizing that there are millions of
people who are 19 year old, Evan struggling with their first business.
And that's who I wanted to make content to help and eventually caught up. Um,
now I've ended up helping pretty much everybody in the industry inside thought
leadership. Um, again, if you're doing prank videos or slime videos or all
sorts of other stuff, I, I'm not the guy, but inside thought leadership. I
probably had a hand in helping pretty much everybody. Who's got a decent sized
channel names that, you know, and recognize. So, you know, a couple weeks
ago I had Matthew McConaughey and the channel, um, last weekend of YouTube,
Deepak Chopra for the channel. Uh, every time I have some, a new person who comes
on that I don't have a ton of context relationship with.
I still get nervous. I'm afraid that I'm going to ask the wrong question that,
that I'm going to disappoint. My biggest fear is disappointing. Somebody not even
me, looking like a fool is that I'm going to show up and waste their time
that I'm going to ask Deepak some question he thinks is stupid, but I
don't know because I'm not as spiritual guru as he is. And so I don't want to
ask the dumb question then gets laughed out of the room. Hey, sorry for the
interruption. I just wanted to let you know, you can get a free copy of my
book, the millionaire shortcut, which shows you the fastest way to become a
millionaire in the new economy. There's a special link just for this episode in
the description. Thanks for tuning in. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the
episode. So there's two things that helped me through it.
Um, the first is that I do difficult things that it's a, it's a constant
reminder to myself that if, if I say scary, difficult or hard, I have to do
it just because I said it, that the fact that I'm scared of it is not a good
enough reason anymore. Cause everything you want is on the other side of scary.
My family has been trained. My team's been trained to hear me say scary,
difficult to hard so that you said it like, Oh crap. Now I have to go do it
just because, um, and that might be a little crazy weird duck for people, but
it's helped me. The one that's more accessible and easy for people to grasp
is that, uh, we still want to serve just because you're an introvert doesn't mean
you don't want to serve. It doesn't mean you don't want to help that you've got,
you've got, you've got a message.
You've got knowledge that if you are going to sit down with the person you
were 10 years ago, you could help that person. You could give that person
guidance, love. Even just a hug would be valuable, right? Depending on what we've
all been through. Some trauma, pain, struggle, suffering. It's why you're
here entrepreneurs. The greatest thing is that the serve and give back and help
and obviously make money in the process of doing that. But we're here to serve
and help. And so if you're silent, you're not helping people. Yeah. So you
want to serve and give back. And so that every time I shifted from I'm not here
for me and making myself look good in front of Deepak or whoever it's, he's
got a message. And hasn't been asked in entrepreneurial kind of interview
before. So I'm trying to get knowledge out of him that people can use.
I'm here to serve. So it's not about me anymore. It's about who I'm trying to
help. And that calms me down. So depending on the day and the situation I
rotate between the two, like I do difficult things and I'm here to serve.
And sometimes it's like 90 10, or sometimes it's 50 50, but those two
things helped me get up on stage or doing that interview to get the message
out easy means you're only doing things, you know how to do. So you're just stuck
doing, you'll actually hate your life. Like you're just photocopying the same
day over and over and over again. Right? I think that if there's nothing in your
calendar that scares you, you actually hate your life. You want to grow, you
want to learn. And that has to come with some dose of fear. Otherwise it's a
lifetime of regret.
If you want to have success in entrepreneurship, obviously you have to
listen to your customers. And introverts, I think are better at doing
that. I think we know extroverts because they're going in on what they're good
at. Like extroverts are great at being extroverted. So that's why we, what's
why we hear them. That Gary V and grant Cardone and Kevin O'Leary and all these
guys are great extroverts and love the attention and love the camera. And so
they're, they're doing what they're great at, which is awesome. Um, but it
doesn't mean that, that if you're an introvert you don't want to serve, you
don't want to help you. Don't also have a voice and a message to get out there
at the beginning. You're going to suck a lot. So like just expect the suck part
of the problem is when people are making a video is you don't expect to be great
at the start.
You don't expect to be Larry King or, or whoever at the start, but you don't, you
don't also don't expect to be as bad as your first video is, right? Like your
first few comes up. It's like, wow, I expect it to be bad, but I didn't expect
to be that bad. I mean, that's why do you expect to just get up and ride a
bike or get on skates or snowboard down the Hill for some reason in this, just
to be great, just because you know, your, your craft and you're an expert at
what you do doesn't mean that's going to auto translate into being great on
making a YouTube video, that retention curve that we looked at trying to hit
70% at one minute, that's a really hard number to hit. Okay. So 70% at one
minute, because if you get somebody for one minute, in terms of short attention
span, it's true in the, in, at the beginning of a video cause they're
scrolling.
But if you get them for the first minute, they're going to keep watching.
So the key is what do you do in the first minute to get somebody to watch
the video? And most people where they struggle is a video would be like, Hey
guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan. And I'm so excited that you're here. Oh my
God, happy Monday. Like typical, but goodbye. 80, 83 to 87% of my traffic now
on the channel are, non-subscribers still at my channel size. Right? So
welcome back. Like, who are you? I don't even know who you are. Why, what am I
being welcome back to is my just assume it's their first time ever seeing you.
So if it's a thought leadership piece, where it's you talking to camera lead
with a powerful opinion, tell me something that you believe that other
people don't believe with. The very first you press record and you tell me
something that's different. If it's an interview, most interviews that at the
beginning. Suck. Right. Hey, tell me about yourself. Hey, what's your story
is like building rapport. It's not, it's not any, anything good. So you take
coming up. So you take the highlight moments from the video and put them at
the beginning so that I know something good is
Jeff Lerner: If you loved that episode, then you're definitely going to love
this one.
Evan Carmichael: The path to excellence is taking the first step. The biggest
thing missing. They have all this potential that you could go and see. And
this is where I get frustrated. You have so much potential. You could do all
these great things. You can be a millionaire by next year. Go do it.