5 Hard Truths I Learned Getting 1,000 YouTube Subscribers

:: 00:00:00

Speaker 1

I just crossed a thousand YouTube subscribers. Finally, it didn't happen overnight, but I have learned in this time five things that have helped me that I'm just going to share. If you're just getting started with your YouTube channel or just thinking about it, let's dive in. Hey. What's up? I'm Ray green, former executive turned nomad entrepreneur, and for the past five years I have been creating content online, and that has enabled me to generate more than $3 million in online sales as a consultant and a strategic growth partner for B2B companies.

:: 00:28:28

Speaker 1

And the vast majority of that was driven by LinkedIn, where I have built about 35,000 followers and where most of the revenue and audience and stuff that we have built has, has really come from and driven to my email list. But a year and a half ago, give or take, I started posting on YouTube. The goal with it was really to get to a channel where content had a longer tail, right?

:: 00:49:01

Speaker 1

Like where I could create something and it could be seen for days, weeks, months, maybe even years. Whereas on, you know, platforms like LinkedIn, you post and it's basically gone the next day or within 48 hours. So I wanted content that had a longer tail. I also wanted something that allowed me to create assets for my marketing and sales funnels.

:: 01:05:09

Speaker 1

Right? Like so I could create something for online, like for you. And then I could put these things strategically in like my booking funnel or in my pipeline or in the email sequences or something. And YouTube allows you to do that. And frankly, I wanted a channel that over the long haul is something that allows you to generate income without actually having to sit on a treadmill of engagement and, you know, connecting with other creators.

:: 01:28:22

Speaker 1

And just like constantly trying to hammer away in the comments and DMs and shit like that. So I went on YouTube with that mindset, and that's with publishing videos every single week. So I have been consistent for about a year and a half now with getting a video up at least once a week now. Recently we went to two a week and possibly we'll do more, and we have found a lot of ways to repurpose the content here into other channels, as opposed to other channels being the main source for us.

:: 01:51:17

Speaker 1

Now, what I can tell you is that looking back over this, it has been a haul. Like it has been a big learning curve. It has been a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of frustration, frankly. I mean, there were there were weeks and months. We were like, why am I here with 40 people watching this video?

:: 02:07:06

Speaker 1

Like, I can go to LinkedIn and get thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views. And there were times where I thought, I don't know if it's really worth the haul. Now, YouTube has a steep learning curve. Like there are things that you've got to figure out. So what I'm going to do is just share five of the things that I kind of wish I had known when I got started.

:: 02:24:27

Speaker 1

Let me clarify. I'm not proclaiming to be a YouTube expert like I have a thousand subscribers, and by most measures of people doing YouTube, it's a it's it's minuscule. It's a like it's a microscopic, you know, subscriber count. But it is something, right? It is something that I have I've worked pretty hard at and we have we have chipped away and there's been a lot of learning during that time.

:: 02:46:29

Speaker 1

much quicker does the second: 1000

:: 03:05:13

Speaker 1

This is me talking to me a year and a half ago that said, hey, watch this video. This is literally a kind of beginner telling actual beginner, at least do these things. You've got to nail the big three, and the big three are you've got to get the thumbnail, you've got to get the title and you've got to get the hook.

:: 03:22:01

Speaker 1

You've got to nail all three of those. Now, I kind of knew that, like I'd been told that like if you just Google some basic advice, you're like, hey, how do I get started on YouTube? It's like, hey, have a good thumbnail and have a good title and have a good hook. But I didn't know what that meant.

:: 03:33:18

Speaker 1

Clarity is so important. Like telling people what they're going to get is monumentally more valuable than trying to be really cute. Really clever, really creative. If I cover the title of your of your video and I'm looking at just the thumbnail, can I get a sense of what that is like? Does it tell me anything? And for a long time I'm not sure I did.

:: 03:57:20

Speaker 1

You know, like they were not only were they kind of boring and bland, but they also weren't very clear. Clarity trumps creativity in this in this case. Like what does it tell you something. And then congruency is also a big part of this. So imagine looking at the feed, does the thumbnail pop and does it catch my attention and tell me something about that?

:: 04:16:15

Speaker 1

I might want to watch that if it does, my eyes are going to go to the title. Is that congruent? Like is it consistent? Does the title then give me a little bit more information? Right? Like the thumbnail hooked me in the title now gets me interested, right? So my piqued my interest now gets me interested when I click.

:: 04:34:18

Speaker 1

Is it pretty clear that you're following through on this promise? What I want to know is with all these fancy thumbnails that are out there, the biggest thing I'm concerned about as a user is like wasting my time on like, clickbait that's, you know, completely irrelevant. I see the thumbnail, I see the title, I click it, does it tell me what I'm going to get really quickly?

:: 04:52:14

Speaker 1

And if you can knock those three things out, then you're off to a really good head start. So look for clarity. Look for consistency and nail thumbnail title and hook. Okay. Now the second thing is YouTube is a is a quality game. It makes sense to invest a little bit more time into the better content. Now, what I can tell you is looking at the videos that we have, like we just we had one, just recently that just like really by our, you know, relative to our other content, just really took off, you know, like it was thousands and thousands of views and it was an hour and a half full deep dive

:: 05:27:27

Speaker 1

into LinkedIn. It took a while to get to like put together. It was an eight page checklist comes with it. It's got links. It's like a complete breakdown of how to do, how to build your client acquisition system, how I'm using LinkedIn. There's a lot of work my editor had to do, a lot more work. I had to use, obviously from a recording standpoint, getting the materials ready.

:: 05:45:16

Speaker 1

So a lot more work. But if you actually look at the numbers that video accounts for 30 other videos, like consistency, I'm sure matters to to some degree. Although that's not one of my five, it might be better if I did one really good video every couple weeks, as opposed to a whole bunch of shitty videos every single day.

:: 06:06:25

Speaker 1

One way you're trying to just hack the algorithm, but after you need those top three, it is a quality game. It is like YouTube is measuring. How long do people stay with this thing? Like how many times is it getting shared? Like how valuable is this content? And if it's good, it will get shared. The third thing I would say, and I'm actually stealing this from, Alex Ramsey, you've got to create content for new people, right?

:: 06:29:16

Speaker 1

So for a while what I was doing was I was assuming that the vast majority of people were coming from my LinkedIn audience or coming from my email list, which is pretty strong, and coming to my YouTube video. So I was creating content as if everyone knew who I was or mosey a while back, did some research on the content they were creating, and he said he kind of had this moment where it was like, hey, you know what?

:: 06:49:24

Speaker 1

I'm here to build my audience, and if I'm building my audience, I have to do that under the assumption that the person watching this video doesn't know who I am. Not that this person's been following my content on LinkedIn for three years, I have to assume it's the first person on YouTube who's ever seen it, and it shows up in their feed.

:: 07:06:18

Speaker 1

And so I need to tell them really quickly why you should bother listening to me. If I'm doing some sales related content I'm going to talk about I've turned around eight sales teams. I'm going to talk about how I used to run sales for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, how I lead turnarounds for for private equity groups. I'm going to say those things really quickly.

:: 07:23:15

Speaker 1

And the person from LinkedIn who already knows me is like, man, I'm tired of hearing Rei say that on his on his videos, probably. But for all the new people they now know. Okay, like I guess I'll continue watching this right now. The fourth thing I would say about YouTube is it requires focused attention for 6 to 9 months.

:: 07:42:21

Speaker 1

I was doing it on the side while LinkedIn was our real focus right? It was like, hey, you know what we'll do? We'll keep the LinkedIn machine going and we'll start creating some videos on the side. And it was kind of like it was kind of get one up a week. I wasn't paying too much attention. I wasn't looking at the data.

:: 07:58:09

Speaker 1

I wasn't looking at, okay. Like this had like click through rates. We weren't testing different thumbnails. We weren't thinking about like being really strategic with the titles or even the content that we were creating. Once we flipped it, once, we found better ways to repurpose YouTube content for LinkedIn, instead of creating those as two separate channels and giving me more time and more attention and energy to focus on creating YouTube videos and increasing the volume and increasing the quality of what we were doing, and being a little bit more deliberate about, hey, let's let's test a thumbnail or two or hey, this video, this video really popped.

:: 08:33:00

Speaker 1

Why do you think it popped? Let's go back and look at the intro. That focused attention has made a world of difference. Our curve in terms of subscribers and views, is increasing now. We're still again, we're very, very early in this phase and I'm by no means an expert, but I am, I can tell you, is that the amount of learning that I've gotten after that initial call it 6 to 9 months of just doing it on the side versus what we're doing now, the learning that we are getting now as a result of what we're looking at and the adjustments that we're making is significantly higher, which means we're going to iterate and

:: 09:04:22

Speaker 1

optimize much more quickly. And so we're going to see results much more quickly. So for me, finding a way to make this the core focus and finding better ways to leverage what I'm doing here through systems to get this over to other channels. So I have to spend less time on those. Has been a game changer for me.

:: 09:22:03

Speaker 1

And then fifth, YouTube is a long game, right? If you're thinking, hey, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna hop on YouTube and recreate my channel, throw up five videos, and I'm going to see how they do, and then I'm going to, if that's your approach, I just fuck it. Like, don't don't bother. And like that least is my experience and that of like several friends and stuff that I have here.

:: 09:39:23

Speaker 1

When I look at the, the creators and the YouTubers that I kind of look up to, right? Like I, you know, because I love their content or just in terms of how they've grown here. Many of them like people with, you know, millions of followers today like they have been at this for a long, long time, you know, and, you know, it's not a it's not an overnight deal.

:: 10:00:18

Speaker 1

And even at a year, year and a half, I'm still looking at this like a five year deal. Ten year deal. I knew going into this that YouTube was not going to have a quick turnaround. I knew I wasn't going to to pop in, you know, build up a really quick subscriber base. But even with that, I was still really disappointed at times.

:: 10:16:27

Speaker 1

I was still like, man, this is slow now. Again, I could have put more focus on it, maybe done some more iteration. But you know, we've been here every week and I credit the fact that I went into this knowing there's going to be a lot of work. I'm not really expecting any immediate returns, and I'm playing the long game here.

:: 10:35:00

Speaker 1

I credit that mindset with being here today because there's a million times between, you know, when I started and now that I would have said, fuck this. Like, it's not it's not worth it. It's not producing returns. It's not. You know, I can't measure the ROI immediately. I can't you know, the traffic to my website isn't huge. Like so like from a data standpoint, like looking how to quantify this within the first six months, I would have said, this doesn't make any sense, right?

:: 10:58:18

Speaker 1

Like just just kill that project. But I was looking I was playing the long game. And everyone that I know that has done really well here has, has played the long game. Now what does that mean? It means one set your expectations right. It also means to think about content that you can create consistently, sustainably and not burn out.

:: 11:17:04

Speaker 1

Don't start a strategy that you can't sustain for two years, right? Like don't start something that you're going to burn out in two months on. Start something that you know you can do consistently and sustainably, and you can kind of weather these times, you're like, hey, there's not many indications that this is this is going really well. You know, think about that as you go into it.

:: 11:37:09

Speaker 1

Like what is a content strategy or a cadence that you can you can do over the long haul. And that also includes the content itself. One thing that's made YouTube a lot easier for me is I for a while, I was very, very niched on like product sizing or this or that, and now now I just create content that one like it.

:: 11:56:27

Speaker 1

I mean, we're measuring things and we're looking at it, but it's also content I want to create. Right. And it's also content. I'm just really good at it. Right? If you get me talking about building sales teams, if you get me talking about, you know, sales processes and strategies and, you know, scaling up a B2B company and it comes naturally to me when I'm talking about a topic that I'm like, maybe not super comfortable with, then it's it's not good.

:: 12:19:02

Speaker 1

It's going to be harder for me to create that content. Like if I was sitting here trying to tell you, listen, I'm the YouTube guru and here's what you need to do this. I just wouldn't deliver that message very well, and I would have to practice it and script it, and it would be energy draining. And frankly, the reward and the feedback loop on it just wouldn't be worth it.

:: 12:36:08

Speaker 1

So, I have found that creating content. Yeah. I mean, find your niche niche or whatever, and find, you know, your, your market and, you know, you know, if you, if you have some brand strategy, like cool. But also make sure you actually kind of enjoy the content because, because if you don't, it's really easy to burn out.

:: 12:52:15

Speaker 1

So that's all I've got. I can't wait to watch this in a year. And see how I disagree with myself. But this is, this is really the learning that I've had up to this point. And, I had a friend reach out recently and say, hey, you know where to chat about. You know, I was thinking about starting a YouTube channel.

:: 13:07:17

Speaker 1

This is basically the video I want to send. Here's what I think, and here's what I know so far. So, I hope it's helpful for you. And if you're getting started, feel free to, you know, comment below. If I can answer some questions, I certainly will. And if you want some, more business tips, sales tips for your business, feel free to subscribe to the channel.

:: 13:23:13

Speaker 1

But no, I'm probably not going to post a whole bunch of how to YouTube stuff. This is a one off audience, and you.