Latest / Curiously Guided Podcast / Ep.116 | YouTube for Business: You Don’t Need 100k Subscribers to Make Good Money w/ Mariah Magazine, SEO Consultant & Educator

Transcript

Ep.116 | YouTube for Business: You Don’t Need 100k Subscribers to Make Good Money w/ Mariah Magazine, SEO Consultant & Educator · Curiously Guided Podcast

• 0:07
  Mariah: Welcome to the Curiously Guided Podcast.
• 0:10
  Shay: We're your hosts, Mariah.
• 0:12
  Shay: And hey guys, I'm Shay.
• 0:14
  Shay: We're two online business consultants passionate about rewriting the rules to success within both life and business.
• 0:21
  Shay: We believe that curiosity is our superpower.
• 0:24
  Shay: And trusting the nudge is a muscle that's meant to be strengthened.
• 0:28
  Mariah: Especially if we want to create a life that feels good from the inside out.
• 0:33
  Shay: So if you're ready to open your mind and let curiosity guide the way, let's get into the episode.
• 0:41
  Shay: All right, my dudes.
• 0:42
  Shay: What is up?
• 0:42
  Shay: Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:44
  Shay: We have a really fun episode.
• 0:47
  Shay: I know we say that every time, but this is one that I feel a bit selfish about because this is a personal curiosity that I have that I have.
• 0:56
  Shay: I've been wanting to kind of pick Mariah's brain about this for some time.
• 1:00
  Shay: Uh basically, I have, as I've known Mariah, I have watched her, I don't think, start a YouTube channel, but take a YouTube channel that was relatively small and grow it into something quite substantial.
• 1:14
  Shay: And she shared with me kind of in bits and stories here and there about how the YouTube channel has affected her business, but also just kind of grown as its own revenue stream.
• 1:25
  Shay: And so I am someone sitting here at the very beginning of my YouTube journey.
• 1:29
  Shay: I have shared two full-length, two long form videos and a couple short form videos.
• 1:33
  Shay: And so I just want to pitch pick her brain, you know, um, how did she go from here to there?
• 1:40
  Shay: What has she learned?
• 1:41
  Shay: What kind of takeaways can we have as an audience if we're interested in sharing more and using YouTube as a platform?
• 1:47
  Shay: So with that, Mariah, thanks for joining your podcast.
• 1:50
  Mariah: Oh, thank you so much for having me on my podcast.
• 1:54
  Shay: It's it's an honor to be here.
• 1:56
  Shay: Thank you.
• 1:57
  Shay: And I I like, I actually want to start similar to how we start most of our episodes with the origin story.
• 2:03
  Shay: Can you take yourself back to like who you were as a human when you decided to start a channel?
• 2:08
  Shay: I'm wondering like, why did you decide to start it?
• 2:11
  Shay: What was your goal?
• 2:13
  Mariah: Yeah, it was 2017, and I was in the tanning bed too often, and I was extremely orange.
• 2:22
  Mariah: And how old was I?
• 2:23
  Mariah: 22, 23, 24, young 20s, mid-20s.
• 2:28
  Mariah: My voice was shaky.
• 2:30
  Mariah: Uh, so I started my business in 2015.
• 2:33
  Mariah: And through doing business, doing website design, doing that stuff, I basically found Facebook groups.
• 2:41
  Mariah: Facebook groups were huge back then, and I was just immersing myself in the online business space.
• 2:49
  Mariah: And I noticed that it's like I was such a sponge for information, but then it's like I realized that I had a gift of breaking down complex things into easy to understand ways.
• 3:02
  Mariah: And I don't know how I had that realization.
• 3:05
  Mariah: Um, people just kept asking questions and I wanted to answer them.
• 3:08
  Mariah: That's basically was like I feel like the through line of my entire life.
• 3:12
  Mariah: When somebody has a question, I like to be the person with the answer, especially if it aligns with my zone of genius.
• 3:17
  Mariah: And so in these Facebook groups, I'm responding and people are like, oh my God, do you have a blog post on that?
• 3:21
  Mariah: Like, yada yada.
• 3:22
  Mariah: And I was like, a blog, okay.
• 3:23
  Mariah: Like I guess I gotta start a blog, I gotta whatever.
• 3:25
  Mariah: And so like I would write content out.
• 3:28
  Mariah: And this is like how I also discovered SEO.
• 3:31
  Mariah: It was kind of in tandem, but not really together.
• 3:35
  Mariah: Like when I started my YouTube channel, I didn't really focus on SEO.
• 3:40
  Mariah: I didn't realize that YouTube really had SEO, that type of thing.
• 3:43
  Mariah: But I was realizing that, oh shit, for some of these things that I want to explain, they're a little bit techy.
• 3:50
  Mariah: So it would be helpful if I could just share my screen and kind of walk somebody through things.
• 3:55
  Shay: So cut in for a second.
• 3:57
  Shay: You started the YouTube channel while you were still web designing.
• 4:00
  Shay: It was before SEO.
• 4:02
  Shay: Correct.
• 4:02
  Shay: I didn't realize that.
• 4:03
  Mariah: Yes.
• 4:04
  Mariah: Yes.
• 4:05
  Mariah: And so I started it because people kept asking me like website design type questions.
• 4:10
  Mariah: Like my very first video was how to add social media icons to the header of your WordPress website.
• 4:19
  Mariah: I laugh at how fucking specific that is.
• 4:22
  Mariah: Um that first video got 10,000 views.
• 4:26
  Shay: Which like like right away, or was it a slow burn?
• 4:29
  Mariah: It was a slower burn, but it was like with to be honest, I feel like it was like within six months.
• 4:35
  Mariah: Because it was like I was it was that video.
• 4:38
  Mariah: And with that video, I was obviously editing everything myself.
• 4:42
  Mariah: I listened to my voice and I was, oh my God, God bless her.
• 4:45
  Mariah: 2017 Mariah.
• 4:47
  Mariah: I was so nervous about everything.
• 4:49
  Mariah: And I did it.
• 4:50
  Mariah: I thought that people were gonna come with pitchforks.
• 4:54
  Mariah: I've heard awful things about YouTube comments.
• 4:56
  Mariah: I was like, people are gonna come for me.
• 4:58
  Mariah: I can't show my face, like I have no idea what I'm gonna say.
• 5:01
  Mariah: I had these things fully scripted out, didn't show my face at all in the video.
• 5:07
  Mariah: And I kind of just published it because that was like a question that I was getting in Facebook groups.
• 5:12
  Mariah: That's where like this YouTube channel basically started from.
• 5:15
  Mariah: It's like I was noticing people's questions.
• 5:17
  Mariah: I knew that I had the answer, and the best way to get my answer across was not a blog post, it was a YouTube video.
• 5:23
  Mariah: So that's kind of what started it in 2017.
• 5:27
  Shay: Interesting.
• 5:28
  Shay: And take us back, you know, you just told us about like the first video, but what were your first videos like?
• 5:34
  Shay: And then it sounds like you kind of had some initial success.
• 5:37
  Shay: Did it take some time for people to start watching?
• 5:39
  Shay: Yeah, it's funny because it's like I would get the views, but I wouldn't get the subscribers.
• 5:44
  Mariah: Interesting.
• 5:44
  Mariah: I'm having that trouble.
• 5:45
  Mariah: Yeah, it's hard to get subscribers at the beginning.
• 5:47
  Mariah: It's hard to get subscribers because people don't take you seriously.
• 5:50
  Mariah: And I will say it until the cows come home, your first thousand subscribers is hands down the hardest.
• 5:55
  Mariah: It's the hardest milestone.
• 5:57
  Mariah: It's where people burnt out.
• 5:58
  Mariah: That's where I burnt out.
• 5:59
  Mariah: So it took, I didn't hit a thousand subscribers until 2020, 2020, 2021.
• 6:07
  Mariah: So from 2017 until 2020 or 2021, I was under a thousand subscribers.
• 6:15
  Mariah: So that's what, four years?
• 6:17
  Mariah: And I was create, I had, I don't know, maybe like 40 videos.
• 6:20
  Mariah: And these videos in the beginning, they were very like website based.
• 6:24
  Mariah: It was like, I mean, I still carry the video styles over now, but it's like how to check your website for broken links, what you need on an about page.
• 6:35
  Mariah: Like it was very like website strategy, but it's funny because it's like that's the foundation of how I see SEO.
• 6:43
  Mariah: Do you know what I mean?
• 6:44
  Mariah: Like where my brain naturally goes is like the technical aspects of things of website design.
• 6:49
  Mariah: I didn't really give a shit about the visuals.
• 6:51
  Mariah: I used to, I don't want to say I used to get into fights with clients, but like they cared where way more about the visuals than me.
• 6:56
  Mariah: I cared more about the strategy, about the conversions, about the fast loading speeds and like the words that we're using versus like, oh, we have an animation.
• 7:05
  Mariah: Like, I don't care about the animation.
• 7:07
  Mariah: And it's so funny because it's like I just thought that I was more web developer brained back then because I thought that the only option for me was like website design or website developer.
• 7:17
  Mariah: But really, all of this has set me up to be incredible with SEO because it all kind of like funnels into it.
• 7:24
  Mariah: But yeah, those first videos, like I ended up showing my face for the next one.
• 7:28
  Mariah: I was like, we gotta do this.
• 7:30
  Mariah: And it was fully scripted.
• 7:31
  Mariah: I had people call me out, hey, it looks like you're reading from a script in my in the YouTube comments.
• 7:37
  Mariah: And I remember being like, you because I didn't trust my voice.
• 7:40
  Mariah: And I remember commenting back and being like, yeah, because I want to keep this like succinct, like you don't want me going on tangents, is essentially like was my excuse for it.
• 7:52
  Mariah: Um, but I would get like those videos got views.
• 7:56
  Mariah: I would send them to people in Facebook groups, that type of thing.
• 8:00
  Mariah: That's kind of how I grew like an authority in the online space pretty quickly.
• 8:06
  Mariah: Um, people would then like refer their clients to me.
• 8:08
  Mariah: Oh, Mariah knows what she's talking about.
• 8:10
  Mariah: Oh, you need a website development, oh, you're having problems with your WordPress site, like go to Mariah, go to Mariah because these videos, when it comes to creating videos, you you build trust so much easier.
• 8:19
  Mariah: And this is back when like blogs were still huge.
• 8:24
  Mariah: Like blogs were like having a big boom at that point, but it's like I could gain trust way quicker through a potential client with a video than I could a blog post because they could see me, they could hear me, they could feel me.
• 8:36
  Mariah: And then I was getting people asking me to be on podcasts and stuff like that.
• 8:43
  Mariah: Like I was getting interviewed for things back then because I was willing to show up and kind of like share my expertise in a video format.
• 8:51
  Shay: How quickly did you start like getting clients, potential clients to reach out or getting potential podcasts get like when did you start to notice some bigger effects on your business?
• 9:01
  Mariah: Um I I don't know because I didn't really pay attention to like the the separation of them.
• 9:10
  Mariah: Do you know what I mean?
• 9:11
  Mariah: I kind of like it wasn't just oh, they found me from YouTube.
• 9:14
  Mariah: It was more me leveraging my YouTube content in communities.
• 9:20
  Mariah: That's what got me clients.
• 9:22
  Shay: Well, I think it's interesting because I still see you doing that now, even this morning in Threads, some SEO scandals going on.
• 9:29
  Shay: I don't know, and someone tagged you in a newsletter you had written, and you kind of followed up and was like, here's that newsletter.
• 9:35
  Shay: And I was like, Mariah's always got a resource she can share.
• 9:38
  Shay: So that's cool that like that same strategy has stuck with you this whole time.
• 9:42
  Mariah: Yeah, I didn't realize that, but yes, I'm always the bit like Mariah, me third person over here, like I always have a blog post, a YouTube video, a newsletter about things because I'm I'm so deep into it and I really enjoy sharing it.
• 9:57
  Mariah: I can share complex things in two easy to understand ways, and they land a lot better with people because I'm transparent and I just use normal people language, which then translates very well on YouTube and with like an actual like video platform.
• 10:17
  Shay: Nice.
• 10:17
  Shay: Yeah, before we dive too much into like the strategy of how you approach your video, I want to get through the full story.
• 10:23
  Shay: So I hear that often, like there's this tipping point when you're building a YouTube channel.
• 10:28
  Shay: Like you said, that first thousand feels hard, like really hard.
• 10:32
  Shay: And then you kind of like hit some point where you know you start to like see subscribers more regularly and you start to see that more sustainable growth.
• 10:42
  Shay: What what when did that tipping point happen for you?
• 10:44
  Shay: What that looked like?
• 10:45
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Mariah: So I was creating videos, you know, I was listening to the YouTube gurus back then, maybe in like 2018, and they were like, you have to post every week.
• 10:54
  Mariah: And so I tried that.
• 10:56
  Mariah: I tried posting one new YouTube video every single week.
• 10:59
  Mariah: This was even back when people were like, you need to post two to three times a week on YouTube.
• 11:03
  Mariah: And I was like, Well, I can't do that because at this point I'm juggling clients, I'm still writing blog posts, like I'm still doing all of these other things.
• 11:10
  Mariah: Like I don't have the capacity.
• 11:12
  Mariah: And so I remember trying YouTube videos on a weekly basis, and I would make it four weeks and then burn out and not create a video for three months.
• 11:22
  Mariah: And that's actually not good for the YouTube algorithm.
• 11:24
  Mariah: The YouTube algorith algorithm, it kind of almost, I don't want to say it doesn't matter how often you post, but they like to see that you're consistent because they want to showcase videos that it's like the people that are taking their channel seriously, like that type of thing.
• 11:38
  Mariah: It's it's another trust thing.
• 11:40
  Mariah: And so I didn't realize that if I did buy weekly and stayed consistent with it, then that was just as good, essentially.
• 11:51
  Mariah: I didn't know this at that point.
• 11:52
  Mariah: And so in 2018, 2019, I burnt out.
• 11:56
  Mariah: I go, fuck YouTube.
• 11:57
  Mariah: I still don't have a thousand subscribers.
• 11:59
  Mariah: I have 40 videos, I have all of these views.
• 12:02
  Mariah: I'm not monetized.
• 12:04
  Mariah: This isn't bringing me any clients.
• 12:05
  Mariah: Like it's basically just giving people free resources.
• 12:08
  Mariah: Like, this isn't adding to my bottom line.
• 12:10
  Mariah: I'm done with it.
• 12:11
  Mariah: And so I tried walking away from it, completely ignored it for like four months, which felt like a really long time when I was like consistently trying to figure it out.
• 12:21
  Mariah: And I felt really burnt out about it.
• 12:23
  Mariah: And then in 2020, Google Analytics 4 came out.
• 12:27
  Mariah: It's so techy, but it's just like the newer version of Google Analytics 4.
• 12:31
  Mariah: And everybody at that time already associated me with like website strategy, SEO, like having the answer for these tech things.
• 12:40
  Mariah: I've been talking about analytics forever.
• 12:42
  Mariah: And so when GA4 came out, everybody's coming to me, Mariah, how do we set this up?
• 12:47
  Mariah: How do we decode this?
• 12:48
  Mariah: And I was like, I don't know.
• 12:49
  Mariah: And so I actually went on YouTube, I tried looking for a video so I could just like refer them to my clients and to colleagues and friends in the online space.
• 12:57
  Mariah: And it was so new and it was so confusing that there was zero fucking videos about it.
• 13:02
  Mariah: And I was like, oh fuck.
• 13:06
  Mariah: I guess I gotta do this.
• 13:07
  Mariah: Like, I have to be the one to do it.
• 13:09
  Mariah: Like, there's a huge gap in the market.
• 13:10
  Mariah: I would be a silly goose to not spend a couple hours testing some stuff and then just create a video, not for the masses, but I created it for the intention of like sending it to my clients, sending it to my website designer friends, like that type of thing.
• 13:24
  Mariah: And so that's what I did.
• 13:25
  Mariah: I figured it out, I tested it, I did all of this.
• 13:28
  Mariah: I was like, I might as well publish it on fucking YouTube because it's easy to share it there.
• 13:34
  Mariah: So then I'll toss the thumbnail up and like whatever.
• 13:37
  Mariah: So I do that, and this video fucking took off.
• 13:40
  Mariah: This it was that video because there was a huge gap in the market.
• 13:45
  Mariah: That idea was trending.
• 13:47
  Mariah: I under, I see now that like I'm really deep into SEO, like I notice that I just see the world and like solutions and problems, which just so happen to be connected to keywords.
• 13:58
  Mariah: And so I naturally kind of name things like very keyword-esque.
• 14:02
  Mariah: And so I think that that was helpful.
• 14:04
  Mariah: But it was that singular video that got me over a thousand subscriber hump, and that's the video that got me monetized.
• 14:14
  Shay: Interesting.
• 14:15
  Shay: Okay.
• 14:16
  Shay: So what happened?
• 14:17
  Shay: I'm curious, like this idea of keywords has come up quite a bit.
• 14:23
  Shay: And now that you've told me that you kind of discovered SEO through the YouTube channel, take me like today, when you're choosing a video on the content to make, are you and I know this is kind of two sides of the same coin, but are you listening to questions that your people are asking you?
• 14:42
  Shay: Or are you looking at keyword research and like choosing based on like where you can see data supports a gap in the market?
• 14:49
  Mariah: Yeah, both.
• 14:50
  Mariah: Both.
• 14:51
  Mariah: It's it depends on the video.
• 14:52
  Mariah: I think that that's the thing that a lot of people get wrong with YouTube is that they think all of their videos need to fit one bucket or the other and they don't.
• 14:59
  Mariah: That's good.
• 14:59
  Mariah: Like you have an audience that's subscribed to you, that's going to get like your updates, and they might be notified, like they're checking your channel, like they're a fan of you already.
• 15:10
  Mariah: And then you have that discoverability kind of top of funnel.
• 15:13
  Mariah: Top of funnel content, that's where you're really gonna hit like the SEO keywords, but it's more like that nurture engagement content or what feels fun.
• 15:21
  Mariah: Like that's the other thing, too, is like when I before I was monetized, I suck the fun out of YouTube.
• 15:27
  Mariah: I thought that I had to play the game by everybody else's rules, that I had to create the shit weekly.
• 15:31
  Mariah: Like I to be honest, I didn't I when it comes to SEO, it's like I was kind of learning them in tandem, like YouTube strategy and SEO strategy.
• 15:45
  Mariah: I did not bring them together for a long time, I feel like, especially when I started this channel in 2017.
• 15:55
  Mariah: I don't think that I brought YouTube consciously into the mix until like 2021, 2022, probably after that Google Analytics 4 video took off, to be honest, because then I'm trying to work backwards.
• 16:05
  Mariah: Then I'm just like, oh shit.
• 16:07
  Mariah: And there really at this time there really wasn't any good SEO keyword research tools.
• 16:13
  Mariah: And then even when I started like diving into it, like YouTube SEO, very specifically for that platform, I was so underwhelmed at the data that I thought I was doing it wrong because we don't have access to as much SEO data on YouTube that we do for Google.
• 16:30
  Mariah: We just don't like, I don't, they don't give us as much information, like that type of thing.
• 16:34
  Mariah: And so the keyword tools for YouTube are really simple.
• 16:39
  Mariah: And I was like, I must be missing something.
• 16:41
  Mariah: And like after I got monetized, I had people being like, oh my God, can you tell me what you're doing?
• 16:45
  Mariah: Like, how do we how do we combine YouTube and SEO?
• 16:48
  Mariah: And I was so annoyed because I'm like, it's really you literally just like sign up for a tool and like type in words and like look at like it's not really as complex as website and business SEO outside of YouTube.
• 17:04
  Mariah: And so for a long time I wouldn't even talk about it.
• 17:07
  Mariah: I wouldn't even talk about YouTube SEO because I was like, no, everybody like this is so easy.
• 17:12
  Mariah: Everybody's going to naturally understand this.
• 17:14
  Mariah: We don't have a lot of data that we have to sift through.
• 17:18
  Mariah: But when it comes to like creating the videos now, and especially since I've been doing this for so long, it kind of depends.
• 17:26
  Mariah: Like sometimes when it feels fun, like I have questions that people will ask me from my email newsletter list, or when I teach in memberships, or when I teach workshops and stuff like that.
• 17:37
  Mariah: And I go, ah, that should be like an evergreen resource.
• 17:40
  Mariah: Once I know that the question, somebody has a question and the answer could be an evergreen resource, and it would make more sense for me to show them.
• 17:48
  Mariah: I know that that's a YouTube video, whether I can connect it to a keyword or not.
• 17:52
  Mariah: So like I kind of look at my YouTube videos in different ways.
• 17:58
  Mariah: And especially after I got monetized in 2021, if I would have only looked at like SEO keyword data and like the data, the data, the data, I would have burnt out again.
• 18:08
  Mariah: And so my approach was how can I deconstruct what worked well for this Google Analytics 4 video and kind of take it and run with it?
• 18:15
  Mariah: It just so happens that I noticed that I named it in a way that keyword makes sense.
• 18:19
  Mariah: Okay, cool.
• 18:20
  Mariah: So I'm gonna like uh pay attention to the keywords if I can.
• 18:23
  Mariah: But what was the real motivating factor for this video?
• 18:27
  Mariah: It was that people were fucking looking for it.
• 18:30
  Mariah: People needed it, people had a question, I had the answer.
• 18:33
  Mariah: Okay, great.
• 18:34
  Mariah: What if I approach my videos from like these buckets?
• 18:37
  Mariah: And then that video felt so easy because I was sharing it.
• 18:41
  Mariah: It became a resource in my business.
• 18:43
  Mariah: And since then, I've created videos that probably don't do very much for my channel, don't make me very much money in terms of like ad sense, but like I have a video that's like how to add a user to your Google Analytics profile.
• 18:55
  Mariah: And then I have that linked in my questionnaire where I have clients, hey, do you have Google Analytics?
• 19:00
  Mariah: Yes or no.
• 19:01
  Mariah: If yes, watch my YouTube video and add me as a user to your Google Analytics profile.
• 19:08
  Mariah: So it's like I'm also using videos as resources for clients and for students to be able to walk them through something that I don't want to have to repeat myself 45 times.
• 19:19
  Mariah: So, like my YouTube channel and the videos that I have, they kind of serve different purposes, but all under the umbrella of my zone of genius.
• 19:35
  Mariah: This season of the Curiously Guided Podcast, including this episode, is sponsored by Adobe Acrobat.
• 19:43
  Mariah: Most of us are still sharing content the same way that we did 10 years ago.
• 19:48
  Mariah: Send a PDF, drop a Google Doc link, and hope that the person that we're sending to actually opens it and reads it.
• 19:56
  Mariah: PDF Spaces, though, is a completely different experience.
• 20:00
  Mariah: You can build a full interactive hub with your files, your links, and audio overviews, and then customize an AI assistant that actually sounds like you.
• 20:12
  Mariah: Same tone, same vibe, acting as an extension of your brand while your audience actually takes action with your content.
• 20:21
  Mariah: And you can even track who's engaging with it so you can see how helpful it is while allowing your users' convos to stay secure and private to them.
• 20:32
  Mariah: If you want to see all of this in action, we built a PDF space for all of season six.
• 20:40
  Mariah: Every current released episode, every guest and all of the show notes and links, you can interact with them right now.
• 20:48
  Mariah: Go interact with it and then imagine what you could do with something like this.
• 20:54
  Mariah: Because honestly, it's pretty damn impressive.
• 20:56
  Mariah: So click the link in the show notes and go and explore.
• 21:09
  Shay: Hmm, that's really good.
• 21:11
  Shay: And you really think about your videos and your channel a bit differently, I think, than I have heard, like the big narrative about YouTube.
• 21:20
  Shay: So I want to talk about like getting monetized.
• 21:23
  Shay: A, can you explain what that means literally?
• 21:26
  Shay: But for you, yes, getting monetized was cool.
• 21:30
  Shay: But from what I'm understanding, the real value that the YouTube has brought your business isn't necessarily AdSense.
• 21:37
  Shay: I think a lot of people think like, oh, I need to build this YouTube channel because I'm going to get AdSense money.
• 21:41
  Shay: And it's like, yeah, that is one piece of the pie, but there's a lot of other opportunities and income streams and ways to build your business and client referrals and blah, blah, blah that come through.
• 21:52
  Shay: So talk a bit about like getting monetized and how you've actually gotten value from the YouTube channel channel in your business.
• 21:58
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Mariah: So getting Monetized is essentially starting to make money on the ads that YouTube adds to your videos.
• 22:06
  Mariah: So even before you're monetized, Google or Google, YouTube will show ads on your videos, but before you're monetized, you're not getting a cut of that.
• 22:14
  Mariah: After you hit a certain threshold, I don't know the threshold.
• 22:17
  Mariah: I think it's a thousand subscribers and maybe like 3,000 or 4,000 watch hours within a year.
• 22:23
  Mariah: Like it's this parameter that you have to hit basically to prove to YouTube, like, hey, I'm taking this shit seriously.
• 22:28
  Mariah: Once you hit that threshold, you make 55% of ad revenue.
• 22:34
  Mariah: YouTube makes 45%.
• 22:37
  Mariah: And so how much money you make from ads depends on the niche that your videos are in.
• 22:46
  Mariah: Certain niches, certain industries make more money.
• 22:49
  Mariah: And so you make more money based on how much other people are willing to spend to get in front of your audience.
• 23:00
  Mariah: I think that I got pretty lucky when it comes to AdSense.
• 23:05
  Mariah: So, like if I take a look at like how much money I have made on a monthly basis based on the views that I have, my monthly AdSense revenue is extremely high for how little views that I actually have.
• 23:21
  Mariah: And it's because I'm creating content for business owners.
• 23:27
  Mariah: Business owners, entrepreneurship, making money online.
• 23:31
  Mariah: It's an insane industry.
• 23:33
  Mariah: People are willing to pay a lot of money to put their ads in front of my audience, not specifically mine, but like the bucket of like who my people show up for.
• 23:44
  Mariah: Also, I create software tutorials.
• 23:46
  Mariah: Other software companies are willing to spend a lot of money.
• 23:50
  Mariah: If we compare that to gaming or like unboxing for like children, like if your audience is children, if your audience is like gaming, you're going to make a lot less money per 1,000 views compared to me because of the different audiences.
• 24:08
  Mariah: So I think that that's what people really need to understand.
• 24:10
  Mariah: It's not like a foundation, everybody makes the same amount.
• 24:14
  Mariah: It really is dependent on your audience and like how much money people are willing to spend in order to get in front of your audience that your videos attract.
• 24:22
  Mariah: And so a lot of people only focus on that, but we don't have control over that.
• 24:26
  Mariah: We have no control.
• 24:28
  Mariah: I have seen this swing up and I have seen this swing down.
• 24:31
  Mariah: I think the most money I've made in one month from YouTube AdSense was$1,300, which is insane because at this time, I think I had definitely had less than 20,000 subscribers, like for sure.
• 24:45
  Mariah: And so making that amount of money was wild.
• 24:48
  Mariah: I think now, especially since now that I'm doing like brand sponsorships and stuff like that, my AdSense has not ironically, I think, gone down a little bit, but I'm still hanging out around$600 to$800 a month.
• 25:02
  Mariah: And I only post videos bi-weekly.
• 25:05
  Mariah: Like I don't post every single week.
• 25:07
  Mariah: And so I tell people it's like YouTube AdSense basically pays my rent.
• 25:13
  Mariah: Like it's helping me pay my bills for sure.
• 25:16
  Mariah: The issue is that a lot of people focus on that, like you were saying.
• 25:18
  Mariah: And so a lot of people approach this from like a YouTube creator perspective.
• 25:24
  Mariah: And when you're coming from a YouTube creator perspective, you're kind of coming from like, how do I entertain people or like how do I make money from like AdSense, like that type of thing?
• 25:34
  Mariah: It really limits you in terms of things.
• 25:37
  Mariah: And now you're going to like psychoanalyze and data analyze all of your videos because you're going to be so hung up on these numbers on like which videos get the most views, which videos made me the most money, and that type of thing.
• 25:49
  Mariah: And then you're kind of just stuck in like this bubble of content for an audience that maybe you're not even that connected to.
• 25:58
  Mariah: It's kind of just like where YouTube put you.
• 26:01
  Mariah: And to me, I'm a YouTube content creator, yes, but I'm a business owner first.
• 26:07
  Mariah: I'm a consultant.
• 26:08
  Mariah: I'm an educator.
• 26:09
  Mariah: I'm a teacher.
• 26:11
  Mariah: And so I don't really care about entertaining you.
• 26:14
  Mariah: And so I never wanted to create videos on YouTube that were really like click-heavy, really like clickbaity, really like I'm going to keep you watching until the end.
• 26:27
  Mariah: Like Mr.
• 26:28
  Mariah: B style, that felt really overwhelming.
• 26:30
  Mariah: And I was very intentional about that from the beginning.
• 26:33
  Mariah: If that type of video didn't feel fun for me to create, I never wanted to vlog.
• 26:37
  Mariah: Like I'm pretty, I don't want to say that I'm private in my in real life, but like I'm not sharing my in real life on fucking YouTube.
• 26:44
  Mariah: The idea of walking around with a camera and videotaping myself all the time sounds absolutely awful to me.
• 26:50
  Mariah: And so I'm not a lifestyle creator, I'm a solutions creator.
• 26:57
  Mariah: And so I think that approach has been really helpful and seeing YouTube as an extension of my business.
• 27:05
  Mariah: YouTube is not like the foundation of everything.
• 27:08
  Mariah: It kind of supports all of the other things that I do in my business.
• 27:13
  Shay: Well, yeah, I think that is people think like, oh, I'm gonna be a content creator for content's sake.
• 27:19
  Shay: Like I'm just gonna make content and be this entertainer.
• 27:22
  Shay: But really, when you start talking to content creators, you realize a lot of the money straight up is coming not from AdSense, it's coming from brand deals, it's coming from affiliate links, it's coming from a bigger newsletter.
• 27:37
  Shay: You're now drawing people to your audience.
• 27:39
  Shay: And I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they just start making content for the sake of making content without thinking about like the bigger ecosystem.
• 27:48
  Shay: You know, where are you driving people to?
• 27:50
  Shay: Where are you building a community of people who are interested in you and what you've got going on?
• 27:55
  Shay: Um, are you monetizing in other ways and thinking of, I've heard that consistently, you know, when you start bringing in brand deals, maybe your ad sense goes down, but it doesn't really matter in the big scheme, right?
• 28:05
  Shay: It's all, and for you, not only are you getting all of those things, but you are getting clients coming to you on sales calls kind of closed.
• 28:14
  Shay: They have already built trust in you.
• 28:16
  Shay: They already have heard how you approach a situation.
• 28:18
  Shay: You know, you just kind of have to show up as a warm body and be real.
• 28:22
  Shay: And you've got clients in your inbox, right?
• 28:25
  Shay: So it's just like that.
• 28:27
  Shay: I've always been amazed with you of like it's not just about the ad sis, it's like this whole bigger ecosystem that's working together and like building that snowball effect.
• 28:36
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 28:37
  Mariah: And it's cool because it's just like uh it's so funny.
• 28:42
  Mariah: When I was listening to the YouTube gurus before 2020, they're like, you need to post weekly, and you can't grow a successful, quote unquote, successful YouTube channel just doing tutorials because people will find your tutorial, you will solve their problem, and they will leave.
• 28:58
  Mariah: They will not hire you, they will not subscribe, you have already solved their problem.
• 29:02
  Mariah: And to me, I was like, well, that's the only kind of content that I want to create until I decide that I don't want to create that content anymore.
• 29:10
  Mariah: And so tutorials versus like talking head videos, essentially entertainment vlog style videos.
• 29:17
  Mariah: And so I've kind of proved them wrong, but like in a way, they were kind of right because they thought a quote-unquote successful YouTube channel was having 200,000 subscribers.
• 29:31
  Mariah: To me, right now I have almost 26,000 subscribers.
• 29:36
  Mariah: And YouTube is fantastic.
• 29:39
  Mariah: Like YouTube is the engine, like the little, the little engine that could.
• 29:43
  Mariah: It's gotten me in front, it's landed me two long-term brand partnerships with Sumrush and Adobe.
• 29:52
  Mariah: They came directly from people finding me for my channel.
• 29:55
  Mariah: Like the head of Sumrush Academy literally slid onto my contact form on my website and was like, I love the way that you explain things.
• 30:03
  Mariah: Can we talk about a partnership?
• 30:05
  Mariah: And now I'm literally doing like long-term educational consulting and creation for Sumrush Academy.
• 30:12
  Mariah: And Adobe being an ambassador for Adobe Acrobat specifically came through because they were looking for people that like can explain complex things and easy to understand ways and can create like good YouTube educational content.
• 30:29
  Mariah: I don't have a massive channel.
• 30:30
  Mariah: These are massive companies.
• 30:32
  Mariah: SEMrush and Adobe are massive companies.
• 30:35
  Mariah: I don't have a hundred thousand subscribers.
• 30:38
  Mariah: If you would have told me that this was possible with 25,000 subscribers six years ago, I would have laughed.
• 30:44
  Mariah: A brand's not going to pay attention to me until I have at least a hundred thousand.
• 30:48
  Mariah: And that is just not true.
• 30:50
  Mariah: And the same thing, if I'm building trust with these brands, I'm also building trust with the people that are finding my videos.
• 30:57
  Mariah: And so YouTube drives around, I'd say 75 to 100 new email subscribers every single month.
• 31:04
  Mariah: It drives consulting clients all the time.
• 31:06
  Mariah: I've gotten teaching opportunities, um, a whole bunch of stuff.
• 31:10
  Mariah: And it's so funny.
• 31:11
  Mariah: I'm gonna, because I have this, I'm looking at it right now, I'm gonna break this down because a lot of people think I even had somebody message me and they were like, How did you start growing this YouTube channel?
• 31:21
  Mariah: Like it seems like it was just like an overnight success.
• 31:23
  Mariah: And I was like, oh, wait a minute, hold on a second.
• 31:27
  Mariah: Let me actually get the dates and like what happened.
• 31:29
  Mariah: So, like I said in the beginning, I started this channel in 2017.
• 31:33
  Mariah: I didn't get monetized until 2021.
• 31:36
  Mariah: I didn't hit 5,000 subscribers until 2023.
• 31:42
  Mariah: And I got my first paid brand sponsorship in 2024.
• 31:49
  Mariah: 2023 is when I hit 5,000 subscribers.
• 31:52
  Mariah: Right now, at the end, we're nearing the end of 2026 and I'm almost at 26,000.
• 31:59
  Mariah: That's a snowball.
• 32:02
  Mariah: But it was not an overnight success.
• 32:04
  Mariah: And like you were saying, it's it's good advice.
• 32:08
  Mariah: Like, if you're gonna think about YouTube, you have to think about like you can't just be like, why are you doing this?
• 32:14
  Mariah: Because you're not just gonna make money from YouTube AdSense.
• 32:16
  Mariah: If that's the long game for you, you better be in it for the long game, like years, or you better get real fucking clickbaity.
• 32:22
  Mariah: You better know your people, like you better know what kind of content you're creating and be willing to put in the work.
• 32:26
  Mariah: And I I don't want to say sell your soul to the YouTube algorithm, but that's essentially the game that you're playing.
• 32:35
  Mariah: Where me, I actually had no fucking idea how YouTube was going to fit into my business in the beginning.
• 32:44
  Mariah: I had no clue.
• 32:44
  Mariah: I literally just wanted to be able to create resources and explain, like and answer questions and have an easy way to share the answer.
• 32:53
  Mariah: That's really all it was.
• 32:55
  Mariah: And it's through YouTube and exploring and doing it and being consistent with it and seeing the opportunities that come is how I've been able to learn how to use it to kind of like infuse these different buckets in my business.
• 33:09
  Mariah: But like in the beginning, I didn't I didn't have a clue.
• 33:13
  Mariah: I kind of just wanted to create content, but it just so happens that my content was built in a different way than other people, and I didn't let that hold me back.
• 33:22
  Mariah: I kind of used that as like the chip on my shoulder to like be different and see if I could make it work.
• 33:30
  Shay: Yeah, I haven't really ever thought about like using YouTube to cast a wider net and like let you do what you want to do.
• 33:37
  Shay: You know, since I've met you, you your story has been I want to teach, I love teaching.
• 33:45
  Shay: Put me up on a panel, I can answer questions all day long.
• 33:48
  Shay: I do not want to be building this big ass agency where I'm managing a million billion people.
• 33:53
  Shay: And so YouTube almost gave you the opportunity to step into that zone of genius and cast a wider net, literally, get out in front of more people.
• 34:02
  Shay: And so using it as a tool to kind of let your future self show up, I think is really interesting.
• 34:08
  Shay: Of like, what do you want?
• 34:10
  Shay: And then how could you use YouTube as like a platform to start building your muscles there is very cool.
• 34:16
  Shay: And I also appreciate you know, it's the long game.
• 34:19
  Shay: And I don't think anyone's gonna tell you that YouTube is like gonna be a quick hit or a quick win.
• 34:25
  Shay: It really is more of a sustained, dedicated effort over time and like knowing your 2017 to 2023 has been most of the time that you've been making YouTube videos with not much, right?
• 34:37
  Shay: It's only been in the last few years that it's really started to like take off.
• 34:42
  Shay: If you don't mind sharing, tell us about like the pie of your business, like how much is at sold at C Work, how much is brand partnerships, how much is AdSense, that kind of stuff.
• 34:55
  Shay: I I don't know if I know, like off the top of my head.
• 34:58
  Shay: Um told me something recently where it was like, whoa, I didn't realize that like I if I had to guess, I would say let me see.
• 35:11
  Mariah: Probably like half of my revenue is from YouTube, which would include AdSense and brand partnerships.
• 35:19
  Mariah: Client work has the percentage that it makes up of my revenue has decreased consistently.
• 35:28
  Mariah: And not that like the money that I make year over year from client work has really decreased, but it's just it's a less percentage now than it used to be.
• 35:39
  Mariah: And so I don't know the exact like in terms of breaking it into like brand partnerships and YouTube AdSense, and like because I also have digital products and then I have a membership and I have consultant, like I have so many different revenue streams.
• 35:53
  Mariah: Um, but I would say brand like YouTube specific type stuff or the opportunities that YouTube have brought me is well over 50% of my revenue.
• 36:04
  Shay: That was one thing I was really struck by when we talked to Christy earlier in the season.
• 36:09
  Shay: We're saying, How you've been a web designer for decades almost.
• 36:14
  Shay: How have you kept doing it?
• 36:16
  Shay: How do you make it sustainable?
• 36:18
  Shay: And her answer was literally that like really the agency work is maybe 50% of the pie, but I'm doing all these other things that are lighting my fire and I'm getting to teach and I'm getting to be in other zones of genius and explore other ideas through making content.
• 36:31
  Shay: And that really blew my mind.
• 36:32
  Shay: I was just like, ah, more revenue streams.
• 36:35
  Shay: It makes so much sense on like multiple levels.
• 36:38
  Shay: But let's dive in like to the tactics, if you will.
• 36:42
  Mariah: Well tutorial real quick, it's it's interesting because I want people to realize that like I didn't know the revenue streams until they hit me in the head.
• 36:54
  Mariah: It's almost like I decided that I wanted to create tutorials, or like in this case, like I wanted to create content.
• 37:00
  Mariah: I remember it was like 2021 that I was like, no, I enjoy creating content.
• 37:04
  Mariah: I remember people telling me, you as a business owner, you should not be spending all of your time creating content.
• 37:10
  Mariah: You should be selling, selling, selling, like only create content for marketing.
• 37:13
  Mariah: And I'm just like, that's not how my brain works.
• 37:16
  Mariah: But at the time, it's like I didn't know what was three steps ahead of me, but I just knew what felt fun and what felt right for me.
• 37:24
  Mariah: Every single step of this entire process and my entire journey, I am running it through this lens of do I fucking want this?
• 37:31
  Mariah: Do I enjoy this?
• 37:32
  Mariah: Does it feel fun?
• 37:34
  Mariah: That is the most important lens to my entire business because I'm not building a business to turn around and sell tomorrow or sell at all.
• 37:42
  Mariah: I don't even know if my business is fucking sell a bull.
• 37:45
  Mariah: Like I have no idea.
• 37:46
  Mariah: But I'm in this for the long haul and I give a shit about it.
• 37:48
  Mariah: And if I want to give a shit about it and I want to be lit up by this sustainably moving forward, I have to enjoy what I'm doing.
• 37:58
  Mariah: Now, does that mean that I'm enjoying like every single aspect of every single day?
• 38:01
  Mariah: Of course not.
• 38:02
  Mariah: Let's not be silly.
• 38:03
  Mariah: But it's through taking, making these decisions, taking these baby steps and allowing myself to let the opportunities come to me.
• 38:12
  Mariah: Like when it came to brand partnerships, I knew that I wanted to build my YouTube channel.
• 38:16
  Mariah: I wanted to get brand partnerships.
• 38:17
  Mariah: I was learning that like that's how you make the big bucks, like yada, yada, yada.
• 38:21
  Mariah: So I was pitching brands.
• 38:23
  Mariah: But when you pitch brands, I only had 5,000 subscribers.
• 38:27
  Mariah: They didn't give a shit about me.
• 38:29
  Mariah: Because I'm pitching them.
• 38:31
  Mariah: I'm coming in and they're looking at me now from a vanity metric standpoint.
• 38:35
  Mariah: They're comparing me to other people that have 100,000, that have 55,000, that have whatever.
• 38:41
  Mariah: They don't give a shit about me.
• 38:42
  Mariah: When I was pitching brands, I didn't get any.
• 38:46
  Mariah: Then I said, you know what?
• 38:49
  Mariah: Fuck this.
• 38:50
  Mariah: I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing.
• 38:51
  Mariah: I'm gonna keep growing my email list.
• 38:52
  Mariah: I'm gonna keep creating YouTube videos that feel fun, that feel like resources, that feel evergreen, that I can use over and over again, that will like funnel people into my world, that type of thing.
• 39:01
  Mariah: And then a year later, these brands come knocking on my door.
• 39:07
  Mariah: And they're offering me more money than I could have imagined when I was pitching these brands a year prior.
• 39:15
  Mariah: But it's like I didn't go into this thinking I need 45 different revenue streams.
• 39:20
  Mariah: I had no idea how this was gonna come together.
• 39:22
  Mariah: And so I think that that's an important piece of the story because it's like I'm also saying this in hindsight where I can see how it all connected and like how it all kind of like funneled into each other and how, but like as I was doing it, I'm really just running through the language of like, does this feel fun?
• 39:37
  Mariah: And do I fucking like this?
• 39:38
  Mariah: And I think that that's really important because a lot of people come into YouTube or like some other long-form content aspect of things and they try to strategize it until the cows come home and then they realize that they don't even like the medium that they have like that they have chosen.
• 39:55
  Mariah: If you don't like yapping, don't start a podcast.
• 39:59
  Mariah: If you are not willing to get better on video, you can't go on YouTube.
• 40:04
  Mariah: I'm not saying you have to be good in the beginning.
• 40:06
  Mariah: I was trash in the beginning, but it's like YouTube has helped me build my my speaking skills and it's helped me build my confidence in speaking and in teaching, kind of like you were saying before.
• 40:16
  Mariah: But I just wanted to share that it's like you don't know the opportunities that are going to come.
• 40:20
  Mariah: And so don't try to strategize it too much from the beginning when you have an inner knowing that this just feels like a place that you want to explore.
• 40:32
  Shay: Oh, that's good.
• 40:33
  Shay: Yeah, I love that.
• 40:34
  Shay: And I like, I like that you brought up it's a muscle that can get built.
• 40:38
  Shay: Cause I'm in the beginning where I like have several videos that I have not shared because I was like, oh my God, I sound like the most awkward girl in the world.
• 40:45
  Shay: And I'm even noticing like every time I make one, I get a little bit more comfortable.
• 40:48
  Shay: I get a little bit more comfortable.
• 40:50
  Shay: So remembering that, like, yes, going through the awkward phase is normal.
• 40:53
  Shay: It's a muscle that you can build.
• 40:55
  Shay: But the other thing you said there is like thinking about YouTube as a positioning tool.
• 41:00
  Shay: You are positioned differently when people find you, when those companies find you, like you are sitting in a different position because you have a channel, because you speak as an authority.
• 41:10
  Shay: And so that is a really big value add of like how like what is your first impression that you're making on people?
• 41:17
  Shay: What how are you positioning yourself?
• 41:19
  Shay: And I think that's something that not a lot of people think about.
• 41:21
  Shay: And YouTube can be really powerful for that, especially once you get to a certain point.
• 41:26
  Shay: Um, but there's one kind of idea that you brought up there that I think is interesting.
• 41:30
  Shay: This whole season, we've been talking a lot about how to balance this idea of um striving with contentment, you know, like how do we keep growing, keep building, live the best life, blah, blah, blah, but also be grateful for the now, be here, be ourselves, be in the present moment.
• 41:47
  Shay: And I learned this metaphor of like, I think there's some Buddhist concept where like the idea of um effort and detachment are wings on a bird.
• 41:58
  Shay: And you have modeled that really well.
• 42:00
  Shay: That's how we be sustainable, that's how we fly.
• 42:02
  Shay: We have sustained effort where we are showing up doing the work and joining the process.
• 42:07
  Shay: But then the other wing is this detachment from outcome.
• 42:11
  Shay: I'm gonna show up because this is what I feel like I should be doing, but I'm not gonna hold so tightly on what, the what, what actually comes of it.
• 42:18
  Shay: And what we hear over and over is when you can release and detach from the outcome, you get all of these insane opportunities that you couldn't have even predicted in the first place.
• 42:27
  Shay: So I think that just your like dedication to the process is really cool in this story of like, I'm just gonna keep showing up and making these videos because it feels good, even if I can't see the bigger picture.
• 42:38
  Shay: I think that's what it is.
• 42:39
  Shay: Like, I think that's the secret sauce to all of this stuff.
• 42:42
  Shay: So that's a really cool example.
• 42:44
  Shay: But let's like dive into the nitty-gritty now.
• 42:46
  Shay: You've talked a bit about like how you choose topics or how you choose um videos that you want to make.
• 42:54
  Shay: I want to know how do you approach titles and thumbnails?
• 42:58
  Shay: What's your thought process there?
• 43:00
  Mariah: Detached.
• 43:01
  Mariah: Uh um no, it's um, I'm really glad like that language and like that metaphor is actually really helpful.
• 43:09
  Mariah: I would completely agree with that.
• 43:10
  Mariah: And like I do have sustained effort and I am very detached.
• 43:13
  Mariah: And it's it's made me, I don't want to say uncoachable, but like it's almost made me uncoachable.
• 43:20
  Mariah: Do you know what I mean?
• 43:21
  Mariah: Because I'm I'm just like, I it's like, what's your goal?
• 43:25
  Mariah: And I'm like, to fucking like my life and make good money and really help people and give solutions.
• 43:29
  Mariah: Like, I don't have a two-year goal, a five-year goal, a 10-year goal.
• 43:33
  Mariah: I don't have a financial goal.
• 43:34
  Mariah: Like, I just like I'm just fucking hanging out on the internet is basically what I try to tell people.
• 43:39
  Mariah: So detached for sure.
• 43:41
  Mariah: I would say that that's a big piece.
• 43:43
  Mariah: And like, you can't teach that, you can't strategize that.
• 43:47
  Mariah: That is something that took a long time in order to feel comfortable being detached, but also strategic and also um determined.
• 44:00
  Mariah: Like it's hard, it's hard to be able to balance all of those.
• 44:03
  Mariah: Um, so the strategic part in terms of thumbnails and in terms of titles.
• 44:07
  Mariah: To be honest, I have been using the same style of thumbnails.
• 44:12
  Mariah: I feel like since I was in the womb.
• 44:14
  Mariah: Um being out with this thumbnail.
• 44:17
  Mariah: I came out with this thumbnail style.
• 44:19
  Mariah: Uh no, I mean I've I've slightly tweaked them, but like if you look all the way back at my channel, it's like it's the same style.
• 44:25
  Mariah: I don't try to like reinvent the wheel.
• 44:28
  Mariah: The thumbnail to me, it's kind of like I want it to look professional.
• 44:33
  Mariah: And I know people would probably look at my thumbnails and be like, oh my God, there's so many words on there.
• 44:38
  Mariah: I'm a wordy bitch.
• 44:39
  Mariah: Like, I don't know what you want me to tell you.
• 44:41
  Mariah: It's also very important that I give people expectations before they click on my video.
• 44:48
  Mariah: I don't know why that this is a hill that I'm going to die on, but like when it comes to YouTube, I will die before I become a clickbait bitch.
• 44:56
  Mariah: Like I can't do it.
• 44:58
  Mariah: I'm not going to post thumbnails with like, oh, can you believe it?
• 45:04
  Mariah: Like surprise faces.
• 45:06
  Mariah: And I know that they work in like some instances, but for mine, it's a fucking tutorial.
• 45:09
  Mariah: I'm teaching you how to find broken links on your site.
• 45:12
  Mariah: You literally typed in how to find broken links on my website.
• 45:15
  Mariah: Yeah, you shouldn't be looking too surprised, right?
• 45:17
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 45:18
  Mariah: Yes.
• 45:18
  Mariah: Like I'm not looking surprised here, dog.
• 45:20
  Mariah: You know what I'm saying?
• 45:21
  Mariah: So it's like, I'm just I want people to know what they are getting into before they click on my video, which is actually probably not what most people would tell you.
• 45:33
  Mariah: They would say, no, you want the thumbnail to speak emotion and to get them to click.
• 45:37
  Mariah: Yeah, but what happens when they click and then I don't meet their expectations or I don't solve their whatever?
• 45:43
  Mariah: It's like, and then they click off.
• 45:44
  Mariah: And now the bounce rate on my videos is too high.
• 45:48
  Mariah: And then YouTube is like, meh, her thumbnails might be good, but like people aren't watching very long and they're leaving.
• 45:53
  Mariah: Well, I don't want that because engagement metrics matter too.
• 45:57
  Mariah: And so to me, the thumbnails are pretty straightforward.
• 45:59
  Mariah: I don't know how I came up with the style.
• 46:01
  Mariah: They are very literal, just like SEO.
• 46:04
  Mariah: Like I said, this is just the way that my brain sees the internet.
• 46:08
  Mariah: I think in keywords and I think in very literal terms.
• 46:10
  Mariah: And so that's where these thumbnails came from.
• 46:14
  Mariah: I do think it's important to have my face.
• 46:17
  Mariah: I have been using the same seven photos for couldn't even tell you how long, an extremely large amount of time.
• 46:26
  Mariah: Four years.
• 46:27
  Mariah: Four years, been using the same fucking photos.
• 46:30
  Mariah: Don't really care.
• 46:31
  Mariah: Have not taken a new photo for a thumbnail in forever.
• 46:35
  Mariah: I just rotate them through, don't really give a shit.
• 46:38
  Mariah: Where I do pay attention is the title.
• 46:40
  Mariah: And the title, it's because I try to get the keywords in there.
• 46:43
  Mariah: Like I'm doing keyword research before I do most of the videos.
• 46:46
  Mariah: Even if the idea of the video doesn't come from a keyword, I'm still trying to see if I can find a keyword because why not?
• 46:55
  Mariah: Type thing.
• 46:56
  Mariah: So I'm doing some keyword research, and a lot of the times I'm trying to find a keyword, and I put it in the beginning of the title, and then I try to add some secondary keywords in there.
• 47:07
  Mariah: YouTube gives you a hundred characters, not all of the characters show when a viewer is like scrolling YouTube, but the YouTube algorithm is still reading the hundred characters in order to understand the context of this video and kind of connect this video to different keywords.
• 47:26
  Mariah: And so YouTube is an interesting platform because it's kind of like old school SEO, which is what I was so annoyed with before, is like, why is it not more complicated than it has to be?
• 47:36
  Mariah: But YouTube is very literal.
• 47:38
  Mariah: And I've kind of done some testing on this, even with a video that I published recently, where it's like the video title was a little bit more uh less keyword driven than typic than typically I would publish simply because it was like a brand partnership video and they had to approve the title.
• 47:55
  Mariah: And so it just didn't have like the keywords that I wanted in there.
• 47:58
  Mariah: And so I published it.
• 47:59
  Mariah: And typically, because my channel has longevity and my channel like YouTube is very clear on where I fall with a bucket, I can usually start ranking pretty quickly for a video.
• 48:11
  Mariah: Now, will that ranking carry out for the next three months, six months, 12 months?
• 48:16
  Mariah: It kind of depends on the video.
• 48:18
  Mariah: But after I publish, I can kind of see what keywords Google is or YouTube is associating with me.
• 48:24
  Mariah: And so I ran this test yesterday.
• 48:26
  Mariah: And that original title that the brand approved had maybe like two keywords in there, like whatever.
• 48:31
  Mariah: And so I published it, I refreshed it, I checked my rankings.
• 48:34
  Mariah: I was only being associated for two keywords.
• 48:36
  Mariah: And I was like, I can add in some other words here, like the word beginner, the word tutorial, the like words that I know that my people are like automatically kind of adding.
• 48:49
  Mariah: And when you add tutorial to the end of a key phrase, it instantly kind of changes the search intent.
• 48:55
  Mariah: Now, even if you're searching this on Google, YouTube videos will likely show up because Google and YouTube know that you're looking for a tutorial, somebody to walk you through a process.
• 49:06
  Mariah: YouTube is a great platform for that.
• 49:08
  Mariah: So that type of thing.
• 49:09
  Mariah: So I went and added uh, I think it was beginner tutorial, and then another part of the brand name, because I only had like half of it in there, republished it, just like updated the publish, rechecked it again.
• 49:25
  Mariah: I was being associated for eight keywords.
• 49:29
  Mariah: And it was those keywords that then had those other words in there.
• 49:34
  Mariah: It's like the title, like YouTube really does look at the title to be able to understand the context clues that are happening here.
• 49:42
  Mariah: And it's very literal, it's the most literal platform.
• 49:46
  Mariah: Like it's even more literal than Google AI being like all of this, because people on YouTube typically, when they're searching, they're being extremely literal for what they want to find.
• 50:00
  Mariah: But this is uh that's why there's like so much nuance because it's like, but that's also like I create very literal videos.
• 50:06
  Mariah: Do you know what I mean?
• 50:07
  Mariah: Like I'm not creating vlogs.
• 50:08
  Mariah: If I'm creating vlogs, connecting them to a keyword is like a whole lot harder, that type of situation.
• 50:13
  Mariah: But that's kind of how I approach the thumbnail and the title.
• 50:18
  Mariah: And then when it comes to the description, I try to get the keywords in the description too.
• 50:22
  Mariah: I try to add timestamps to all of them.
• 50:24
  Mariah: YouTube loves it when you add timestamps, like that type of shit.
• 50:28
  Mariah: Um, and so I kind of just like use all of the places that YouTube will let me in order to give context clues so that YouTube is very, very clear on what my video is of.
• 50:41
  Mariah: I also do keyword research before I record the video.
• 50:45
  Mariah: So I'm saying the keyword in the first like in the hook or in the first like minute of the video because YouTube will look at the transcript too.
• 50:54
  Shay: Interesting.
• 50:55
  Shay: Okay, I didn't realize that.
• 50:56
  Shay: That's actually bringing up a point.
• 50:58
  Shay: You know, there's that idea of like the 80-20 rule where 20% of your efforts generate 80% of your returns.
• 51:07
  Shay: I'm curious, like, what do you think are like the 20% things that people should be focusing on that really move the needle that make a lot of leverage?
• 51:16
  Shay: And then I want you to go to the flip side of that.
• 51:18
  Shay: Like, what are the things that people focus on and like don't really move the needle at all?
• 51:23
  Mariah: Yeah, um, it's interesting because I I haven't done very much YouTube SEO consulting, but I've done enough to be able to see that like the knowledge and that the information that I have and how I view kiddio kiddios videos um translates into like other industries too.
• 51:42
  Mariah: And I would say like people think tags don't work.
• 51:47
  Mariah: I think they do.
• 51:48
  Mariah: I think tags work.
• 51:50
  Mariah: Tags are kind of like in a YouTube video.
• 51:52
  Mariah: Tags are essentially like keywords that you can kind of dump behind a video to let YouTube know what this video is about.
• 52:00
  Mariah: If you use tags correctly, I think that they help you.
• 52:04
  Mariah: I think the issue is that most people don't use tags correctly, they're not that literal.
• 52:09
  Mariah: So, an example would be like on a new YouTube video, maybe where I'm talking about like um how to fix broken links.
• 52:16
  Mariah: Some people would be like the tag would be like Mariah Magazine, Mariah Magazine SEO consultant, SEO consulting for business, digital marketing, search engine optimization.
• 52:28
  Mariah: Like, what the fuck are those?
• 52:30
  Mariah: Like the they're so vague, they're not connected at all.
• 52:33
  Mariah: But the real tag should be broken link check, how to check broken links on your website, free tool for checking broken links, how to find broken links, fix broken, like so literal for that topic, because that's how we can also check like the rankings for things too.
• 52:52
  Mariah: If you're using a tool, you can kind of refresh, you can see the tags behind a video, and then you can see like where that video is ranking for that specific tag.
• 53:01
  Mariah: So tags are essentially keywords.
• 53:03
  Mariah: It's one of the only platforms where we can still fucking dump keywords and people just ignore them.
• 53:08
  Mariah: And to me, the whole thing with the algorithm is context clues.
• 53:12
  Mariah: So I think tags, I think titles are extremely important.
• 53:17
  Mariah: And I I think the written part of the video is a lot more important than people give effort to is essentially what it is because that is how the algorithm is understanding where to put you.
• 53:32
  Mariah: People don't like they will do this video and they'll be like, oh my god, like the jump cuts, like the editing is so good.
• 53:38
  Mariah: Bitch, if you don't get YouTube to show you anywhere, either in suggested videos and search and anywhere, because YouTube actually has no fucking idea what content you created, then nobody's gonna see your cool jump cuts and like your view of Italy if you're a travel blogger.
• 53:57
  Mariah: You know what I'm saying?
• 53:58
  Mariah: Like, it's just like you have to play the game and give enough context clues because that's how things get spread on the internet.
• 54:07
  Mariah: The algorithm is a robot, it's not a human watching your video and being like, oh my god, that view from the drone was incredible.
• 54:14
  Mariah: Like, no, we have to get the algorithm to understand you so that it can push you out.
• 54:18
  Mariah: So I think that the written stuff matters a lot more than people want to think.
• 54:27
  Mariah: I think the professionalism of the video itself matters less than what people think.
• 54:36
  Mariah: Not saying that you can post grainy videos and have a shitty mic.
• 54:40
  Mariah: You do need to have a clear video, you need to have a decent microphone, that type of thing.
• 54:47
  Mariah: But we've seen, like through being on YouTube, I've seen YouTubers they get big enough.
• 54:53
  Mariah: Now they're using like these fancy cameras, they got a production company, their views tank, their engagement tanks because you're no longer trustworthy.
• 55:04
  Mariah: Now you're coming off as a commercial company.
• 55:07
  Mariah: Now you're coming off as somebody who wants to sell me something.
• 55:10
  Mariah: That's the beauty of YouTube, baby.
• 55:13
  Mariah: You grow trust.
• 55:14
  Mariah: Trust doesn't happen from perfection, it happens from like you're not so fucking great camera.
• 55:20
  Mariah: I've been using like people will tell you you can't start a YouTube channel unless you have a Sony DSLR775 with 75 fucking micro.
• 55:28
  Mariah: Like, I have never owned one of those.
• 55:30
  Mariah: It sounds awful.
• 55:30
  Mariah: I use a shitty log tech webcam that's$150, and my microphone is$75 on Amazon.
• 55:38
  Mariah: Like, I don't care about the production, I don't care about my background too much.
• 55:42
  Mariah: Like, I just I don't give a shit.
• 55:44
  Mariah: My lighting is good enough.
• 55:46
  Mariah: The editing is fine.
• 55:48
  Mariah: And so I think that like people try to get these things perfect and also like when you're talking, people yeah, they just focus on the perfection of it too.
• 55:58
  Mariah: And like they'll cut out all of their ums, they'll cut out like their awkward pauses, they won't like laugh at themselves.
• 56:05
  Mariah: And it's just like the whole point of this though is to build trust.
• 56:09
  Mariah: The more human you are.
• 56:11
  Mariah: I'm not saying that we need um every three seconds.
• 56:13
  Mariah: Like I notice I say like way too much, so I will cut out some likes, but I am leaving them in there because that's how I naturally speak.
• 56:23
  Mariah: And so it's just like allow yourself to be a human.
• 56:27
  Mariah: That's actually what people love.
• 56:29
  Mariah: If they didn't want that, they would just be watching commercial videos, which we know is not entertaining to watch at all.
• 56:38
  Shay: Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
• 56:40
  Shay: And especially like maybe millennials or people a bit older than us, we have this idea that like you have to come perfect and it needs to be really polished and really professional.
• 56:49
  Shay: And what we're learning is that that's not quite the case online.
• 56:53
  Shay: And sometimes if you come off too pro and too polished, you erode trust, right?
• 56:58
  Shay: You don't seem like a real person, you seem sponsored, you're not you lose that human connection.
• 57:02
  Shay: And I love how you're so good at zooming out of like, what is the actual point?
• 57:06
  Shay: We it's to make human connection, right?
• 57:09
  Shay: That that's the whole point of all of this.
• 57:10
  Shay: That's how it all works well.
• 57:12
  Shay: If you ref like replace algorithm with like my person or human connection, it's the same idea.
• 57:18
  Shay: The algorithm just wants to pair you up with your people.
• 57:20
  Shay: Um, so I think that's really insightful.
• 57:23
  Shay: And the other question I had like more strategically, I hear a lot about like hooks.
• 57:28
  Shay: And you know, how do I within a couple seconds or within the first minute, I gotta get people locked in and hooked in so they stay and they watch?
• 57:37
  Shay: How how do you think about like intros and like hooking people in?
• 57:41
  Mariah: I just maybe it's because my videos are so literal.
• 57:45
  Mariah: I'm literally just like telling them that I'm gonna solve their problem.
• 57:49
  Mariah: Hey, do you have broken links on your website and you're trying to fix them?
• 57:53
  Mariah: Cool, you made it to the right video.
• 57:55
  Mariah: Just orient them.
• 57:56
  Shay: Your whole thing is orienting people, setting expectations.
• 57:59
  Shay: I like that.
• 58:00
  Mariah: That's literally it, or it's just like uh setting up the problem so that they know that they're about to get the solution.
• 58:06
  Mariah: So it's like for brand partnerships and stuff like that.
• 58:09
  Mariah: Like I just published a video with Adobe Acrobat, and the video intro is like, hey, as an SEO consultant, I'm literally juggling like 75 documents all of the time.
• 58:20
  Mariah: I found a solution that's really good at kind of bringing them all together, and that's what I'm gonna show you in this video.
• 58:25
  Shay: And you said something else to me, which has been helpful about your intro and your exit.
• 58:30
  Shay: You know, you have a set intro, you have a set exit, and it kind of helps you get into the right, like lock in when you're doing a video, talk a bit more about that.
• 58:38
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 58:38
  Mariah: So the hook, like the first two lines, two to three lines, is dependent on the video itself.
• 58:45
  Mariah: And so, you know, because we need to make sure that they're in the right spot, type situation.
• 58:49
  Mariah: So I'll kind of explain the problem or explain the solution.
• 58:53
  Mariah: And then I end that usually with like, you've made it to the right video, or like that's what we're gonna talk about in this video.
• 59:00
  Mariah: Like I want them to know that like I'm not a clickbait bitch, like this is what we're here for, type situation.
• 59:06
  Mariah: And then I have just like um a video or a channel trailer, it's a couple seconds long, and then I kick it into what's up, y'all?
• 59:15
  Mariah: Welcome back to my channel.
• 59:17
  Mariah: Like, if you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this is what I help with, this is who I am.
• 59:21
  Mariah: And then I get into, and in today's video, if I want to kind of back up what I mentioned in the hook, and so that's the same thing that I do in all of my videos.
• 59:30
  Mariah: It's like a tiny little hook, quick channel trailer.
• 59:34
  Mariah: Hi, I'm Mariah.
• 59:35
  Mariah: If you're new here, welcome.
• 59:37
  Mariah: This is what I talk about on this channel.
• 59:39
  Mariah: Dive into set the stage of like what we're doing.
• 59:42
  Mariah: And then my next slide is and let's kick it in to the screen share because I'm doing screen shares in all of my fucking videos.
• 59:48
  Mariah: And then at the end, I'm just like, that's it for today's tutorial.
• 59:51
  Mariah: If you enjoyed this, give me a really quick thumbs up.
• 59:53
  Mariah: The simple thumbs up does go a long way and letting the YouTube algorithm know that my video was helpful and therefore hopefully pushing it out to more people that also might find it helpful.
• 1:00:03
  Mariah: And then I'll have them if they, you know, if they have a comment or a question, leave it below this video.
• 1:00:09
  Mariah: And then if you're not already subscribed to the channel, subscribe to the channel.
• 1:00:13
  Mariah: But that literally, like that intro where I'm like, and if you're new to this channel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:00:19
  Mariah: And then my outro is the same fucking thing every time.
• 1:00:22
  Mariah: Maybe slightly tweaked if it's a brand sponsorship or if I'm feeling feisty that day, but like most of the time, I'm just regurgitating the same thing over and over again.
• 1:00:32
  Shay: Well, I really like having those as like anchors.
• 1:00:35
  Shay: It's really nice to like anchor your mind into that.
• 1:00:38
  Shay: Like having something I'm hopping in, I know right what I'm gonna say, I know how I'm gonna close it down.
• 1:00:42
  Shay: It just helps you start and finish really strong, which I was really helpful for me because I felt like I was just jumping into the videos and like, well.
• 1:00:50
  Shay: And the other thing I don't realize when I'm in it is most of the people seeing your video are probably seeing you for the first time, or maybe the second time.
• 1:00:59
  Shay: So it's good.
• 1:01:00
  Shay: It feels like you're being repetitive when you're like, I'm this person, I do this person, I help with this.
• 1:01:05
  Shay: But you really, the whole point of these channels is to get in, cast the wide net, get in front of new faces.
• 1:01:11
  Shay: So there's a lot of like reminding and repeating, and this is what I do, this is who I'm here for, that I don't think I would do naturally unless I had those like really nice, like, here's how I start, here's how I finish.
• 1:01:23
  Mariah: Yeah, it's that.
• 1:01:25
  Mariah: And what I have gotten feedback from from clients that have hired me on YouTube, and this has been really helpful, especially if you're a business owner, is I use examples and language that elude to me having clients or me having solutions that people can hire me for.
• 1:01:44
  Mariah: Because a lot of content creators on YouTube are just content creators.
• 1:01:47
  Mariah: You can't hire everybody.
• 1:01:49
  Mariah: And so I've had people be like, Yeah, you were talking about like, oh, like your clients are like the people in your membership.
• 1:01:54
  Mariah: And I realized, like, oh, I could hire you.
• 1:01:57
  Mariah: So then they went to my website and saw that like I have services, but I'm not like, and if you want to hire me to do this, like I'm not, I'm kind of alluding to it and using examples and stories that showcase that like this is also how I help people.
• 1:02:14
  Shay: Yeah, I mean, that's just like a pro-level sales move, right?
• 1:02:18
  Shay: Like always be referring to, oh, this you remind me of this story, or I had a client in this situation.
• 1:02:23
  Shay: Like, the more you can kind of say it from a subtle place and instead of like being so like literal and obvious with it, it just comes off better.
• 1:02:31
  Shay: It's more trustworthy and and you're attack attracting the right people.
• 1:02:34
  Shay: I think that's good.
• 1:02:36
  Shay: You know, I've been kind of taking notes here what Mariah's advice is about starting a YouTube channel.
• 1:02:42
  Shay: And so what I've heard you say number one, be consistent, but that can look differently.
• 1:02:48
  Shay: I really loved when I first met you, you were, I think, doing the one video a week and then got burnt out, and then you kind of were like, hey, what works for me is twice a month.
• 1:02:57
  Shay: Let's see if that happens.
• 1:02:58
  Shay: And I think once you kind of pick twice a month and stuck to it, that's like really where you start to see a lot of growth.
• 1:03:04
  Shay: So I really like you have a bigger message of like YouTube, just like all of this stuff, you can skin the cat in a million different ways.
• 1:03:15
  Shay: And so you can really decide, like for you and your gifts and your skills and the business that you want to run or whatever impact you want to make, structure the channel to be about that and less about what you think is gonna work.
• 1:03:28
  Shay: Like there's so many instances in your story where you're like, well, I was told that this and this was the best practice, but that didn't work for me and it didn't light me up.
• 1:03:36
  Shay: And back to our other point, like I think what gets people to the channel and what keeps people on the channel is you are really lit up about what you are saying.
• 1:03:45
  Shay: You're excited to share it.
• 1:03:47
  Shay: That energy, that human, that's what connects the other human.
• 1:03:50
  Shay: So if you're just trying to like force yourself to do this stuff and you don't want to do it and you don't even want to talk about this stuff, it it that energy carries through.
• 1:03:59
  Shay: So I really think it's important to set this up in a way that works for you.
• 1:04:04
  Shay: And I love your story as an example of like, I listened to some best practices, but I also didn't listen to the ones that didn't work for me.
• 1:04:11
  Shay: And ultimately that was the right decision.
• 1:04:13
  Shay: So I think that just like be consistent and make it work for you.
• 1:04:16
  Shay: I think was really powerful.
• 1:04:17
  Shay: I'm taking a look at my notes here.
• 1:04:19
  Shay: Oh, what questions are people asking?
• 1:04:23
  Shay: If you don't have like you're at a cool point now, and I get annoyed with creators at your point where they're like, well, I just answer questions that my list is sending me.
• 1:04:31
  Shay: And it's like, okay, well, what the fuck do you do if you don't have a list?
• 1:04:34
  Shay: And I loved how you answered that question.
• 1:04:36
  Shay: I'm in so many Facebook groups.
• 1:04:38
  Shay: I see people asking questions.
• 1:04:40
  Shay: There's like a timeliness to this, you know, like what are the big topics going on?
• 1:04:44
  Shay: I'm in the reselling world.
• 1:04:45
  Shay: So like eBay makes a change.
• 1:04:47
  Shay: Now everyone is asking questions about this topic.
• 1:04:50
  Shay: I see it, you know.
• 1:04:51
  Shay: So I think there's a bit of like, if you don't have people asking you questions, go to where they are asking questions.
• 1:04:58
  Shay: People are asking questions on the internet, asking questions.
• 1:05:01
  Shay: You can find some questions, but I think tying your content to what questions you know are being asked right now in this moment that you feel lit up by.
• 1:05:12
  Shay: I think that's kind of the recipe, right?
• 1:05:14
  Shay: It's a bit of what do your people want, but also what do you want to talk about?
• 1:05:17
  Shay: So I really like how you're thinking about like getting topics from the source, from the human.
• 1:05:24
  Shay: And then you bring in the data.
• 1:05:25
  Shay: So we get an idea for a topic.
• 1:05:27
  Shay: We know people are asking about this.
• 1:05:28
  Shay: Okay, now what keywords have we seen that people are associating with this topic?
• 1:05:33
  Shay: So again, human first, data to kind of support it.
• 1:05:36
  Shay: And then the other piece we talked a lot about is just like fall in love with the process.
• 1:05:40
  Shay: I think the whole thing about make this work for you is again that long game idea.
• 1:05:45
  Shay: You're you're in this for the long haul.
• 1:05:47
  Shay: It's got to work for you, or else you're gonna hate yourself.
• 1:05:50
  Shay: So, like, how could you fall in love with the process of sharing, of getting your word out there, and then kind of detach from how it all comes together?
• 1:05:58
  Shay: So, so those are my some.
• 1:06:00
  Shay: Of my takeaways, but I'm wondering, like, from your perspective, like, what did I miss?
• 1:06:03
  Shay: What questions didn't I ask?
• 1:06:05
  Shay: Like, what do you want people to know about YouTube or building a YouTube channel?
• 1:06:09
  Mariah: Yeah, I feel like if you're curious about it, just fucking try it.
• 1:06:16
  Mariah: Who gives a shit?
• 1:06:17
  Mariah: You don't have to sign up to do it for the next 12 years, but you're gonna learn something about yourself.
• 1:06:22
  Mariah: I think that that's what happens.
• 1:06:24
  Mariah: And obviously, it's like as business owners, we're juggling 45 things.
• 1:06:28
  Mariah: Often, you know, it's like I have a membership, I'm creating content, I have consulting clients, I'm working with brands, like I have a husband that I really enjoy hanging out with, like I'm growing a baby right now.
• 1:06:38
  Mariah: Like I'm juggling a whole lot of different things here.
• 1:06:41
  Mariah: And I know that you have to kind of choose wisely, but I would say, can you carve out two hours?
• 1:06:49
  Mariah: Create a mock YouTube video.
• 1:06:52
  Mariah: You don't even have to publish it.
• 1:06:54
  Mariah: Just see, like, if you did create a YouTube video, what would it be about?
• 1:06:58
  Mariah: And then just allow yourself to have fun with it.
• 1:07:01
  Mariah: And then I also think so, like you shared that you published like your first long form content not long ago.
• 1:07:09
  Mariah: And it's funny because I was watching that and I made my husband watch it, and I was like, this bitch waited too long.
• 1:07:15
  Mariah: It wasn't cringy at all.
• 1:07:18
  Mariah: There wasn't one second where I was like, damn, she should have done this better.
• 1:07:22
  Mariah: And so when I see it and I'm watching that, I go, She should have started this two years ago.
• 1:07:27
  Mariah: She waited too long.
• 1:07:29
  Mariah: And so that's kind of the whole thing is like, how can you enjoy, like, how can you learn through the process?
• 1:07:34
  Mariah: And I think it was the very first episode that we had this season of like climbing cringe mountain.
• 1:07:38
  Mariah: Like, how can you be fucking cringy?
• 1:07:40
  Mariah: Like, my first video, I didn't have my face, my second video I did, and I am extremely orange, and I am living at my parents' house, and behind me is like this mysterious black curtain, and the back there was my craft closet and my sewing machine, and I have like fucking shitty stuffed animals on like the thing behind.
• 1:08:01
  Mariah: Like, it was not good at all, but I had to do that in order to get to where I am right now.
• 1:08:10
  Mariah: And so if you have this, damn, I think I maybe want to start a YouTube channel, then just fucking try it two hours.
• 1:08:18
  Mariah: Give yourself two hours to just play and just see, or even do some research.
• 1:08:22
  Mariah: Hey, what would I create that YouTube?
• 1:08:24
  Mariah: Just start start typing around, get a little inspired, and just allow yourself to play with it and to get better with it.
• 1:08:32
  Mariah: Like in the beginning, your videos are not gonna be edited great, they're gonna be really fucking shitty.
• 1:08:37
  Mariah: You're not gonna have a channel trailer, you're not gonna have a good intro or a good outro, and you know what?
• 1:08:43
  Mariah: Nobody gives a shit.
• 1:08:45
  Mariah: Nobody, not one person.
• 1:08:48
  Mariah: I want literally like there's actually one of my YouTube videos from 2017 that still gets views, and I shudder every single time.
• 1:08:57
  Mariah: That video is still making me money, which is another thing for YouTube.
• 1:09:01
  Mariah: Like, I have videos that have made me five grand, literally from creating a video that took me 20 minutes.
• 1:09:12
  Shay: I guess like typically it's up and down, but the longevity and the ever-greatness of those videos is insane.
• 1:09:18
  Mariah: It's insane, it's absolutely insane.
• 1:09:20
  Mariah: And so I I have a video from 2017 that still gets views, and I absolutely shudder, and I can see how many subscribers that video is driving.
• 1:09:27
  Mariah: It's still driving subscribers to my channel.
• 1:09:29
  Mariah: People do not give a shit.
• 1:09:32
  Mariah: We are our own worst critic, always and forever.
• 1:09:36
  Mariah: Can you just fucking play?
• 1:09:38
  Mariah: You're gonna learn something about yourself, and you know what?
• 1:09:40
  Mariah: Maybe you'll learn that you fucking hate YouTube, and then you never have to think about it again.
• 1:09:47
  Mariah: Not even now you know, you don't have to waste any more brain space to be like, well, could I, should I, would I type situation for me.
• 1:09:57
  Mariah: I felt so awkward and hated it, and that's what made me addicted to it because I didn't want to be bad at it.
• 1:10:09
  Shay: That's good.
• 1:10:10
  Shay: Yeah, I want to share something like what Mariah said.
• 1:10:14
  Shay: The way we started making content actually began like maybe three to four months ago.
• 1:10:20
  Shay: And we Bobby and I were like, all right, the idea of making a YouTube video feels really overwhelming.
• 1:10:25
  Shay: Like that's a lot just to go from nothing to a YouTube video.
• 1:10:29
  Shay: So we started asking ourselves, like, okay, the people that are making videos, what actions are they doing?
• 1:10:35
  Shay: What kind of things are they doing just on a day-to-day basis?
• 1:10:38
  Shay: So we were like, well, they're they're shooting B-roll.
• 1:10:41
  Shay: You know, everywhere they go for us when we're going to estate sales or whatever, they're shooting little shots while they're out.
• 1:10:47
  Shay: So we literally just started with B Real.
• 1:10:49
  Shay: We were like, okay, we feel like we could do that.
• 1:10:51
  Shay: So we just started shooting little shots and we put them in a Google folder every like once a week.
• 1:10:56
  Shay: I just dump them in there.
• 1:10:57
  Shay: And they were like, okay, well, what else do content creators do?
• 1:10:59
  Shay: Oh, well, they take their little shots and they learn how to edit and they put them together into a video.
• 1:11:04
  Shay: Okay, well, maybe we could play around with editing.
• 1:11:06
  Shay: So we played around with editing and we did edit a few videos that we didn't even share to Mariah's point.
• 1:11:12
  Shay: Like, you can create without sharing.
• 1:11:15
  Shay: I think we forget that.
• 1:11:16
  Shay: Like you can just create to create to see if you like it and see if you enjoy it.
• 1:11:19
  Shay: So literally, there were months and months and months of Bobby and I just taking the babyest of steps because we knew that those actions were actions that like future us would be taking.
• 1:11:31
  Shay: So it and we just layered it on.
• 1:11:33
  Shay: And for me, it's like a capacity building exercise.
• 1:11:36
  Shay: Like, I need, okay, I had enough space for this this week.
• 1:11:38
  Shay: Maybe next week I'll have space for a little bit more.
• 1:11:40
  Shay: Maybe next week I'll have space for a little bit more.
• 1:11:42
  Shay: You know, it gets to a point where I'm like, oh, I need an intro for my videos.
• 1:11:46
  Shay: Okay, let's make an intro.
• 1:11:47
  Shay: What would that sound like?
• 1:11:48
  Shay: So it was literally just like layering the baby steps as small as we could make them until we finally had a video we felt really cool about sharing.
• 1:11:57
  Shay: And that was our process, right?
• 1:11:59
  Shay: Like some people hop on hit play, throw it up.
• 1:12:01
  Shay: That's great too.
• 1:12:02
  Shay: Again, it comes back to like, how does this work for you in a sustainable way?
• 1:12:08
  Shay: Because again, it is the long game.
• 1:12:10
  Shay: For me, I can't just go from zero to 60.
• 1:12:12
  Shay: I really have to like step by step work my capacity up, work my confidence up, and get there.
• 1:12:18
  Shay: And so I love the message of this of like, slice and does slice and dice it how you want, baby.
• 1:12:24
  Shay: You gotta make it work for you.
• 1:12:25
  Shay: That's the only thing that is sustainable at the end of the day.
• 1:12:29
  Shay: Um, Mariah, thank you so much.
• 1:12:31
  Shay: Like, I'm feeling jazzed.
• 1:12:32
  Shay: I feel like this was really insightful.
• 1:12:34
  Shay: Tell us about if we wanted to learn more about maybe researching keywords or other things like that.
• 1:12:41
  Shay: What could we find out from you?
• 1:12:43
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  Mariah: So obviously, I have a shit ton of YouTube videos on YouTube.
• 1:12:47
  Mariah: This is very meta.
• 1:12:48
  Mariah: Uh, so you can check out my channel.
• 1:12:49
  Mariah: You can just literally go to YouTube and search Mariah Magazine.
• 1:12:53
  Mariah: I should pop right up.
• 1:12:55
  Mariah: Um, I'm gonna be posting more videos about YouTube straight.
• 1:12:59
  Mariah: Like, this is the topic that people won't stop fucking asking me about.
• 1:13:02
  Mariah: And if I'm being honest, it's just like it's the breadcrumb that I've been ignoring.
• 1:13:08
  Mariah: Um, but it's like when people ask me to come on podcasts and stuff like that, and even like, I don't know, just friends asking me questions.
• 1:13:16
  Mariah: So many people are really interested in my YouTube channel.
• 1:13:18
  Mariah: So I'm gonna start sharing more videos over there.
• 1:13:20
  Mariah: But I actually do have a YouTube SEO checklist.
• 1:13:25
  Mariah: So I can link that in the show notes below.
• 1:13:27
  Mariah: It's a free checklist if you just want to take a look at it and like see what I pay attention to when it comes to YouTube SEO type stuff.
• 1:13:34
  Mariah: And also, actually, um fun fact, if you type in YouTube SEO checklist, I'm pretty sure that that checklist shows up on page one of Google.
• 1:13:44
  Mariah: So I put all of my freebies on like their own kind of like landing pages and kind of treat them as like little baby sales page type things.
• 1:13:53
  Mariah: And so you should be able to find it there too, which is pretty cool.
• 1:13:56
  Mariah: So I'm getting people on my email list that are interested in YouTube coming from Google, people that are interested coming from YouTube and all of that.
• 1:14:02
  Mariah: So you can definitely check that out.
• 1:14:04
  Mariah: But I mean, other than that, y'all, I mean, you should know where to find me.
• 1:14:08
  Mariah: But if you don't, also Mariah Magazine CO on Instagram, and that's it.
• 1:14:13
  Mariah: I mean, like LinkedIn is whatever.
• 1:14:16
  Shay: And we'll have all those links in the show notes.
• 1:14:19
  Shay: Okay, Mariah.
• 1:14:20
  Shay: We're at our final question, which you know what it is.
• 1:14:22
  Shay: But I am wondering what is sparking your curiosity lately?
• 1:14:26
  Shay: What renewables are you going down?
• 1:14:28
  Mariah: I feel like this is like an unfair question at this time.
• 1:14:30
  Mariah: It's birth.
• 1:14:31
  Mariah: I'm growing a human right now.
• 1:14:33
  Mariah: She's 27 weeks currently at the time of this recording, and she's starting to kick and starting to move.
• 1:14:39
  Mariah: And, you know, especially from what I went through in December, which we're gonna share in another podcast episode, um, being pregnant.
• 1:14:48
  Mariah: Like I still almost can't believe it.
• 1:14:51
  Mariah: And it's been an invitation to dive deeper into my different thought processes and how I think about things.
• 1:15:00
  Mariah: It's brought up some things, some conversations that I've been having with myself and like all of that.
• 1:15:06
  Mariah: It's changed the way that I look at the world a little bit, how I interact with people.
• 1:15:12
  Mariah: It's allowed me to give myself grace.
• 1:15:14
  Mariah: My favorite part is that it's allowed me to say no.
• 1:15:17
  Mariah: I'm saying no to new clients.
• 1:15:19
  Mariah: I got a wait list starting April 2027.
• 1:15:22
  Mariah: If you want to work with me one-on-one, like that's when I'm starting to take clients again.
• 1:15:25
  Mariah: Right now, I'm booked up with these brand partnerships with YouTube, like with my membership and everything.
• 1:15:31
  Mariah: Um, I'm booked up for one-on-one stuff until April, which feels really good.
• 1:15:34
  Mariah: But like in that time frame, I was talking to a friend.
• 1:15:37
  Mariah: She um, she's due like five days after me.
• 1:15:40
  Mariah: And I was like, hey, like what kind of education have you, like, are you signed up for?
• 1:15:45
  Mariah: You know, because just because I'm curious.
• 1:15:46
  Mariah: And she was like, Oh, me and my husband have like a like a four-hour class at the hospital.
• 1:15:51
  Mariah: And I was like, Oh, she was like, What about you?
• 1:15:54
  Mariah: And I was like, I've signed up for 30 hours of birth education.
• 1:15:56
  Mariah: So it's just it's the rabbit hole that I'm in.
• 1:15:58
  Mariah: I want to understand my body.
• 1:16:00
  Mariah: I believe that like my body was created to do this.
• 1:16:03
  Mariah: And so, how can I get my mind out of the way so that my body can do what it's already doing?
• 1:16:12
  Mariah: I don't even have to think about like the fact that my baby brain is developing right now.
• 1:16:17
  Mariah: I literally just have to eat well and keep moving my body.
• 1:16:20
  Mariah: And my body is so fucking smart and intelligent and like what a gift.
• 1:16:23
  Mariah: And it's really shifted the perspective that I have with my body.
• 1:16:26
  Mariah: So I would say birth education, there's always so much to learn.
• 1:16:29
  Mariah: And it's a little frustrating sometimes with the lack of information or the fact that I have to like uh beg and plead for some information and that all of this isn't given freely through the systems that we have.
• 1:16:43
  Mariah: But regardless, I'm very grateful that like I feel very supported throughout the education process of this.
• 1:16:50
  Shay: That's so good.
• 1:16:50
  Shay: Thanks for sharing that.
• 1:16:52
  Shay: Um, all right, friends.
• 1:16:53
  Shay: This is an incredible episode.
• 1:16:54
  Shay: If you're with us here, thanks for sticking around.
• 1:16:57
  Shay: We will make sure to share all of Mariah's links and resources in the show notes.
• 1:17:01
  Shay: So head on over there.
• 1:17:03
  Shay: I think we are ready to close this episode down.
• 1:17:06
  Shay: So remember, friends, you have the power to create whatever the fuck you want.
• 1:17:10
  Shay: Follow the nudge, ask questions, and let curiosity guide the way.
• 1:17:14
  Shay: We'll see you in the next episode.