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The Case for Being a YouTube Strategist (Not a Full-Time Head of Content) · Gimbal Podcast

0:00
They can make like $10,000 from a single video.
0:02
I was earning more money with this side hustle than I was with my main hustle.
0:06
What are you worth? Start charging that.
0:08
Be okay saying no to people or at least putting them on a wait list.
0:12
Hi, I'm Jamie Whiffin. I am a YouTube consultant.
0:14
I've worked with Ali Abdall, Simon Swibb and Grovedge.
0:18
And I mostly help business owners turn their YouTube channels into their best source of clients
0:23
through fixing their ideas, their titles and their thumbnails.
0:27
Jamie, you have years of experience as a strategist and you've earned the respect of everybody
0:32
across the internet. To the point where you've actually turned down a role as head of socials
0:38
for Stephen Bartlett, why? Yeah, many, many years ago. I was kind of at a crossroads in my career.
0:44
I was working in a TikTok agency at the time and I learned a hell of a lot there.
0:49
But what I really wanted was to go kind of go back into the YouTube work.
0:52
Because I'd worked in a YouTube agency. I had my own YouTube channel before that.
0:56
It was a sort of a gaming channel and I built that up to roughly like 100,000 subscribers.
1:01
And I just kind of wanted to get back into YouTube.
1:04
And at the time I was like big fan of Ali Abdall. He was kind of at his,
1:08
he had a lot of momentum around productivity and side hustles and making money online.
1:13
And that was kind of like the lifestyle that I wanted to have.
1:15
I thought it would be great to be able to have a YouTube channel,
1:19
creating videos on whatever I wanted, especially around the same topics that Ali was
1:22
creating videos on. And then obviously have a great income as a result.
1:26
And so I ended up being in a position where I had these two jobs in front of me
1:30
between working for Stephen Bartlett. I'd gone through the interview process there.
1:35
They kind of wanted me to come in and start managing their head of socials.
1:39
Because I started to build like a, I was a big Kanye West fan.
1:42
And so I built this Instagram account on the quotes of Kanye.
1:46
And I agree that it's like 35,000 followers in about 90 days.
1:49
And it just kind of like really took off and started having like even like chance
1:52
the rapper was following it. Like these kind of like the celebrity started to follow it.
1:56
Yeah, yeah. And so I was kind of like knew a little bit about Instagram.
2:00
I had my background in the YouTube world.
2:02
And then obviously working at the TikTok agency.
2:04
I started to understand short form sponsorships.
2:07
And so I started to kind of become well-rounded in content.
2:10
I think that was really what sort of attracted Steve's team.
2:13
Part of me was like, ah, this seems like a cool opportunity.
2:16
It wasn't Steve at where he currently is.
2:18
Like he'd die over, see it was definitely a thing.
2:20
It definitely had momentum.
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But it wasn't what it is today.
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Like one of the top five biggest podcasts in the world.
2:26
And yeah, I kind of just looked at these two options.
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And I thought, you know, Ali seemed way more aligned with my values,
2:32
the lifestyle I want to have the YouTube world,
2:35
more so than the podcasting world.
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And so I took that sort of jump and started working for Ali as his head of YouTube.
2:42
Can you just quickly riff off a list of some of the other creators that you've worked for?
2:46
Yeah, I've worked with Ali.
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I've worked with Rian Doris.
2:50
Mrs. Eats did some very light work for Brian Johnson
2:53
when he was starting his channel by designing a lot of thumbnails for him.
2:56
And so yeah, I've worked with a lot of like really big names in this space
3:00
down to like those mediums of small size creators as well.
3:03
What have you learned about greatness and excellence
3:07
working alongside such esteemed people like Ali Abdul and Simon Squib and Brian Johnson and Rian Doris?
3:12
They know what they want and they're they ensure like anything they kind of gets in the way they
3:17
figure out a creative way to get around it.
3:19
And I think that's really what separates sort of the entrepreneurs in the space
3:24
who kind of move into the YouTube world and actually succeed in it
3:27
compared to some of the other people who more, you know,
3:29
you'll create a first, not entrepreneurs first, and they like to create.
3:33
But they kind of hit these roadblocks where something might be a little bit tough
3:36
and they're not exactly sure how to fix it.
3:39
Whereas they find the entrepreneurs are like very direct with their team
3:41
of like we need to get around this.
3:43
We need to do this, you know, fixes within the next week.
3:45
And it did just have this kind of different energy about them
3:48
that I think really kind of bleeds over into the system
3:51
and the processes that they have for actually getting content out.
3:54
I think when I was working with Rian Doris' team in the early stage,
3:58
it's probably the best example of someone who like really knew what he want.
4:02
And he was just like hiring and firing people like crazy in those early days
4:08
because he knew what he wanted.
4:09
He wanted the team that could run with it.
4:12
And so I was in there making thumbnails for him.
4:14
And he went through like three or four producers in the span of six weeks,
4:18
which is obviously kind of unheard of.
4:20
And this YouTube, yeah, this YouTube as well,
4:24
obviously hire one producer and work with them for a time for an extended period of time.
4:29
But Rian was not like that.
4:30
He knew what he wanted and at the time, I wasn't like, I was kind of like,
4:34
this is a bit extreme.
4:35
Like he was getting good producers in who'd worked for other names.
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I'm not going to say who these people were.
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They were doing a good job and he was like,
4:40
it's not to the standard that we want.
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And at the time, I thought, well, this is almost felt extreme.
4:47
Because I've seen creators who are not like that.
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But then Rian blows up and he is continued to, right?
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And he gets like 500 K views per video,
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millions of views per videos in some cases.
4:57
And he just took off.
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And I think it's because he had this incredibly high standard
5:02
that he was relentless about.
5:04
And it worked.
5:06
It paid off for him.
5:07
Should Rian be praised for hiring and firing for producers like that?
5:13
Like, obviously, he got the results that he was looking for.
5:15
Yeah.
5:16
But that's a pretty turbulent working environment
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for people who do work for him.
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I would say it was definitely stressful, you know, for those folks
5:24
because it was like, you know, you kind of joined.
5:27
And then you had to very, you had to very quickly prove yourself.
5:30
You know, this was a full-time employment.
5:32
By the way, this was kind of a, come in, can you run the show?
5:36
And if you can, the full job is there for you.
5:38
So it wasn't technically like firing.
5:40
It's more just like, you know, you're not a good fit.
5:42
But the results that they were getting were strong.
5:45
But there was sort of this standard,
5:46
yeah, that kind of had to be touched.
5:48
And I think that is sort of the vibe that I get from
5:51
the biggest entrepreneurs in the space
5:52
that I've spoken with is they do have this incredibly high standard.
5:57
And I think that the employees that thrive off of that
6:00
is not really a problem.
6:01
I think they see it as a challenge,
6:04
or others might get stress and anxiety from it.
6:07
That's a good point.
6:08
I'm convinced.
6:09
I do think that this industry as a whole is a place
6:12
that is likely more stressful than most other industries.
6:15
But if you set the bar for yourself quite high
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and you're willing to take on difficult challenges
6:21
and you're willing to hold yourself
6:22
to such a high degree of excellence,
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I do think that you can get rewarded for it.
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Like the pay opportunity here is significantly higher
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than most other industries.
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You know, the rate of growth as well is much, much faster.
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If you are someone who's willing to work hard.
6:34
It's because its results are orientated, right?
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Like you have direct inputs and outputs.
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And if you're paying an incredibly high amount of money to someone
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and as a result, you're not seeing that needle move,
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you're very quickly going to say,
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well, this isn't working,
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which I think in some other industries,
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you can get paid a lot of money,
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but the inputs and outputs aren't as clear.
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And you can sort of stay in that position for years
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without essentially being caught out
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if it were.
7:03
Right. How do you find that right kind of balance
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or do you just give yourself over
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to the hustle and the grinding culture that YouTube is?
7:13
I think it's set by the leader.
7:15
I think it's set by the entrepreneur.
7:17
I mean, when I worked for Ali,
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Ali didn't really have that approach, right?
7:22
He was very anti-hustle, right?
7:25
He kind of talks about this a lot in his content.
7:28
It's something that he doesn't personally enjoy, right?
7:30
He kind of, as he said, many times,
7:32
he likes to sort of enjoy the process, right?
7:35
He talks about the journey, not the destination.
7:38
I think that really kind of bled into the culture
7:41
of the company and us as employees.
7:45
Again, what type of YouTuber, non-trapener you are?
7:47
I think you approach it from a completely different perspective.
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That is the culture that you are building.
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And I think as, yeah, producers,
7:55
some of the designers, video editors,
7:57
you've got to find the right fit for you.
8:00
And like, that's why I joined Ali's team
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is because I liked his personal brand.
8:05
I liked his vibe.
8:06
And I thought, working at this company
8:08
is going to be pretty fun, right?
8:08
I didn't think, oh, I'm going to join it.
8:10
It's going to grind me into a pulp.
8:12
And I'm going to hate it,
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where I think I can look at other YouTube content
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from YouTubers that I like.
8:17
But I can be like, I probably wouldn't work for this person.
8:20
Like, I admire them from a distance.
8:22
So I think it's like any job,
8:24
whether you're an employer or an employer,
8:26
there are certain styles of careers
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that you're going to aspire to.
8:30
If you want to go and be a lawyer, for example,
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you know you're going to be working hell of a lot of hours.
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You can't really go in there and then say,
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oh, I want to have a bit of a chill lifestyle career
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where I can have a really nice work life balance.
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And there will be those jobs within those industries,
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but you're likely to find yourself getting paid less
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or not working on the most interesting work in your industry.
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Why is being a for hire YouTube strategist,
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the right move for you,
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instead of being the head of content
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or a creative director for one channel?
9:03
I think it's worth remembering that I was that, right?
9:06
Like, I definitely spent my time working for people.
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And like I said, I joined Ali's company
9:14
from the perspective of I wanted to have my own business, right?
9:18
I wanted to live the lifestyle similar to his.
9:21
And I would say I have that,
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you know, I don't make as much money as Ali does.
9:26
But I definitely have the ability to say,
9:28
I don't want to work today and take the day off.
9:30
I wish I actually used that as much as I possibly could
9:35
because I work a lot.
9:36
Sure, sure.
9:37
But it's there, right?
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It's the option of like,
9:40
if I wanted to just chill out,
9:41
if I wanted to go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon,
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I could do that.
9:45
Whereas if I was an employee,
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I'd be kind of stuck in an office.
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So that was my experience when I worked for the YouTube agency.
9:51
It was like,
9:52
9, 10 hours a day,
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headphones on, staring at a screen.
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And, you know, after a year of doing that,
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I felt really kind of depressed and down
10:00
because it was like, this is not a collaborative experience.
10:03
I wasn't enjoying it as much as I probably should have.
10:07
And so I think for me, like I've experienced
10:11
a lot of different types of work
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and a lot of different types of agencies
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and sort of solo crates of work
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that for me being in a position now where I can work
10:22
with multiple creators and have an impact
10:24
on multiple, you know, sort of niches
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is way more enjoyable for me than it was
10:31
if I was to just be stuck working on one creator.
10:34
That doesn't mean that occasionally,
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I don't have the idea of like,
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it would be nice to kind of work more in depth
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with one creator.
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So I still have that feeling from time to time.
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But I, I actually like sprints.
10:45
You know, for the last year,
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I worked with Simon Scrifer about four months
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and it was, it was a sprint of like, let's come in.
10:51
I worked more intensely on that channel
10:54
than I would with my consulting clients.
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You know, I was in a making the titles,
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the thumbnails, reviewing the edits
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on multiple hour long calls per week.
11:02
It's because I want to have a bigger impact there.
11:05
And so I think, yeah, for someone like me,
11:07
I kind of like the flexibility
11:09
that comes with this sort of career,
11:11
this business that I'm building.
11:13
I'm someone who really likes variety
11:16
as opposed to one style of working.
11:20
Can you talk to the moment where you kind of pivoted away
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from working for the agency
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or, you know, doing work for Allie
11:28
and then you kind of realize, okay,
11:29
I have this opportunity to actually take on extra clients
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or, and then what was that transition
11:35
into your first client?
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This is interesting because I was not really aware
11:39
of the YouTube consulting world.
11:40
You know, when I looked back
11:41
and I was making like that Instagram account,
11:43
that was my attempt sort of figuring out
11:46
what's my side hustle, what's my business.
11:47
And like for that Instagram account,
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I built that platform up.
11:50
I got into drop shipping and I was creating
11:53
these Kanye West hats and other kind of merch
11:55
and I was selling them.
11:56
I wasn't making crazy money,
11:57
but I was like learning that process
11:58
because I always like, I want to have my own business.
12:01
When I look back, I'm like,
12:03
well, YouTube consulting was obviously the answer, right?
12:06
I'd grown a channel to 100K subscribers
12:10
when I was 16, 17, right?
12:12
And so it's like that entire time working
12:15
at the YouTube agency that I should have been doing
12:17
consulting from all of my 20s,
12:19
but I think I only started it around 26, 27.
12:22
And so yeah, it's kind of like, it was always there,
12:25
but I wasn't aware of it because this space
12:26
wasn't developed like it is today.
12:29
And so when I was working for Ali,
12:31
Ali sort of head of editing.
12:33
Gordon, he was saying to me,
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you should probably do consulting.
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And like he was kind of, I was like,
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you know, what does that mean?
12:37
What does that really entail?
12:39
And he was sort of a big believer in like,
12:42
yeah, you could absolutely charge money for this.
12:44
There will be people who will pay for that.
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And I really kind of struggled to be like,
12:48
people will actually pay you money for me
12:50
to just talk to them for an hour over the Zoom.
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Didn't feel like reality.
12:54
And then Bob had her own podcast on,
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Bob worked for Ali as well.
12:58
And she had her own podcast.
13:00
And she, I think she paid me like 50 pounds,
13:02
which was like 60, 70 dollars.
13:04
For like a cool week, I think it was per month.
13:07
And then Joe Gannon, who was used to work for Ali,
13:09
he kind of referred me to Grovege,
13:11
which was my first client, which was a gardening channel.
13:15
I'm still working with them, you know, four years later.
13:17
Wow.
13:18
And kind of like, Joe, you kind of gave me, I think two clients.
13:21
I think it was my first two clients.
13:23
And then eventually once I left working for Ali,
13:26
I think within four to six weeks after leaving,
13:29
I was already making double what I was making for Ali as a salary.
13:32
And when that happened, that's when I was kind of like,
13:34
oh, this, this is a real thing
13:37
because I was only working a few hours per week, right?
13:41
I think I had like three or four consulting calls per week.
13:45
And then I suddenly, yeah, I was making more money
13:47
than I was full time.
13:48
And so very quickly, I was like, oh, this is actually a real career.
13:52
This is something people will pay money for.
13:54
And, you know, it's just sort of been this iterative process
13:58
over the last three and a half years
14:00
of figuring out business, figuring out how to position myself,
14:03
how to price myself, what do people want?
14:06
What do people not want?
14:07
You know, I've learned a lot over the past four years.
14:10
And I think it's just a case of, you know, trying out,
14:14
that's your side hustle.
14:15
If you're interested in kind of like going full time,
14:17
it's like, you can definitely build this up
14:19
on the side of whatever is your main thing.
14:22
And then eventually quit and make it your full time job.
14:25
I think it's very doable for a lot of people.
14:27
And I've seen people do it in a consulting world,
14:30
in the editing world and thumbnail world.
14:33
I think there are more people willing to pay for help
14:37
in a creative economy than ever before.
14:39
And you can do it.
14:41
You can do it. I'm always encouraging people.
14:42
I love talking to people about starting their business,
14:45
especially in a creative economy,
14:46
because I feel like it's such a big opportunity.
14:48
It's life-changing and everyone should really consider it
14:51
if they have any kind of skills
14:53
that they think that they could sell to creators.
14:56
Yeah, I mean, what you just described
14:58
as a similar trajectory to what my year was like last year
15:01
when I pivoted into consulting.
15:03
My first client came and asked me what I offered,
15:06
what I could offer.
15:07
And I was like, I don't know.
15:09
I'll just give you everything that I have.
15:10
And I'll try my very, very best to do a great job.
15:13
And we'll do like a weekly call.
15:14
And you can message me on Slack, unlimited.
15:16
I had no idea what my actual offer was.
15:18
But they agreed.
15:19
And I was like, okay, awesome.
15:20
This is fantastic.
15:21
And I got $800 per month for this service,
15:24
which I thought was excellent,
15:25
because it felt like really easy,
15:26
because it was just stuff that I was already doing.
15:28
But to your point, it ramped up very, very quickly.
15:31
And I found like I was earning more money
15:34
with this side hustle than I was with my main hustle.
15:36
And that was only six or seven months into it.
15:39
It got to a point though,
15:41
where I got a lot of inbound traffic coming.
15:44
And I didn't know how to say no.
15:45
And all of a sudden, I was overwhelmed with work.
15:49
Did that ever hit you as well,
15:50
where there was just so much opportunity
15:52
and you were bringing in all this money
15:53
and you were looking at it,
15:54
you're like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do?
15:55
And then now all of a sudden,
15:56
you're working 50, 60 hours and you're like,
15:57
oh boy, I have no life.
15:59
Yes.
16:00
Yes, I think everyone who kind of gets into the space
16:04
doesn't realize the demand,
16:06
because you go from, does anyone want this thing?
16:09
And there are actually people who pay for this
16:11
who suddenly they're being loads of people
16:13
and it doesn't really stop.
16:15
I think the way that you make it stop
16:17
is by increasing your rates.
16:19
Because I think that was one of the things
16:21
that I would say was a mistake back in the day,
16:24
was I was undercharging
16:25
and I had all these opportunities
16:26
and I was sort of saying yes
16:29
because I don't like to say no.
16:30
I like to help people if I can.
16:32
You know, I ended up where I was working
16:34
so many consulting calls every single week
16:36
that I started to feel a bit burnt out
16:38
and I could sense that the quality of the conversation
16:43
and the advice that I was giving within those calls
16:45
was starting to dip.
16:46
That didn't sit right with me
16:48
because I always want to give my best.
16:50
I don't want to give 90%, I don't want to give 80%.
16:52
And so when that started to happen
16:55
and I started to just feel tired all of the time,
16:57
I was like, I need to start saying no.
17:00
And the best way,
17:03
now that I've realized is
17:04
when you start to feel like you're at capacity,
17:06
that's the time that you increase your rate
17:07
and you just sort of have this stair stepping effect
17:10
over time where you will end up
17:12
reducing the amount of consulting calls
17:14
but you'd end up earning more.
17:16
And that way you can actually go more in depth
17:18
with the one-to-one clients that you have
17:21
as opposed to spreading yourself so thin
17:23
over like 20 different clients.
17:25
You know, it's better to have eight than it is to have 20.
17:27
Sure.
17:28
And so, you know, for me, that's something
17:31
I would give as advice to my younger self.
17:34
Figure out actually what are you worth?
17:36
Start charging that and be okay saying no to people
17:40
or at least putting them on a wait list
17:42
which is something that I didn't really do,
17:45
especially for the first like two, two and a half years
17:48
of the business.
17:49
Do you have a wait list now?
17:50
Like is that something that's part of your business?
17:52
I've started to within the last month have a wait list
17:56
and park people who I think are a really good fit
18:00
but I'm kind of like a bit stretched too thin.
18:02
Mostly because I'm not focused on just deliver it
18:05
at the moment, I'm actually focused on improving my program
18:09
because for the last three and a half years,
18:11
the way that I would work with my consulting clients
18:14
is I'd kind of sexy myself as a doctor
18:16
where I would speak with them and I'd diagnose
18:19
where their bottleneck was,
18:20
where what was the issue on their YouTube channel
18:22
that we needed to fix that would then allow us
18:25
to get more views or more lead conversions.
18:28
And so what I started again,
18:29
I started to fill myself a little bit burning out
18:31
of like I'm repeating the same thing for the 500th time
18:34
and let me actually start to build some training.
18:37
Let me start to build some lessons and some video courses
18:40
and some resources within Notion
18:42
that I can refer to when I'm in a consulting call
18:46
or they can actually use kind of as homework
18:48
that I can assign to them at the end of those sessions.
18:51
So they are improving outside of me having to deliver
18:54
one on one all of the time
18:56
and we can actually use those hour,
18:58
hour, 90 minute long sessions
19:00
to actually implement the stuff
19:01
rather than me educating you
19:02
and kind of answering very basic questions
19:05
that could have been answered by something else.
19:06
And so right now I'm really focused on like,
19:09
what does the first 90 days look like
19:11
and how can we get you that when,
19:13
whatever that is by them,
19:14
like define by them as soon as possible.
19:16
I am still gonna take this sort of diagnostic approach.
19:18
I'm not gonna prescribe sort of a general approach
19:21
everyone because every single YouTuber
19:24
and every single niche has completely different problems
19:27
and team members and you always have to start from scratch.
19:31
But I want, you know, if you,
19:32
I'm gonna continue with the doctor analogy
19:34
but if you're a doctor you'd be like,
19:36
here's this pill, right?
19:37
Or go and do these exercises.
19:40
You know, go and take this.
19:41
I wanna have that approach where I'm able to look at sort
19:44
of like the three main areas
19:46
that people struggle with on YouTube
19:47
and be like, there's a training for this,
19:49
there's a training for that
19:50
and get the sort of the momentum
19:52
much quicker where they can get that result.
19:55
So that's where I'm focusing at the moment
19:57
and all of the leads that I think are perfect for that,
19:59
they get put on a wait list
20:01
because the second that I'm able to open those doors,
20:04
the offer is gonna look better than ever
20:06
and we're gonna get the results soon
20:07
and so I'd rather bring someone in once that's done
20:10
than now when, I mean, the middle of construction basically.
20:14
Is YouTube the best platform for any thought leader
20:18
or business person or educator
20:20
or are there arguments for why Instagram
20:22
LinkedIn might be a better fit for somebody?
20:24
Well, I mean, yeah, I think there will definitely be people
20:27
where LinkedIn is a better fit.
20:29
I think it would be silly to kind of say,
20:31
yeah, YouTube applies for everyone in every situation
20:34
but I think more often than not YouTube is the place to be.
20:37
I've had clients who were huge on TikTok
20:40
or huge on LinkedIn, a huge on Instagram come to me
20:42
and want to start a YouTube channel
20:44
or they've already got the rules rolling
20:46
and they're like a fraction of the size
20:48
and they also say the same thing to me
20:49
which is I wish I started YouTube earlier.
20:52
It's 10 times better than Instagram
20:55
and like this is what I found as well
20:56
in the TikTok world
20:57
because when I was working in the TikTok agency
20:59
we were dealing with short form creators
21:01
and if it was like a brand visibility campaign
21:05
it was really kind of easy to please the client
21:07
because you can be like, hey, we've got 500K views
21:10
we've got three million views, right?
21:11
That's great
21:12
but does that actually help with conversions
21:15
and so when we'd have a conversion campaign
21:17
this was scary for all of the account managers
21:19
in the TikTok agency
21:20
because you knew that you actually had to deliver
21:22
you had to actually get people to click the link in the bio
21:26
go to the website and purchase something
21:28
and short form creators really struggled to do that
21:32
because they don't have that trust with their audience
21:35
they don't have that depth of relationship
21:37
that you can get from YouTube
21:39
because if you think about it this way
21:40
with TikTok it's an Instagram Reels
21:43
you know it's very much a swiping platform
21:47
you're swiping through this feed
21:49
you are served a piece of content by the platform
21:53
you didn't choose to watch that
21:55
YouTube's different, it's a click and watch platform
21:57
you have to say yes that title and thumbnail's hooked me
22:00
I'm interested in that topic
22:01
let me click and watch it
22:02
and YouTube videos are always like you know
22:04
10 minutes long, 15 minutes long, 20 minutes long
22:07
hours long
22:08
with a TikTok or an Instagram
22:10
really you're kind of looking at you know
22:11
30 seconds to a minute and a half
22:14
and so let's just say it was 60 seconds
22:16
you'd have to watch 10, 60 second videos
22:19
to have a 10 minute watch time
22:20
whereas on YouTube you can just watch one YouTube video
22:23
and you already hit that
22:24
and so if you're able to create this spider web
22:27
of amazing content which obviously the algorithm
22:30
is recommending all of the time to people
22:32
you can very quickly develop that relationship on YouTube
22:37
then you can with TikTok
22:39
because no one ever really kind of goes through
22:40
and watches 10 TikToks in a row
22:43
and then decides to buy something
22:45
but I have seen that haven't quite a lot on YouTube
22:48
and so I think for a lot of people
22:50
especially if you're trying to sell anything
22:52
YouTube is the place to go if you want conversions
22:54
I think from a brand visibility perspective
22:57
YouTube is also awesome
22:59
because I think more people than ever on YouTube
23:02
and you just get that brand visibility
23:04
that depth, that relationship
23:06
and I think you have more friction
23:08
creating YouTube content and making that a success
23:11
then you deal on something like Instagram
23:13
or you have stories of rils and carousels
23:15
and sort of other formats of content
23:17
which are easier to outsource and delegate
23:20
but it's worth that if you can crack the YouTube game.
23:24
I talk about that sometimes as well with my clients
23:26
where I feel like you have a stronger relationship
23:29
with your audience because of that time spent
23:31
and because they're electing to click on the video
23:33
rather than being fed it kind of randomly.
23:35
I think one piece of pushback that I get from clients
23:38
who aren't overly educated in the YouTube spaces
23:42
I can go and film a reel or a short
23:45
and I can get 50,000 views
23:47
and then we spend so much time
23:48
and energy scripting out this magnificent YouTube video
23:51
and it gets 1200 views
23:53
and I think those clients are predominantly the ones
23:55
who don't have something to sell at the end of the day
23:58
they don't have like an offer to convert
24:01
so they're not seeing that depth of relationship.
24:03
Yeah I mean it depends I think
24:05
especially for anyone who's listening
24:07
who thinks about offering services to anyone in the YouTube world
24:10
I think it's very important
24:12
that you focus on who your ICP is.
24:14
In other words like what are the problems
24:16
that you want to solve and can solve
24:19
and what people pay for them?
24:20
For me when I got started
24:22
I was happy to do consulting with entertainment
24:24
and education channels.
24:26
I actually find that it's way easier
24:28
to grow entertainment channels than it is education
24:31
because entertainment like the ideas are always
24:34
really big and bold and you kind of get slightly more
24:37
over into click faithy territory
24:38
which doesn't necessarily happen too much
24:40
in the education space.
24:41
And so if you want to go views
24:44
I think entertainment's quite an easy thing to do.
24:46
But from working again with like the YouTube agency
24:50
the TikTok agency and then working with these creators
24:52
entertainment channels can get a lot of views
24:54
but they don't have a lot of money
24:56
because they're living off adsense and sponsorships
24:58
and the kind of merch and merch isn't very,
25:01
you know it's quite cheap
25:02
it's like $20 for a t-shirt that kind of thing right?
25:04
You're not making great money there
25:07
for the majority I wouldn't say all
25:09
but for definitely the majority of entertainment channels
25:12
they have a completely different business model
25:14
to the education creator who can get a fraction of the views
25:19
but be selling something that's high ticket
25:21
and they just need you know 10,000 views
25:23
and they can make like $30,000 right?
25:26
From a single video
25:27
and I've seen that happen so many times.
25:30
For me over time I started to drift over
25:32
more towards like I'm just helping educators.
25:35
Then I realized I really like talking head content.
25:38
So I've started to create educational talking head content
25:41
and now it's kind of like my ICP is more for business owners
25:45
and experts, thought leaders who create talking head
25:49
educational content on YouTube, right?
25:50
So I'm like over time becoming more and more refined
25:53
with who I'm creating for
25:54
because those are the people who have the right characteristics
25:57
they have the right behavior, mindset
25:59
compared to some creators where there's a lot of mindset issues
26:03
and it's like it's less about the giving them the strategy.
26:07
It's more so about then kind of having their head right
26:09
and so sometimes with those clients
26:11
I feel like I'm more of a therapist than a strategist
26:14
and it's like helping them to do the things
26:15
that are actually gonna get them to move the needle
26:17
whereas I find with the business owners and the experts
26:19
and the like the thought leaders,
26:21
they understand the investment that YouTube requires
26:25
for them to get the skills in order to get the result
26:28
because you have skills and you have strategy with YouTube
26:30
and I've seen some entrepreneurs will pay
26:33
for the strategy and for the thumbnail design is an editor
26:36
but they don't have the skills,
26:37
they're not very good at speaking on camera as an example
26:40
and then they're like, why am I not succeeding?
26:43
Because they think they can buy their way there
26:45
and that's not the case with YouTube.
26:47
The best entrepreneurs I have seen are the ones
26:49
who understand that they need to actually really treat YouTube
26:53
like I'd say if it was their own business
26:54
and learn the skills and practice
26:57
and be in it for the long term.
26:58
Are your clients hiring out their own editing teams
27:02
and everything themselves or is that part of the service
27:04
that you offer where you pair them up
27:05
with the team that they need to succeed?
27:08
I have like friends who have editing agencies
27:11
that I refer them to but I don't offer it myself.
27:13
I did think about doing so at one point
27:15
because I had a full time video editor
27:17
and I thought well this is a great way to kind of like
27:20
fill in the gaps of the work schedule
27:22
because they would have like weeks
27:23
where they wouldn't be editing anything
27:24
and if it were I could just offer it to clients
27:26
and then I thought actually I don't wanna do that
27:28
because then you're starting to enter
27:29
into a completely different game.
27:31
You're actually becoming a more like a done for you service
27:33
at that point where you're there having to juggle multiple clients
27:37
who want different styles of edit
27:38
and you're taking me out of being a strategist
27:41
into being the manager of an editor.
27:44
And so that's not my zone of genius.
27:47
I know a lot about editing.
27:48
I used to be an editor but it's not what I wanna do.
27:51
It's and especially I don't wanna manage an editor
27:53
like I can do the thing myself.
27:55
And so I don't offer that at all.
27:57
I think that for a lot of people
27:59
hiring a full time video editor is like
28:02
almost like the first hire that you should get
28:05
when you're a creator.
28:06
Even if you're a small creator
28:07
and you can't afford someone who's full time
28:09
outsourcing a editor to someone who's part time
28:12
or on a video by a video basis
28:14
is the quickest way to free up so much time
28:16
that you can actually dedicate that to the areas
28:19
that are actually more important
28:20
like creating great thumbnails
28:22
or figuring out what actually the video ideas
28:24
are worth the time creating.
28:26
You went into talking head content
28:28
which is such a big important area of the YouTube space.
28:33
And I wanna talk about what that niche looks like
28:36
in the year 2026.
28:37
Let me know if I'm wrong
28:38
but I feel like it's changed a lot
28:40
because AI has kind of become so prominent
28:44
and everybody is using it.
28:46
Like I think a year ago or two years ago
28:48
you could make a video called Seven Ways to Be More Productive
28:51
and you'd have a lot of success.
28:52
And now I think those same people
28:54
who would watch that video
28:56
are just asking ChatGPT
28:57
and getting the answer in five seconds
28:59
rather than in 20 minutes.
29:00
How has the talking head world changed
29:03
in the last 12 or 24 months?
29:05
And what is the right way
29:08
to approach educational content this year?
29:10
Yeah, this is a really interesting question.
29:13
It's always evolving
29:14
because of how quick the AI space moves.
29:16
I think yes, there's definitely some people
29:19
who will open up ChatGPT
29:21
and ask that question rather than watching a YouTube video.
29:24
I think that's going to continue to happen
29:27
but you also have the element
29:28
where Google have installed Gemini into YouTube now.
29:31
So on some YouTube videos
29:33
you don't even need to watch it.
29:33
You can just scroll down click the AI summary
29:37
and you can get your answers.
29:38
You know, it depends on the topic of the video.
29:41
You know, if it's a tutorial
29:42
and you're telling me how to do something
29:44
I might just look at that summary
29:46
or just copy the transcript,
29:47
give it to Claude or ChatGPT
29:49
and say summarize it, walk me through it
29:52
rather than me having to watch it.
29:54
I'm guilty of that.
29:54
I have done that in the past.
29:56
But I think it depends on,
29:57
especially like visual learners, right?
29:59
It depends on the type of learner that you are.
30:02
The reason that I love YouTube
30:03
is because I'm a very visual person.
30:05
And so sometimes I want to watch something happen
30:08
as opposed to reading about it
30:10
or clicking the audio button
30:12
and listening to it read the answer to me.
30:15
And so I think it's definitely going to be
30:18
affecting the amount of viewers that you get
30:20
but I think because of how fast YouTube
30:23
is growing anyway,
30:24
you're not really going to notice it that much.
30:26
I don't think I think there are more people coming
30:29
onto YouTube than there are answering,
30:30
asking ChatGPT question and then deciding
30:32
I'm never going to watch that YouTube video.
30:35
Because effectively all you're saying is like search traffic.
30:38
If you're asking the question,
30:39
you would have been a search sort of viewer in that moment.
30:42
You wouldn't have gone onto the homepage
30:44
and YouTube could have read your mind
30:45
and then have the answer there already, right?
30:47
You would have been a search viewer.
30:49
And so if you're someone whose traffic sources
30:52
is dominated by search
30:54
and that's how you primarily get your views,
30:56
then yeah, you probably in a little bit of a dangerous spot
31:00
compared to someone where 80, 90% of their views come from browse.
31:04
That's an interesting point.
31:05
I haven't heard that point before.
31:06
If you're ambitious but lazy, watch this.
31:09
Have you ever made a video with that title?
31:11
Because I've made like four videos with that title.
31:14
I don't think I've ever made a video with that title
31:17
but I think I've definitely had videos
31:19
like that one I went for Ali.
31:21
It's broad enough that it can kind of apply to everyone.
31:24
So you get a lot of clicks.
31:26
But you end up with so many people
31:28
that sometimes I think the examples
31:30
might not always resonate.
31:32
That title is so funny to me because I've made it
31:35
probably four or five times with clients
31:36
and I'm so sick of it.
31:37
And I've seen everybody in the YouTube education space
31:39
make that title.
31:41
And I think there was a time a year ago
31:43
where you could make it,
31:43
you could just see a title, take it for yourself,
31:46
repurpose it the way that you want.
31:47
And then boom, you've got your own great video.
31:49
But I feel like Outlier Theory has changed
31:51
because it's been adopted so aggressively by everybody.
31:54
It's so widespread, so well-known.
31:56
So how do you avoid falling into the trap
31:58
or what strategy do you use to make Outlier Theory work?
32:03
In January, I had a in-person workshop.
32:05
We moved me, George Blackman and William Sims Williams.
32:09
We did a full day workshop for 20 people.
32:13
And it was great, it was fantastic.
32:15
And this Outlier Theory question continued to appear
32:19
for the small creators all the way up to the big ones.
32:22
And I'll kind of rehash my take on it again
32:25
because I think, as a supporter,
32:28
I've been on YouTube a long time.
32:30
Outlier Theory was always a thing
32:31
but it wasn't known by an average creator.
32:35
So for a strategist like me, we would always use it.
32:37
We would always go and look at
32:39
one of the most popular videos on your competitors' channels
32:42
or what's working quite recently
32:44
that seems to be picking up momentum.
32:46
How can we make our own version of that?
32:48
And it would land quite well.
32:50
I think one of 10 really changed the game
32:52
because all of a sudden people became,
32:55
not only aware of Outlier Theory,
32:56
but they had a tool that helped them implement it.
32:59
And because of that, you end up with this issue
33:03
where a lot of people don't actually know
33:05
how to apply Outlier Theory.
33:07
They just think it's copy and paste.
33:09
And so if you have an original video that does very well,
33:13
and I think it's worth pointing out
33:15
that the original video does well likely
33:17
because it's not even copying another outlier,
33:20
it's original.
33:21
Everyone's looking at Outlier Theory right now.
33:23
It's like, why don't you just be original?
33:24
Stop trying to use Outlier Theory all the time,
33:26
but that's a separate point.
33:28
But if you're gonna use Outlier Theory,
33:30
you have your original video that performs very well,
33:33
but then you use the creator thing,
33:35
oh, I'm gonna make my own version of that.
33:37
And you also have the issue of there
33:38
are 300 other creators who've just seen
33:41
that exact same video and said,
33:42
I'm gonna make my own version of that video.
33:44
And so by the time you've created yours and got it up,
33:47
sort of the time the tutorial just put market is shrinking
33:49
because now that the market's just flooded
33:51
with this style of video.
33:52
And I think the only time that you can truly use
33:55
Outlier Theory like that and it'd be completely unique
33:58
is if the lessons or whatever the advice is unique.
34:01
So there was a number of Outlier videos that I saw
34:05
about a year ago around this I'm 30.
34:09
If you're in your 20s, watch this.
34:11
I'm 40, if you're in your 30s, if we watch this.
34:14
And so I made this version for Simon Square
34:17
but now I was like, this is a video that's working really well.
34:20
There were channels that had a hundred subs
34:22
who were getting a million views on this,
34:24
but in a thumbnail they look like an interesting character
34:27
so people were clicking on it.
34:28
And I said, we need to do our own version of this.
34:30
And it's got 750K views now and a year and it's I'm 50.
34:34
If you're in your 20s or 30s, watch this.
34:37
That works because the advice that he's giving is personal.
34:41
Right, it's unique.
34:42
And so you can kind of see those titles often
34:46
and you won't get sick of it
34:47
because you care about the YouTuber and their perspective.
34:51
I think Outlier videos like that completely work
34:54
but when you're creating an Outlier video
34:57
that's exactly the same as the original, it's gonna fall flat.
35:01
And so I think that's when you need to start looking
35:03
at adjacent niches, which as well a lot of people do now
35:06
or completely different niches and saying,
35:08
how can I take this title?
35:10
Effectively turn it into a formula
35:12
and swap out the word, you know,
35:14
cooking for photography if I was in the photography niche.
35:16
And so it suddenly makes, you know,
35:18
cooking masterclass how to create, you know,
35:22
perfect pizza or something like that.
35:23
And you're like photography masterclass
35:25
how to take perfect black and white photos, right?
35:27
You can kind of start to swap those out
35:30
and you can a lot of times see that you get
35:32
the similar results.
35:33
But I think the most underrated way to use Outlier
35:36
which most people aren't is actually
35:38
studying why it worked in the first place.
35:40
Why was it an Outlier video in the first place?
35:43
And for me, a big part of what I do with my clients
35:45
is the psychology aspect of YouTube.
35:48
I don't focus too much on the design of the thumbnail.
35:50
I look at what were the power words
35:52
that we used in the title in the thumbnail, right?
35:54
What emotions did that evoke in our ICP?
35:58
You know, what was shown, what was not shown in the thumbnail
36:00
that may have built intriguing curiosity
36:03
that got someone to click.
36:04
You know, what desires, what fears, what aspirations
36:09
is that title in the thumbnail communicating
36:11
that got people to click.
36:12
Because if you think about it, right,
36:14
this is what I always say to people.
36:16
When you're on your phone and you're scrolling through YouTube
36:18
and you click on a video straight away that catches your eye,
36:21
try and catch yourself and go back.
36:23
Just like pause the video, go back to the previous page
36:26
and look at that packaging and say,
36:28
what just happened there?
36:29
What made me in under a second click that video?
36:33
Because there was something that you saw
36:35
whether that was the title or it was the thumbnail
36:38
that evoked some sort of emotion within you, right?
36:42
You just think about this from a psychological perspective
36:44
of like cause and effect.
36:45
Something happened within your mind that made you say,
36:49
I wanna click this so that you instantly clicked it, right?
36:52
And the effect was you increased the view count.
36:54
What happened?
36:55
If you can really try and understand what happened,
36:58
you'll start to learn more about yourself
37:01
on what attracts you
37:02
and you can also do the same on the flip side.
37:04
Why did I not click on these other types of videos?
37:07
What was bad about them that didn't appeal to me?
37:09
And so when you're able to start understanding your ideal viewer
37:14
and you're able to start seeing patterns
37:16
across your most popular videos
37:18
and competitors' outlive videos,
37:21
you can start to say, oh, this type of person tends
37:24
to click on this style of video
37:26
or this power word masterclass appears in 10 of their videos.
37:32
So clearly the word masterclass works.
37:34
Then you can start to use it, get results
37:36
if you find that it stops working.
37:38
You can look at adjacent words.
37:40
You can say, okay, the why did masterclass work?
37:42
Masterclass probably worked
37:44
because from a psychology perspective,
37:45
it feels like it's the full picture, right?
37:47
I feel like you're gonna tell me everything I need to know
37:50
about this topic that you're educating me on.
37:52
So what else has that kind of vibe?
37:54
Well, it might be the word blueprint, right?
37:56
That has a very similar vibe.
37:58
It might be the word road map.
38:00
It might be the word system.
38:01
And like the reason I'm mentioning these
38:03
is because that's what I've seen with entrepreneurs
38:05
who make content for other entrepreneurs.
38:07
Entrepreneurs love those types of words
38:09
of system blueprint, masterclass
38:12
because they imply step-by-step what you need to do.
38:16
Even step-by-step is something I've seen that works
38:18
because entrepreneurs love this input and output game.
38:22
They love things to be broken down very clearly for them.
38:24
And so depending on whatever your niche is,
38:27
you need to start learning from a psychology perspective
38:30
what resonates with them
38:32
and how can we then start to use this to flesh out
38:34
our ICP document.
38:36
And over the course of like a year, two years, three years,
38:38
we get really sharp and a refined document
38:41
on who we're making content for
38:43
that then filters over into the video ideas we make,
38:45
the titles and the thumbnails that we create,
38:47
the hooks and the languages that we use
38:49
to call this individual out.
38:51
That is how I think people should be using out like theory.
38:54
I'm completely just like brain dumped
38:56
on you for like three minutes there.
38:57
I'm just, that's in such an incredible answer.
38:59
Like I could tell you've been thinking about this
39:01
for a very long time.
39:02
You've refined it into a way that's just like
39:04
very distillable and palatable.
39:06
So.
39:07
Yeah, I mean, I could talk for an hour and a half on it.
39:09
There's so many thoughts.
39:12
It's sometimes hard to explain it.
39:13
So if I'm making sense right away,
39:15
it just sounds like a madman right now,
39:17
I don't think I've come from topic to topic.
39:20
I mean, fortunately for people who live in the UK,
39:22
it sounds like you're around giving in-person seminars
39:25
pretty frequently.
39:27
And you can, people can hear you talk about it out like
39:30
by joining one of your workshops.
39:32
So that's really cool.
39:33
Do you have anything coming up in the next month
39:35
near like where people who are in the UK
39:36
can come and meet you in person?
39:38
We're gonna plan to do on later this year.
39:40
We think around August, September, October time.
39:43
And if that does well,
39:44
we're also thinking about doing one in Dallas
39:46
and later this year after Vid Summit.
39:49
So those are two plans that we have right now,
39:52
but it's definitely not a monthly thing.
39:54
It was a lot of money for like the venue and everything
39:57
and say, we don't wanna, yeah,
40:00
put the workshops on so often that we run out of leads
40:04
and we get hit with a big bill.
40:06
For anyone who happens to be watching this
40:08
and they're interested in joining that weight list
40:11
that you have, what is the right way for them to find you?
40:14
Yeah, you can go to a whiteyintensive.com
40:18
that will take you to the landing page
40:20
where you can join the weight list.
40:22
Excellent.
40:23
My last question for you is in the talking head space,
40:26
who is a creator that is doing an excellent job right now?
40:30
I really love Vingyan.
40:32
Interesting, okay?
40:33
Yeah, if you've seen his talking head content,
40:37
it's so dynamic.
40:38
Peter, who runs the channel, he's great.
40:42
I've had a few calls with him
40:43
and he just thinks about YouTube in such an interesting way
40:47
and I think that some of the editing decisions
40:49
that he and the team have are just really smart.
40:52
And I haven't really seen anyone do that.
40:53
So I'll give you an example.
40:54
So you see a lot of educational YouTubers,
40:57
they will do, they'll kind of have a keynote, right?
41:01
A presentation, some sort of talking it gets recorded
41:02
and they're just uploaded as a clip
41:04
or they'll have these bookends, right?
41:06
Whereas like they intro it, they have the clip
41:08
and then the end that the YouTuber outros
41:11
and then that sort of that.
41:12
What I love what Ving's team do is they have Ving sort of
41:16
inter spliced within the episodes clip.
41:19
So it feels like a little bit more dynamic
41:21
like an actual video.
41:22
But what's interesting is he's reacting to his own clip
41:26
and the things that are happening within the actual video.
41:29
So when he's helping someone to present well on stage
41:33
and the person messes up, you see Ving laugh
41:37
and talk about that in the moment.
41:39
So you've got two Ving, you've got the onstage Vint
41:41
and then you've got the sort of the future version
41:44
of him sat down in the studio reacting to that.
41:46
And it's just these small things, for example,
41:49
where rather than it cutting straight away back to Ving
41:52
after like a three minutes section
41:54
of where he's been talking on stage,
41:55
they will have Ving sliding on the screen
41:58
and he's like looking at the monitor for about 15 seconds
42:01
and it's like, oh, me and Ving,
42:03
we're watching this moment together right now.
42:05
Then Ving sort of becomes full screen
42:08
rather than just being in this box in the corner
42:10
and then he comments on it.
42:12
And I found that that was such a nice way
42:14
to have this blend of the two
42:17
where I didn't feel so abrupt
42:18
that you were constantly cutting between him
42:20
on stage and him in the studio.
42:22
And they do all of these tiny little things
42:24
like that across their content.
42:26
But I think a really interesting idea,
42:27
to see a lot of other people doing.
42:29
And so if I was a betting man,
42:31
I would definitely put money on Ving's brand
42:33
getting bigger and bigger over the next 18 months.
42:36
That is a really interesting take.
42:38
I'm so glad that I asked that question fascinating.
42:40
Okay, Jamie, thank you for coming on the show.
42:42
I appreciate you being here taking the time
42:44
on your busy life.
42:45
Thanks so much for inviting me, Devon.
42:47
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42:49
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42:51
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42:53
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42:56
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42:57
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42:58
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43:00
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43:02
So we're moving right along.
43:03
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43:04
Thank you.