Latest / Gimbal Podcast / How Did Iman Gadzhi Become YouTube's Top Educator?

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How Did Iman Gadzhi Become YouTube's Top Educator? · Gimbal Podcast

0:00
Do you remember some of the things that didn't quite work?
0:02
Philosophically, some people would say it's impossible.
0:04
What makes it good than now?
0:05
In this business, we are essentially making people famous, making people popular.
0:11
Before Dan Martell and Alex Hermosi, the biggest name in YouTube education was Eman Gazi.
0:17
How did his content stick better than anybody else's on the platform?
0:20
Well, to answer that question, we've brought in Benjamin Grouw,
0:24
his former head of design during that time.
0:26
Benjamin, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated strategists on all of YouTube,
0:31
and today we learn from him the secrets inside Eman's big overwhelming success.
0:36
Benjamin, you worked with Eman Gazi before his big social media blow-up.
0:42
What was it like before?
0:43
And then tell me the story all the way up to him becoming the biggest name on YouTube education.
0:49
After just trying some business ventures on my own,
0:52
I saw that he was looking for a thumbnail editor.
0:55
And to be honest, I never designed a thumbnail in my life before.
0:59
But I thought he's someone who can definitely teach a lot of things.
1:03
He's someone who has a lot of growth potential.
1:05
And a project that could be very interesting to John.
1:08
I just honestly went for it.
1:10
I designed some thumbnails.
1:11
Looking at them now, they're terrible.
1:13
I could show them to you.
1:14
They're very, very clever.
1:15
I kind of lose my reputation.
1:17
But it wasn't the time on YouTube.
1:19
You have to think that there were no thumbnail designers,
1:21
like professional thumbnail designers.
1:23
There was no such thing.
1:24
There were no one that would dedicate to even scripting or whatever.
1:28
It was like a whole thing that was just getting started.
1:31
Maybe on some niches, like Mr. Beast or more top, let's say content,
1:38
there was a little bit of some people working in this stuff,
1:42
but in the business basis was completely unknown, right?
1:45
So I just assigned some thumbnails.
1:47
And I was selected to work with him.
1:48
I think there were like 2000 people that applied to work with him.
1:52
And three of us were selected.
1:53
It was a guy from Morocco, Cornwall,
1:55
another guy from Togo,
1:57
Coruscita, which are people that I've worked with for three years.
2:00
And now it's all best in the space.
2:02
So I want to show them all as well because they deserve it.
2:04
And then it was me.
2:06
At the moment that I joined Iman,
2:08
he had 300,000 subscribers, right?
2:11
Which, again, perspective is quite a big following.
2:14
But nothing compared to what he has now.
2:17
Something that puts this into perspective is that I remember exactly the call
2:22
and that was maybe like one or two months it's working with him.
2:24
Where he just joined one of our calls and he said,
2:26
guys, you won't believe what happened today.
2:28
I was like, what happened?
2:30
I was in South Africa, I went for a dinner,
2:32
and someone came to my table and he said,
2:35
human, got you, right?
2:36
And he asked me for a picture.
2:38
And I remember that when we were like, wait,
2:41
okay, this is funny.
2:42
He's been actually a picture outside of like his country
2:44
for the first time ever.
2:46
Fast forward a year later or two years later
2:49
when we were running the marathon in London.
2:51
And we were walking with him around Winter Wonderland.
2:54
There wasn't a time every like half a minute
2:56
or every minute that people wouldn't stop
2:58
in the group be sure.
2:58
So just to connect the dots on these things,
3:00
we can get into technical stuff as well.
3:02
But I think that just seeing how he's public,
3:07
let's say, appeal change into such a short time is,
3:11
yeah, it's crazy to be honest.
3:13
Yeah, very, very cool.
3:15
What was the come up like in between those moments?
3:19
So between 300,000 and somebody asking for his photo
3:23
and then getting his photo, getting asked for his photo
3:26
every 30 seconds, what happened in between there?
3:29
I think there's a combination of factors
3:32
that really play into his success.
3:34
The first one is having a very great team.
3:38
I think Iman is a great mind when it comes to content
3:41
and when it comes to what he does.
3:43
And we can get into that more in detail later.
3:45
But I think part of his success also, it's his team.
3:50
When you see these YouTubers usually,
3:53
and also back in the day,
3:54
you were talking about three years ago, right?
3:57
Almost four I would say.
3:58
Many of these YouTubers was maybe like one person
4:00
or two people working on projects.
4:02
Since the moment that I joined,
4:04
they were already maybe like 12 people.
4:06
Right now, there's probably like 60, right?
4:09
So it might seem like not a lot,
4:11
but at that time to join someone who was working on YouTube
4:14
and already had 12 people ready to just go all in.
4:18
It was one of the big reasons why he won, I think, in YouTube.
4:22
So I've always said that being part of a team like this
4:26
is the clothes that you experience
4:28
to being part of a professional football team
4:30
where everyone that is working with you
4:33
or you're working to either towards one goal
4:36
is the guy who made it in like their town
4:39
or their space or whatever, right?
4:40
So for example, these two guys that I work with in design,
4:44
they came from countries where they don't speak English,
4:46
they had to learn English,
4:48
just going on the internet,
4:50
figuring out how to do this footage of things,
4:52
thumbnails and whatnot.
4:53
And out of the people that they know,
4:54
they're the ones who made it.
4:56
Same with people in copyrighting,
4:58
marketing, content or whatever,
5:00
I think having a team of killers really was
5:03
one of the success factors.
5:04
Another one, of course,
5:06
is a man leading the direction of the content.
5:09
I think there's many of the videos like,
5:12
let's say, how the VSL was structured,
5:14
the dopamine detox,
5:16
monk mode, many of these initiatives
5:19
were by man, right?
5:21
Like he invented that terminology?
5:23
Well, let's say that he popularized it, right?
5:25
Sure, sure, sure, okay, okay.
5:27
Can you explain what it is?
5:29
Essentially, monk mode, what it is,
5:30
is a protocol that lasted at least 21 days
5:33
where what you want to do is strip yourself
5:36
out of alcohol weed,
5:38
everything that's just making you not focus.
5:40
There's three core pillars,
5:42
and there's three others that you can choose,
5:44
or like four, just you can do it a little bit as you want,
5:47
but they include meditation,
5:49
trying to read and whatnot.
5:51
So actually, monk mode,
5:53
what inspired him is that for someone,
5:56
I think it applies now more to everyday people
5:59
but at the beginning,
6:00
the idea was like for someone
6:01
ultra successful and ultra achieving
6:03
at a young age,
6:04
it's very hard to stay focused.
6:06
So you always need some months where
6:09
you're acting like a monk, right?
6:10
So you have no distractions,
6:12
you just focus on work,
6:13
you just focus on your physique,
6:15
on your mental health and whatnot,
6:17
and this is essentially what it is.
6:19
Like this is now common knowledge,
6:21
general culture, right?
6:23
But at the moment, this was groundbreaking.
6:25
There wasn't a lot of people who were focusing on
6:28
you have to be disciplined,
6:29
you have to just turn off your phone while you're working,
6:32
you have to just reduce your dopamine inputs
6:35
just so you can be productive.
6:36
So all like some of these things
6:39
really played into his success.
6:41
Something that also help him
6:44
like just rise to the top
6:46
is that for some reason,
6:48
many of these things as he was preaching
6:50
were unknown before he was famous.
6:53
So there's this book called The Tipping Point.
6:57
I don't know if you guys read it.
6:59
Of course.
7:00
I am not a business book cognizant.
7:02
This is the only business book that I've read in my life.
7:04
So I don't pretend here to be all cultured on this sort of books.
7:08
But the point is that there's a concept
7:10
on this book called The Law of the Fuel, right?
7:14
Where essentially the book explains how things go viral
7:16
and it says that it's impossible for something to go viral
7:19
unless it has a hard nucleus of people
7:22
who support this to death, right?
7:25
You can see these, for example,
7:26
I'm from Barcelona and I love sports.
7:28
So sorry if I'm quoting sports all the time on this interview.
7:32
But if you go to the stadium
7:33
when there's not the cheering section,
7:37
which might be like 200 people,
7:38
even though there's 80,000 people in this stadium,
7:40
the stadium is somewhat silent.
7:41
But when there's 200 people who are living the chance,
7:44
everyone just follows along.
7:45
So you will normally have the idea that
7:48
in order for something to move or go viral,
7:50
you need a lot of people.
7:51
But what you actually need,
7:53
it's very few people who are hardcore fans.
7:55
And Iman built that base in the years prior
7:59
to all of these concepts,
8:01
let's say, becoming mainstream.
8:02
So I remember in 2022, a little bit before I joined
8:06
because I was told about this.
8:07
He had a conversation with Amara
8:10
and they discussed how he should change his dressing
8:13
and the way that he's perceived, right?
8:15
Because he was becoming more than you
8:18
to where he was becoming an actual business owner, right?
8:21
So he started dressing with brands like Laura Piana
8:24
and all this old money or whatever you want to call it,
8:29
and suddenly six months later,
8:31
this is trending just globally.
8:33
Because this guy has been saying these six months before that,
8:37
he has the credibility and he's seen as the one doing this thing.
8:41
Same with the James Bond edits.
8:44
No one was doing them back then.
8:45
And he's one of the first ones to incorporate them.
8:48
So we're talking about not only one thing,
8:50
we're talking about dopamine details,
8:52
monk more, old money, the edits.
8:55
But now these are all concepts
8:57
that were incorporated in the content structure
9:00
before they were, let's say, mainstream.
9:03
And then you can say it was luck.
9:04
You can say we were us who just shifted the market.
9:09
Maybe it's a part of this and a part of that.
9:11
But the point is that at the end of the,
9:14
all of these factors just helping grow massively
9:18
with a lot of credibility, I think.
9:19
That's so fascinating.
9:21
I mean, there's a lot to unpack there.
9:23
Firstly, you mentioned dopamine detox and monk mode
9:26
being a part of his programs
9:29
before the big YouTube success, right?
9:32
You're talking about like the 300,000 people
9:34
that he had before you joined the team.
9:36
They were already bought into this kind of messaging, right?
9:39
Yes, 100%.
9:41
I'm curious.
9:42
Do you have any idea where those contrarian opinions
9:46
came from or those frameworks came from?
9:49
I think for someone with the upbringing that he had,
9:52
there's many of these beliefs that just come naturally,
9:56
right?
9:56
For someone who had a little bit of a troubled childhood
10:00
like he had and he had to grow up with his mom,
10:02
you quickly need to become the man of the house,
10:05
the one who provides and what not.
10:06
And many of these things are strictly linked to that.
10:08
So I would say there's some influence on that.
10:10
Also, the people that he has surrounded himself
10:13
with many are self-made entrepreneurs
10:16
or people who know that at the end of the day,
10:18
your success depends on you essentially.
10:21
And many of these things are just rooted in this belief.
10:25
There's a friend of the show named Sheldon Bishop
10:28
and he came up with this amazing title.
10:31
It was the name and claim method.
10:34
And the whole theory behind it is a lot of people
10:38
kind of say similar things to each other,
10:40
but you want to build it into a framework
10:42
that you can teach other people.
10:43
And so you take stuff that exists out in the world.
10:47
Like, for example, with monk mode,
10:49
you know, the idea of having extreme focus,
10:52
not exactly the newest thing in the world.
10:54
Like, it's very similar to getting into flow state, in my opinion,
10:57
you know, I mean, just being focused
10:59
is a good basic principle.
11:00
But I think the fact that Iman named it monk mode
11:04
and then kind of popularize this framework around it as monk mode.
11:07
I think that, if I had to guess,
11:09
probably helped it gain a lot of traction.
11:11
I'm seeing this a lot with YouTube educators
11:15
where they come up with a framework
11:17
and then they like name it something.
11:19
And I think that is like a really valuable tip
11:21
because it's one thing to say,
11:23
I'm going to give you seven ways to be more productive.
11:26
Like, I don't think that's as sticky.
11:27
And as to your point about people getting behind it
11:30
and supporting the messaging,
11:31
I think what's its name something?
11:33
I think it takes on a whole new life of its own.
11:35
A hundred percent.
11:36
I think this is also one of the things
11:39
that help can grow as we're discussing before.
11:43
Because, as you said,
11:44
just wanting to be focused,
11:46
just removing yourself from all the structure.
11:48
I don't think this is a concept that you might not actually invent.
11:51
But the packaging of something so simple
11:56
and the naming is also very good monk mode.
11:58
Like, you would know what it means
12:00
even if someone doesn't explain it to you, right?
12:02
Or even opening detox.
12:03
These are all formulas where, as you said,
12:06
you're taking something that already exists
12:08
because let's be honest,
12:09
it's very hard to create something that doesn't exist.
12:12
Philosophically, some people would say it's impossible.
12:15
We're just taking things that we learn that we see
12:18
and then putting them together.
12:20
And when you give it the right name,
12:22
this is so much power.
12:23
One, if you look at his events,
12:25
and maybe I will spoil these with you,
12:27
so one day say you will not be able to just unheared, right?
12:31
But in all these events, many of them,
12:33
like the success of why he makes people feel so related
12:37
to what he's saying,
12:39
is because he comes up with a concept
12:41
or like explain something
12:42
and he gives it a very good name for that.
12:45
For example, our best event,
12:47
which was the first event that we ever did,
12:49
if I'm not mistaken,
12:50
maybe in terms of numbers,
12:51
it wasn't in terms of social repercussion,
12:54
it was 100%, it was called digital renaissance.
12:57
Like you don't even have to know what this is, right?
13:02
We're building a new revolution
13:04
with new thinkers, new artists, and whatever,
13:07
and it's the digital one.
13:09
Who doesn't want to be part of the digital renaissance, right?
13:11
Sure, sure, sure.
13:13
Let's say, hey, you want to start creating
13:15
on this new age on the internet
13:17
or not just be a modern time,
13:19
forward, whatever.
13:20
These are not as convincing,
13:22
but something like digital renaissance,
13:24
it's just something that you just want to join it.
13:26
You know what I mean?
13:27
Sure.
13:28
So the naming and claiming method,
13:30
it transcends being YouTube videos.
13:32
It also goes into conferences or meetups
13:35
or just basically everything that's in his teaching.
13:37
That is really fascinating to me.
13:39
I want to talk about the editing a little bit
13:41
because I started out in this industry as a video editor
13:43
and I was focused in the YouTube education world
13:46
and Iman really transformed what editing,
13:50
what good editing was on YouTube
13:52
because it wasn't just a bunch of Mr. B's,
13:54
punch ins and punch outs and fast whips and stuff.
13:58
Iman created like a very distinct visual style.
14:03
I want to ask you about what that was like,
14:04
where that idea came from,
14:06
and the impact that it had on the channel.
14:08
This was one of the things that also had a lot of impact,
14:11
not only in growth but also in terms of credibility, right?
14:15
Because as I told you before,
14:17
there weren't a lot of people
14:20
who had like massive themes or investment
14:22
behind their brands.
14:23
Now you look at a YouTuber and you assume
14:25
that they have a creative strategist,
14:27
a download designer, a video editor or whatnot.
14:30
Before I know that there were some,
14:32
even some sections on YouTube where it was taboo
14:34
saying that you didn't edit your videos
14:36
because it would look like low effort, right?
14:38
Sure.
14:39
You're trying to buy fame.
14:40
People would understand this.
14:41
But I think Iman just saw the potential of that.
14:45
And with very, very talented people,
14:47
some of them actually working,
14:48
some of them are some of the biggest names
14:50
in the industry when it comes to editing and video and whatnot.
14:54
I'm lucky to be friends with them
14:55
because they explained a little bit
14:57
their creative process and you can always learn from them.
15:00
But Iman has a very good creative direction,
15:03
but there's also the fact that there's people
15:06
that similarly on a football match,
15:08
when you're like losing zero one,
15:10
and then you need someone to score a goal.
15:12
And then that just someone does something incredible
15:15
and they just turn the match around.
15:17
With editing it was a little bit the same.
15:19
There was one guy who joined and then he presented
15:21
this new style with animations
15:23
and everyone was freaking out like,
15:25
how the hell is he doing this?
15:26
So of course we incorporated it
15:28
and all the other editors wanted to learn
15:30
and there was the other guy who said,
15:32
I'm either gonna die trying
15:34
where I'm gonna become like the next top editor
15:36
for Iman Gachi and he became the one
15:39
that started with all these 3D effects
15:42
like M Blender, incorporating Blender into editing
15:45
and whatnot.
15:46
I think part of that was a lot of trying
15:48
and failing as well and a lot of creative direction.
15:52
But as I said, there's an undeniable fact
15:54
that very talented people took a risk
15:57
in just proposing something and it worked.
15:59
And I can see that in the similar way,
16:02
it worked like it was the same for me
16:04
in the design department where when you're trying
16:08
to lead an industry,
16:09
especially one where there would be no references,
16:12
anything to copy, like now you would say,
16:14
oh, there was an outlier with this thumbnail,
16:16
whatever, that wasn't a case but then.
16:18
It's really hard to just use sometimes
16:22
how the tendency of, okay,
16:23
because I don't know what's ahead,
16:24
you have to go tip-toeing.
16:26
But with Imani was quite the opposite.
16:28
We were like, let's try everything
16:30
and let's see what wins.
16:32
And with the design, it was the same.
16:34
We started being the first ones
16:35
that would incorporate icons in the thumbnails.
16:38
Before, as there would be no one
16:40
who would be doing this iconized thumbnails
16:42
and whatnot, after everyone copied that,
16:45
we said, okay, that's something else.
16:47
And we came up with the content
16:48
with the wide background, right?
16:50
So we started using wide background
16:52
instead of the normal background
16:53
and then hyper realistic combinations and whatnot.
16:56
So it's a little bit of intuition.
16:59
It's a little bit of creativity as well.
17:02
But it's a lot of just not being afraid
17:04
of taking these risks
17:06
and not being afraid of being the first one
17:08
to just try things.
17:10
Of course, that comes with the risk.
17:12
And there's something that you produce,
17:13
that are not like up to the expectation
17:16
of the people that are watching
17:18
or some thumbnails that will not have
17:19
the highest click-through rate.
17:20
But I think that that time is the closest you get
17:25
to, for example, advertising in the 80s, right?
17:28
Where they would just try everything
17:30
because advertising was new and it would all explode.
17:33
So it was locally for us.
17:36
That's one of the things that really led
17:38
to the growth of a man, for sure.
17:40
I wanna ask about some of the ones that didn't work
17:43
because you've pointed out some staples on YouTube now,
17:48
like using icons in the thumbnail,
17:50
using a white background was a huge trend a couple of years ago.
17:53
It's still very popular.
17:54
Do you remember some of the things
17:56
that didn't quite work?
17:58
That was not in the beginning.
18:00
Really, really the beginning,
18:01
like the first week or so.
18:03
We would try to make him out
18:04
with a little bit of a bigger head
18:06
to see if, like, get people's attention.
18:08
Actually, you did not work.
18:13
Some others, for example,
18:15
would try like very complex thumbnails.
18:18
I remember one that I did where it was in Man as Thanos
18:22
with, like, all the AI, different programs here.
18:25
I think it would, like, different gems.
18:26
It was more Mr. B style,
18:28
so definitely it was not very much on-brand.
18:31
But we're always keen to just try and stuff to see what's...
18:36
But I would say that given the fact
18:38
that many of the people on the team,
18:39
most of the people are very kind
18:41
that it's usually hard to come up with something
18:44
that it's not very good, you know what I mean?
18:46
How did Imon react to some of the ideas?
18:50
Like, was he very open to trying anything?
18:53
I think that as time went by,
18:56
he was a little bit more conservative
18:58
because you would also be labeled more easily people.
19:02
So you could be confusing the target audience
19:04
not because he was afraid of new ideas.
19:06
But if, for example, now he posts a video
19:10
with thumbnail on more of a Mr. B style,
19:13
the audience is so educated on what these means
19:16
that if the video is not in the style of Mr. B's,
19:20
which will probably not be,
19:21
it will just confuse the audience
19:23
and they will just not click or they will just jump off.
19:26
So I think that we have a better understanding
19:29
of how audiences react to different packaging.
19:32
There's a more clear path of what to do.
19:35
But especially in the beginning,
19:36
when there was less people and everything was new,
19:39
I think he was very open to many ideas.
19:43
And that's also one of the reasons why
19:45
all these new styles and of editing, thumbnails,
19:49
short form or whatever came to be the strategies
19:51
that we use because there was also a lot of,
19:54
well, there was always a lot of creative freedom
19:56
which is something that I really appreciate it.
19:58
One example of this is that we started doing
20:01
retesting or rehashing, right?
20:04
When no one else was doing it,
20:05
essentially what rehashing is that
20:07
you take an old video, change the thumbnail,
20:10
sometimes a title, but at the time it was only the thumbnail
20:12
in order to just update the CTR
20:15
and get a higher percentage, right?
20:17
It's interesting.
20:18
It sounds like, like when I think about him on God's E,
20:22
I think of a very calculated man and YouTube channel.
20:28
And it's interesting to hear your perspective
20:30
because it sounds like part of the winning strategy
20:33
was being very open to new ideas.
20:37
And one thing that I've learned is new ideas
20:40
when they work really well, you, they become part of you.
20:43
Like, you know, monk mode is now part of Imangazi
20:46
and iconography and thumbnails are now part of Imangazi.
20:49
But when they don't work out,
20:52
people just forget about them.
20:53
Like the penalty is not as bad as the reward is good.
20:57
Like it's not like people are like,
20:58
oh, he completely messed up and it blew up his entire image.
21:01
Like it's just something that gets brushed out of the rug
21:03
and they move on to something else.
21:05
100% and especially when you're in that face
21:07
where you're growing and you see this potential growth,
21:11
can I say my screen or you?
21:13
Yeah, yeah, go for it.
21:14
So what I'm gonna show you right now about rehashing
21:17
is part of a study that I did for Imang
21:20
where I took all the thumbnails that we ever rehashed
21:24
and I tried to see patterns so we could understand
21:27
how like the thumbnails,
21:30
so try to systemize a little bit the thumbnails that worked.
21:33
I actually called these document thumbnails that work
21:36
and I think it was shared in some of the masterminds
21:40
that Imang did, right?
21:42
But let me share this with you.
21:44
Okay, this is just one video
21:46
and it's a little bit of an old one.
21:47
But you were talking about things that made Imang grow.
21:51
At the moment, people, if you told people
21:54
that changing the thumbnail on your video would make you grow,
21:57
they would think that you're stupid,
21:59
especially because there was not a thing
22:01
as a thumbnail designer.
22:02
But you can see here on the red dots,
22:05
this is when we changed the packaging of the video.
22:08
In this case, it's just 2022, October,
22:11
you can see the video's clearly flat,
22:14
not a lot of things, and then it just goes up.
22:17
And just going back to your question
22:19
to when should we change a, or rehash the video.
22:24
This was one of the indicators where after a growth,
22:27
the video would stabilize again,
22:29
we'd change it again and it's skyrocket once more.
22:33
You can see here the first variation
22:34
output form the original by 12%
22:37
and the second variation output form the original,
22:41
which was the previous one by 41%.
22:43
41% is the overall performance.
22:46
So that includes click-through-aid, watch-time-share,
22:50
and whatnot.
22:51
At the moment, we were using TubeBody,
22:53
which was the best.
22:55
At the moment, I think the thumbnail tester
22:56
is a little bit better than TubeBody,
22:58
as it gets you more data and faster.
23:00
But a thumbnail that performs 41% better
23:04
than the previous thumbnail gets you so many more views,
23:07
especially when you have momentum.
23:09
Of course, if you've got 20 views, 41% I might be,
23:13
let's say, I don't know.
23:15
My mats are not very good for me,
23:17
but let's say six views.
23:21
But if you're having like half a million views,
23:25
that is a lot more people than you're converting
23:27
that you're increasing subscribers.
23:28
And that's only for one video.
23:29
So if you do that for all the videos
23:32
that just create massive growth.
23:33
So as I was saying, we were approaching the end of the year
23:36
and we were usually rehearsing 10 videos per week.
23:39
And I said, hey, if we are testing eight videos per week
23:44
or 10 videos per week,
23:45
and we're getting extra one of subscribers,
23:47
and we're not getting, like,
23:49
we're just gonna miss the million followers
23:52
by the end of the year, let's say by 2000.
23:54
Why don't we just mass rehash everything?
23:58
Just sketch you like all the videos on the channel
24:00
at the moment, it was like maybe 50 or 60 videos.
24:03
And it was like, well, I mean, I haven't thought of that,
24:05
but let's give it a try.
24:06
Yeah, I just went.
24:08
I just rehashed all the videos of the channel.
24:12
I scheduled them for testing.
24:13
And at the end, we ended up reaching one million followers
24:17
on the second or the third of January.
24:18
So it wasn't on the first,
24:19
but definitely we sped up that growth
24:21
by maybe like two or three weeks, for sure.
24:24
That's so interesting.
24:25
I am convinced, like, I've had a few conversations
24:28
with these podcasts now.
24:29
And I think a lot of creators are thinking
24:32
about their next video so much
24:35
that it's very common to forget about the back catalog.
24:39
And after hearing from you, you know,
24:41
switching out thumbnails, that kind of thing,
24:43
being very thoughtful about content
24:44
that's already been made and then re-optimizing it,
24:47
you know, pairing that with some conversations
24:49
we've had from past podcasts,
24:50
I'm super convinced that this is like a big, big winning play.
24:54
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
24:56
Could you tell us a little bit about your strategy
24:58
for making new thumbnails?
24:59
Like, what makes a good thumbnail?
25:02
Really creative process, at least for me,
25:05
is a confusing thing because it's high for me to explain, right?
25:08
When you see a football player, it just makes a skill
25:10
where you can explain it once he's done it,
25:13
but beforehand, it's very hard to say,
25:15
oh, if you do this, you will get this result
25:17
and this will be successful, right?
25:19
So if you just get this console,
25:21
which is my problem, let's say, with outliers,
25:24
people who base themselves on outliers,
25:27
they're just removing the creativity
25:29
or the intuition that you get
25:31
from creating something that comes from you, right?
25:33
Which is what creates an outlier at the end of the day.
25:37
So I would say that definitely references
25:40
from day-to-day life are something that helped me.
25:43
So I love music, I love video.
25:46
I see a lot of things online,
25:48
connecting the dots we were saying before
25:50
is something that helps me.
25:51
But to be really honest with you, many times what I do,
25:55
it's just I just sit in front, I think,
25:57
like off the laptop, on a blank canvas, I think,
26:00
I get an idea, I try to execute,
26:02
and I'm like, oh, this terrible, let's try again.
26:04
And then I remove it, then I try again,
26:07
and maybe when I'm trying,
26:08
I just see it differently,
26:10
but I don't know how you also guys come up
26:13
with your creative process,
26:14
I will be very interested in knowing about that,
26:16
because for me, I know exactly what I have to do
26:19
in terms of creativity, like I know that thought process,
26:23
but I would know how to explain it,
26:26
or it transformed me into a mathematical formula, right?
26:30
See, okay, it's 30 seconds of thinking,
26:32
10 minutes of trying, and then,
26:35
you know, that's a little bit unsophable to be honest.
26:38
Then, do you think about like,
26:40
oh, the composition, like something has to be
26:43
the main focus, something has to be in the background,
26:46
like words, text, like what do you think about
26:49
as you go through the process of making it thumbnail?
26:51
All right, that's a very good question.
26:53
So I would separate these into two different categories.
26:57
The first one is the things that you know,
26:59
and things that you don't know.
27:00
When you're working with something that you don't know,
27:03
you just have to go with your intuition,
27:05
creativity, and maybe just find references online of,
27:08
or offline of other things that you like, right?
27:11
That was the case, for example, when we started
27:14
creating Vlogs for you, man, we had the same problem.
27:17
Okay, we have a structure that we know that works
27:19
for the sit-downs, now we're creating vlogs,
27:22
how do you create a thumbnail for a vlog?
27:24
Well, that's, you have to find things,
27:26
you have to try things, it's an avoidable
27:28
to make mistakes in that regard.
27:30
When it comes to proven structures that work,
27:33
and definitely, for example, for a sit-downs,
27:35
main subject usually in the middle or on the side,
27:37
unless you have something very big.
27:39
You divide the screen into thirds,
27:41
so vertically and horizontally.
27:43
So there should be always one of the thirds,
27:45
vertically, where you have the subject,
27:46
whether they're in the middle or in the sides,
27:48
and that two others that explain the rest of the story.
27:51
You don't repeat in the thumbnail
27:52
what you're putting in the title.
27:54
And I like to think these embassable terms,
27:56
where the title is the layup, the thumbnail is the dunk.
28:00
And if you aren't the same woman twice,
28:01
you're just not gonna work, right?
28:05
In terms of technical stuff,
28:06
things that I've learned,
28:08
usually you want the background to be a little bit less
28:10
contrasty than the subject.
28:13
So you separate them both,
28:14
and in this case, the subject always stands out.
28:16
Color combinations, let's say,
28:18
if you have a white background,
28:19
a black t-shirt works better.
28:21
Just small things like this.
28:22
At the beginning, as I said,
28:24
you just have to try all the color combinations.
28:26
Then it's sitting tweet if you have a black background,
28:29
maybe a black t-shirt can work,
28:31
but then you need to add an element behind him.
28:33
So he is separated from the background,
28:35
otherwise they just blend in.
28:37
What are some things that you never do?
28:39
Like, for example, making his head bigger.
28:43
One of the things what I said,
28:44
usually having the same content that you have in the title,
28:47
I have it in the thumbnail.
28:48
It's a big no go.
28:50
Text usually for me,
28:52
it's not something that I really like.
28:55
I know that for all the audiences,
28:57
text works very good.
28:58
So if you're working, let's say,
29:00
in just targeting people or 56 years old, that works.
29:04
So you have to do that.
29:05
Very saturated colors.
29:07
It's not something that I would recommend.
29:10
And talking about colors,
29:12
not having many colors is something
29:14
that really, really, really helps a thumbnail, usually.
29:18
Like simplifying your color palette.
29:20
Yeah, for example, I remember something
29:23
that the audience really liked in the beginning,
29:26
is when we changed the studio from whatever room
29:29
to that dark room with the blue light
29:32
and the red, the other one.
29:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:34
You would usually have then three or four colors in the thumbnail,
29:37
which would be whatever the t-shirt color is,
29:40
the background color, which is black and then red and blue.
29:43
And that just makes it so much easier.
29:46
Like, if you think about, let's say, Japan's flag,
29:49
it's very like the contrast is very big
29:51
because you only have like,
29:52
wide and a red circle, right?
29:56
Once you start adding many things to the thumbnail,
29:59
it's more difficult to make it stand out.
30:01
I have two thoughts on that.
30:03
The first is that oneof10.com put out a hundred page slideshow
30:07
about a month ago.
30:08
I'm not sure if you've seen it.
30:09
But it tested like, I think 100,000 different thumbnails.
30:13
And the core takeaway from reading the entire slideshow
30:17
was the simpler, the better, every single time.
30:20
The simpler of the title, the simpler of the thumbnail,
30:22
every single time, is always better.
30:25
And it sounds like you're saying,
30:26
be the Japanese flag, not whatever the opposite of that
30:30
is, not the crazy Nepalese flag, so to speak.
30:34
And then the other thing that I wanted to say was,
30:36
Patty Galloway, he teaches this,
30:38
where if you have a title and it's quite long,
30:41
this is to your point about putting the title
30:43
in the thumbnail, having the same text.
30:45
Patty says that a lot of people have two part titles,
30:48
where it says like one thing,
30:50
and then it says the second part of the title,
30:52
like there's a colon or in brackets or something like that.
30:54
Patty suggests to actually put the second part of the title
30:58
as the thumbnail text,
30:59
because then it kind of complements each other
31:01
a little bit better than putting the same thing.
31:04
A hundred percent.
31:06
Just to play a little bit devil's advocate here,
31:09
I will say that these markets are usually shifting so fast,
31:13
right, that everything that I'm saying today,
31:16
maybe in two weeks time is not useful.
31:18
Everything that we're commenting now that we're saying,
31:19
yes, this works, it might not work because as we said,
31:22
it's very difficult to put creativity
31:24
or in the way that people respond to things
31:26
in a mathematical formula, right?
31:28
But nonetheless, with everything that you said,
31:30
I would definitely agree.
31:32
There's a little bit of a problem with the fact
31:37
that simplicity, sometimes,
31:39
if it's not affected,
31:42
you're communicating not many things and wrong, right?
31:44
So that's something also that I've seen
31:47
with other creators that I've worked with,
31:49
where when simplicity is done very good, it's the best,
31:54
but if you don't do it very good sometimes,
31:56
it just doesn't necessarily perform as good.
31:59
And in this case, I would definitely have that in mind.
32:04
When it comes to the title thing that you said,
32:07
yeah, a hundred percent agree with that.
32:08
When you're making a thumbnail,
32:10
do you already have the title,
32:13
do you have a list of titles,
32:14
what do you have to go off of?
32:16
Like, is the video already made?
32:17
Is the video still an ideation?
32:19
Do you have a title?
32:20
I've read a lot about people who said that
32:23
there's one way of doing it or another,
32:26
but in my experience, especially with clients,
32:28
is that you usually get what you get, you know what I mean?
32:30
So some clients will just send you a video with a title
32:33
and then you have to send a thumbnail.
32:35
Some others will just send you a raw file
32:37
and say, please edit title and thumbnail
32:39
and then you just have to go for it.
32:42
It's my preference to usually go with a thumbnail first
32:46
because when I watch the video,
32:48
I will have an idea of what I want to communicate
32:51
and I feel like the thumbnail,
32:53
at least in my, it's more important to nail down
32:57
at the first because the title is much easier to change.
33:00
You know what I mean?
33:01
So I usually go for a thumbnail first,
33:02
but again, I don't think they're stride or wrong with this,
33:05
just whatever word to you.
33:06
I tend to agree.
33:07
I think there's a lot of pressure coming
33:09
from the Mr. Beast team to come up with a title and thumbnail
33:12
before doing anything else.
33:14
And like in the YouTube education world, particularly,
33:17
I don't think that's mandatory.
33:19
Maybe for Mr. Beast, it's mandatory
33:21
because it kind of sets the tone
33:23
for what the rest of the video's gonna be.
33:25
I don't know, I just don't fully agree with it,
33:27
but that's just my take.
33:29
Yeah, I mean, it's just one of those things where
33:31
I don't think they're stride or wrong.
33:32
Like if you're gonna spend millions of like on one video,
33:36
I understand that you wanna know exactly
33:39
what you're gonna do and how you're gonna communicate it
33:41
to make sure that it makes sense.
33:43
But for most people, just sit down and record
33:46
or just make up their mind along the process.
33:49
Yeah, that can work as well.
33:51
Tell us about your agency, what are you doing there?
33:54
All right, so I had a little bit of a funny career path
33:58
with Iman because there's many opportunities
34:01
inside his company.
34:02
So starting as a thumbnail designer,
34:04
I moved then to head of design.
34:05
Then I moved to marketing
34:07
and I worked basically doing copies,
34:09
scripting, landing pages and whatnot.
34:11
So everything that was not sales,
34:14
I really had the time to work in.
34:17
I decided then that if I was gonna start an agency,
34:19
a dump for you would be the best thing for me
34:22
since I'm just covering all the areas.
34:25
So that's what I'm doing at the moment.
34:27
I'm offering dump for you services.
34:29
I'm taking it a little bit slow
34:32
because I want to make sure that scaling is sustainable,
34:36
which is, I'm sure you guys know about that.
34:38
That's a pro tip.
34:39
Pro tip.
34:40
Yeah.
34:41
It's a very complicated thing to do,
34:44
but always happy to just collaborate with great clients
34:48
and especially a lot of talent.
34:49
What kind of clients are you looking for?
34:51
The fact that I work with Iman,
34:53
I think that the thing that I'm most familiar with
34:55
and the people that I usually work with
34:57
are within the business entrepreneur educational space,
35:01
I would not disregard working with people
35:04
in other industries.
35:05
It's just that I don't have any contacts
35:07
or a lot of people that I know there.
35:09
And as you guys may know,
35:11
especially for example, in this podcast,
35:13
contacts are a very important thing.
35:15
Not because they'll grant you anything,
35:17
but if you have a skill and you demonstrate it,
35:20
you can get a lot of opportunities with that.
35:22
For example, with this,
35:23
this is a great podcast.
35:24
You guys are doing a great job.
35:25
So just having the right people to interview
35:27
just amplifies that.
35:29
But yeah, I wouldn't be afraid to work with other,
35:32
like in other niches.
35:32
It's just I haven't redone it before.
35:36
I want to ask you about some of your business clients.
35:39
I'm assuming that many of them are people
35:41
who have built businesses,
35:43
sold them for $10 million and now they want to start
35:46
some kind of personal brand.
35:47
Am I right in that line of thinking?
35:49
Yeah, there's two categories.
35:51
One, people who follow the same path that Iman did,
35:55
just starting an agency,
35:56
info product, whatever, and then they made money
35:59
and they wanted to keep growing.
36:01
But many of them are just people
36:03
who were very successful in the real world
36:06
and they understand the power of being popular online.
36:10
So instead of the youth of the channel.
36:13
How do you get that first bite of traction
36:15
with someone who has earned a lot of money
36:18
but they don't have a following?
36:19
Like how do you get those first videos to crack 10,000 views
36:22
or 100,000 views?
36:24
These very, very complicated and very fun
36:27
because you're at a stage where you can test everything
36:30
because there's no proven concept for that person.
36:33
In this business, we are essentially
36:36
making people famous, making people popular
36:39
and as you may know, not everyone has the same facility
36:43
to be popular.
36:44
There's a very good news for that
36:46
which is that the internet is so big
36:49
that there's always gonna be space for an audience.
36:52
Imagine a classroom, you have like the cool kids
36:55
which in this case we'll have more following
36:57
but there's the kid who's interested in, I don't know,
36:59
snails, right?
37:00
The good thing about the internet is that in your class,
37:02
you will usually be the only kid who likes snails
37:04
but it's not easy, you know?
37:07
There's a pool of potential millions of people
37:09
who will be interested in that.
37:11
So there's always a way to just build an audience.
37:14
The best way to go about it is first,
37:17
start with a framework with a client.
37:18
So how do you wanna be perceived?
37:20
What do you wanna do?
37:21
What do you don't wanna do?
37:22
And just establish a little bit
37:24
how you're gonna communicate their message
37:26
and then just try four months.
37:28
Of course you're gonna have to rely a little bit
37:30
on doing a bit of research
37:32
and sometimes trying to emulate our lawyers,
37:35
especially to get some traction in the beginning.
37:37
That's also something that you have to do.
37:39
But I would just say when it comes to short form,
37:43
there's a lot of content out there.
37:46
Just posting a lot when it comes to long form,
37:48
trying to perfect every video
37:50
and just finding a format that works.
37:52
It's very complicated.
37:53
Sometimes it takes weeks or months
37:57
which is definitely interesting,
37:59
but it's also very rewarding
38:01
to just find something that works and sticks.
38:04
One thing that I've noticed with small subscriber count
38:07
business creators is that there's a lack of trust
38:10
from the audience because they see only 4,000 people
38:13
subscribed to this person
38:14
and they're claiming to have sold $10 million
38:17
worth of business or whatever else.
38:19
And I find that a very, very challenging hurdle
38:22
to get over.
38:23
Part of it also comes down to how you communicated.
38:27
To be honest, I find more trouble
38:29
with people like relating or wanting
38:32
to follow someone who did this rather than just credibility
38:36
because for people who have actually proved
38:39
of being excellent at what they do
38:40
and having sold the business for many millions of dollars,
38:43
usually credibility is not a problem, right?
38:47
I would say the opposite for people who haven't done anything,
38:49
telling you that this is how you should do things
38:51
when they haven't done it is more of a challenge.
38:54
But for other people, I've found more difficulty
38:57
in just trying to find a format or a way of communicating
39:01
that people find appealing rather than just...
39:04
Because people are like, okay, you sold these for X million,
39:07
that's cool, but I mean, I'm not interested in what you're saying
39:10
or your personality is not magnetic enough for me.
39:13
And that's something that's more difficult at least for me.
39:16
Yeah, I find the people who haven't sold millions of dollars
39:19
but are claiming they know the tactics.
39:21
They're kind of becoming noise
39:22
for the ones who actually have done that as well.
39:25
And it makes it hard to tell the difference at a glance
39:27
between who's trustworthy and who is still living
39:30
in their mom's basement, talking about tactics
39:32
they read in a book.
39:34
The good parties that these aren't going to get worse at all.
39:38
Hey, well, that's what your agency's for.
39:39
You're gonna help the ones that can actually provide value
39:42
to the viewers and that's why so much
39:43
it hire you, I suppose, hey.
39:45
Okay, Benjamin, thank you so much for being on the show.
39:48
We have one question that we ask every guest right at the end
39:50
and that is who is a creator that is on your radar right now
39:54
that deserves a shout out.
39:56
So there's this guy called Christoph Christophie.
39:59
He does, he's not in the business industry
40:01
or in the entrepreneurship
40:03
but the kind of videos he creates are very refreshing.
40:08
Like in a moment where everyone's trying to copy outliers
40:10
and copy formats and whatnot,
40:12
the things that he talks about,
40:14
the research and effort he puts into it,
40:16
the editing and pacing of the videos,
40:17
also creativity with camera angles and whatnot.
40:20
I think it's a little bit of a breath of fresh air.
40:23
I don't know this guy, he's watching this, that'll be funny.
40:28
But I think he's definitely worth looking into.
40:32
I'm a fan of his work also.
40:33
He's very creative and deserves applause for that.
40:36
Yep, cool man.
40:38
Well, let's wrap it up here.
40:39
Thank you so much for being on the show.
40:40
It was a pleasure to chat with you
40:42
and learn some of the knowledge that you have inside your brain.
40:45
Thank you so much, the pleasure was mine.
40:48
Really, thank you.
40:49
Okay, that's the episode.
40:50
Thank you so much for listening or watching.
40:52
If you're new here, please consider subscribing
40:54
or leaving us a review on the audio channels
40:56
and also check out another episode.
40:58
We're starting to build up our library of content.
41:01
It's still early, which is why we need all the support we can get
41:04
but we're very happy that you made it to the end
41:06
and we'll see you next week.