TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Set your YouTube channel for financial success with Richie Norton

July 09, 2020 Liron Segev;Richie Norton Season 3 Episode 220
TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
Set your YouTube channel for financial success with Richie Norton
Show Notes Transcript

Take two YouTube channels with identical subscriber numbers and identical views creating content around the same topic. 
Why does one channel leapfrog the other?
What makes one channel more successful than the other?
Why do brands want to work one channel more than the other?

This is what we are going to be chatting about on this episode of TubeTalk with Richie Norton!

Richie Norton is the award-winning, bestselling author of the book The Power of Starting Something Stupid (in 10+ languages) and Résumés Are Dead & What to Do About It. In 2019, Richie was named one of the world's top 100 business coaches by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. He is an international speaker (including TEDx & Google Startup Grind) & serial entrepreneur.
Richie has tons of experience working with creators and businesses and so in this episode, you will learn all about:

  • Don't wait for retirement to do what you want
  • Failure is relative
  • 3 Ts of Stupidity
  • Youtuber realizing the need to monetize off YouTube
  • YouTube financial freedom is based on systems
  • Breaking down how to make $50 000 per year

Make sure you follow Richie Norton on: 


This show is hosted by Liron Segev who is a Tech Blogger, YouTuber, and the Director of customer success at vidIQ. If you have any questions, please feel free to email liron@vidiq.com

Liron Segev:

It's very easy to say we want to become full-time YouTubers. We want to make money by uploading our content to our channel, engaging with our community and simply getting paid to do that. But what does that practically mean? Well, today's episode on TubeTalk is all about that. It's all about the YouTuber mindset, changing your channel from a hobby channel into a real business, working with brands and all the practical steps you need to take. If this is something you've been wrestling with, well today's episode is especially for you. Let's do this.

Liron Segev:

Welcome to another episode of TubeTalk. My name is Liron Segev. I am a tech blogger, a YouTuber and the director of customer success here at vidIQ where every day, we help creators big and small level up their channels, get more subscribers, more views in less time. When it comes to YouTube, there's many, many different ways of looking at your channels. Some pretty much see it as a hobby. Make amazing content, upload it, get a whole bunch of views, some subscribers and that's all hunky-dory and great and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a wonderful way to share your content.

Liron Segev:

Other people look at YouTube as a business. They want to make some money out of that. But whichever way you start, you get to a certain point... And I've said this before, you get to a certain point where you realize YouTube actually has expenses for you. You have to travel to events. You have to meet amazing people. You have to buy gear. You have to spend your time and money editing and thumbnails and then it starts hurting in your pocket. What can we do about it? How can we make YouTube work for us?

Liron Segev:

One of the greatest people I know is Richie Norton who's joining us live now from Hawaii. Lucky man. He is an award-winning bestseller author of the book The Power of Starting Something Stupid, which has been translated into over 10 languages, ladies and gentlemen. Resumes Are Dead: And What to Do about It is another one of his books. In 2019, Richie was named as the world's top 100 business coaches and is an international speaker. Here's my friend. I met with him several times around the world at various events. Richie, thank you for being on TubeTalk.

Richie Norton:

Dude, I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be a blast. I love and respect you so much and I've been looking forward to this. Thanks for having me on.

Liron Segev:

Yeah, thank you. We always love our chats. We always kind of find the [inaudible 00:02:37] and even if we have 10, 15 minutes, it's always stuff that I walk away going, "Wow, how did I not see that?" Richie's got this amazing way and amazing insight. He's able to get a beautiful helicopter view, and Richie calls it like he sees it. He doesn't mince his words, which is what I absolutely love, Richie, that you do that so well with so many people. I suppose we got to start at the top. Those who don't know you, who is Richie Norton in a tweet?

Richie Norton:

I'm just a dude.

Liron Segev:

And here we go, ladies and gentlemen. You're just a dude.

Richie Norton:

I'm just making it up as I go.

Liron Segev:

You don't even realize how-

Richie Norton:

I'm less than 40 characters, or however many they do now. I don't know.

Liron Segev:

The funny things is you don't realize how accurate that is.

Richie Norton:

Oh my gosh.

Liron Segev:

You've done lots of stuff. I mean, you've been around the block for quite a while. I mean, not everybody gets to be a TEDx speaker. Not everybody gets to just go to Google Startup grinds. You're a serial entrepreneur. You network in all the right circles. You know the right people. Tell us your story. Where did Richie come from and where are you actually based? And tell me about Hawaii.

Richie Norton:

Well, this is a really great introduction and I wish my mom was listening because she'd be so happy. I came from my mom and my dad.

Liron Segev:

When a mommy loves a daddy...

Richie Norton:

That's right. No, but born and raised in San Diego, lived in Brazil as a missionary for my church. I live in Hawaii. I've been here for almost, I don't know, almost 20 years now.

Liron Segev:

Wow.

Richie Norton:

I left for a little bit while I did an Executive MBA in Arizona at Thunderbird. All my kids are born and raised in Hawaii. We had a number of tragedies and horrible things that have just happened over time, which we might get into, but at the end of the day... There was one point in my life where I thought... Honestly, I think I was 21 years old. I started thinking, "Man, when I finally retire when I'm 65, I can't wait to do what I really want to do, to work to end poverty, to use my wealth that I'm going to create over forty-something years to give back," and then in the same breath I thought, "That is the stupidest thing I've ever said to myself." But that's traditional America. We're supposed to work until we're 65 years old and we're supposed to, traditionally, be in one company or one industry and have a 401(k) and finally have this golden nest egg that we've grown and then go and do what we really want to do.

Richie Norton:

And then I started looking around the world and I'm like, "That's not the way it is for people that retire. That is not the gift they were promised." And then I started thinking, "How can I do what I really want to do in the future right now?" And then I thought, "But how can I do that without destroying my family? How can I feed my family?" It was just a soup of ideas.

Richie Norton:

As I started getting into college and doing my own ventures and just kind of creating ideas and different projects and getting jobs off and on, my brother-in-law passed away. He's younger than me. He passed away at 21 in his sleep. When that happened, I realized, "Oh. Not only do I not want to wait until I'm 65, but I might not make it until then." I thought about his wonderful life. He did so many cool things. Great person. He's the kind of person that would hang out with the homeless people and bring them to church and he'd go do service projects in Cambodia. Really cool dude, and then it ended.

Richie Norton:

A few years later, my wife and I had our fourth son and we named him Gavin after my brother-in-law Gavin. One day, he got this cough and it was... We took him to the doctor's. They said it was nothing. Babies get coughs. It persisted. They said, "Maybe it's RSV, but he'll be fine. It's not a big deal. It's whatever," and we're like, "This is a big deal. What are you talking about?" They're like, "No, he's okay."

Richie Norton:

Eventually, his cough got so bad we went to the emergency room and they kept us there, and it wasn't for quite a while... It's bizarre... they finally checked for something called pertussis, also known as whooping cough. This is a communicable disease that spreads like wildfire through a cough from someone else somewhere that we have no idea. It was just too much on his little body. Here he is, 76 days into his life and they have him in all these wires and tubes and whatever. They took all that out, I held for him a moment, hand him to my wife with my hand on his little heart and we just sing him lullabies until he slipped away.

Richie Norton:

And you can imagine as a parent and as a couple what a horrible thing this can be. This is the worst thing you can ever imagine and we left that hospital empty-handed. But with these two experiences... I mean, there's more things too, but at that point in time, we just realized, "Oh, life is short." And even though that's cliché, it doesn't make it any less true. That kind of rewired the way we thought about everything we do, when we do it, why we do it and even how we do it.

Liron Segev:

I mean, it's unimaginable. People might say that they understand, but there's no way to understand unless you've been through it yourself. That is a shock to the system. You have a family, you have other kids, you have to decide what are you going to do next? How do take this and harness this for good? How do you harness this to take yourself, your family and those around you to that next level? What happened next?

Richie Norton:

Well, I remember we had a mentor. She was speaking at some event and we happened to be there and she came up to my wife and I after. She's a big-time CEO of an organization and she said, "Wow." She said, "What did you learn?" My wife and I were like... Inside, not to each other. We were just like, "What is she talking about? What have we learned?" We learned that life sucks. What are you talking about?

Liron Segev:

And doctors don't know everything.

Richie Norton:

I think my wife was gracious and she said, "Get back to me in a year," and she laughed at that like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I'm just like, "I don't know. Let me think about it." I made up some things about what I might have learned. But then I took it seriously a little later. I started thinking, "What did I actually learn?" What I write in my book The Power of Starting Something Stupid about this, I call it Gavin's Law. They're both named Gavin and they're both buried right here in Hawaii on top of each other in the sand. Gavin's Law is this: live to start, start to live. Because when you live to start those ideas that are pressing on your mind, you really will start living.

Richie Norton:

There are so many people that don't know what to do with their life. They don't know what their next YouTube channel should be. They don't know what they should do to monetize. They don't know where they're going. It's like, "Cool. Nobody does. There's something pressing on your mind right now... I know there is... that you've been putting off saying you're scared, it's not for you, it costs too much money. You don't have time, you don't have education, you don't have experience. How are they going to think of you if you don't have the audience? You're not relevant." You'd label it stupid and you push it away and do nothing with it when in reality, that so-called stupid idea might be the smartest thing you could do. That's why I like to say stupid is the new smart.

Richie Norton:

At this time, I was working on all these different ventures and I got this idea to write a book called The Power of Starting Something Stupid and I was working on it. My brother-in-law passes, my son passes and then I started interviewing people all over the place but many of them were older in the sunset of their lives or they've already retired or they're about to. I'd ask them, "What worked? What didn't work? What made you feel like you were successful in your goals and achievement and whatever?" They would say exactly like I said a second ago. They said something like, "I waited for a time where I'd have more time, more education, more experience, more money, only to find out that when I fricking got here, I still don't have enough time, education, experience and money." Isn't that true to life?

Richie Norton:

But those that were successful... Quote, unquote successful, whatever that looks like for them... they started where they were with what they had even if it was next to nothing, and they leveraged their existing resources to make it happen. They made it work or they didn't, but at least they were able to... No one says it this way. It's actually kind of cool to be able to get over a dream you didn't like or it wasn't going to work instead of waiting 45 years to do it.

Liron Segev:

Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

Because when you're waiting 45 years to do it, it's a huge fall when it doesn't work.

Liron Segev:

We say this all the time, is that no is not the answer you want to hear, but it's an answer. A lot of people kind of are... They head out to venture capitalist with these big plans and sometimes, the answer is no. It's not the answer you want because obviously, we all want a yes. We want someone to say, "I'll fund you. I'll come in with you. This is a great idea. Let's do it." But if they give you a no, first of all, you know where you stand so you're not all the time waiting and waiting and waiting. But I love what you just said. It's also good to get over something. There is a reason why they said no. They had a reason and you got to understand what that reason is.

Richie Norton:

Failure is relative. You could chalk it up to learning "I don't like failing. Who likes to fail?" No one wants that. It's not about just failing forward or failing fast. It's really about it's this or something better. For example, I call it the three T's of stupidity. Everything from the Model T to the telephone to Twitter, back when these things started, they were the dumbest ideas on the planet at the time. People were like, "What are you doing? You're trying to build some new thing where we don't have to have horses anymore? What are you talking about?" And you're like, "Oh, you think you can talk to someone through a machine really far away? That can't happen." Even Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law told him that it was only a toy. And here we are, basically talking... I know these are microphones and computers, but it's basically a phone.

Liron Segev:

Exactly.

Richie Norton:

You know what I mean? Here we are. Even Twitter, the engineers were like, "This is a stupid idea. What are we doing?" What's interesting to think is, maybe they were dumb ideas at the time, but they turned out to be smart and great. But also, they look very different now than they did when they started. In fact, they look very different when they launched them than they did when they had the idea.

Richie Norton:

What people don't realize is when they have an idea in their head, they are uncomfortable and don't even consider the fact that moving towards it might mean they might create something way better. Instead of going, "Oh my gosh. This is just us moving towards something better," they think it's a failure and they turn it off. That's wrong.

Liron Segev:

Absolutely, absolutely. Because it's not all ones and zeros. It's not "This actually exists in this format or it doesn't exist at all." Maybe by thinking about it, drawing it out, speaking to the engineers, speaking to the marketers, you birth something else as a byproduct that's 10 times better than the original idea.

Richie Norton:

That's right.

Liron Segev:

Maybe it solves that gap.

Richie Norton:

But you could never get there without starting, and you never would have had those ideas without those new inputs. When we had some of these tragedies, I learned that it's a tunnel, not a cave. You're going to get through it. It's not about moving on. It's, at appropriate times, moving forward and keep walking. That's the same it is as a creator. It's a tunnel, not a cave. You don't just have some sort of mental block. You're just scared. You're nervous. You're paralyzed. You're whatever. Keep walking. Again, not moving on. These hard things are part of you. You can build on top of them or with them or through them or transform them.

Liron Segev:

I agree.

Richie Norton:

But stopping becomes a self-imposed cave or prison.

Liron Segev:

Oh, completely. It will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. I love that completely because I think a lot of people start doing a YouTube channel, they start becoming a creator, they drink the Kool-Aid, they love what they're doing and then it gets to a point where they realize, "Hold on, this is actually a lot of work. I actually got to put effort, time, money into this to make it work. I'm just going to give up."

Richie Norton:

I totally agree. Those of you in YouTubeland, it's pretty cool because you're getting instant feedback. You can blame it on the algorithm, you can blame it on "Oh, no one's going to see it," but at the same time, those who are seeing it, those who are seeing what the thumbnail looks like, those who are checking off the analytics, they're getting instant feedback on what works and what doesn't. It doesn't necessarily mean the art isn't fantastic, the story isn't fantastic. Someone may have created the greatest story on the planet ever since the dawn of time yesterday or today and we don't know about it because it wasn't out... No one shared it. It's on YouTube, but we just can't find it.

Richie Norton:

People have issues with separating their art from the attention that it's getting. I work with so many YouTubers, it's bizarre. And I'm not necessarily one. I have videos up there, but I'm not a professional YouTuber. I'm not doing it every day. I'm not grinding on the video thing. I love it, but I just use multiple channels for other goals and for other things that I'm trying to do. But what's happened over time... Because I'm old enough... I hope I'm not too old, but I'm old enough to remember when YouTube started, when people were... Even before Google bought it. I remember this. I remember people not knowing what it was and not knowing what was happening the first time a video goes viral like, "What in the world is..."

Richie Norton:

The world literally changed. Most people now have no idea that happened. They're born with it. It's like a fish in water. You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, that's just the way the world is," right?

Liron Segev:

Right.

Richie Norton:

But I mention that because when people... My experience now that... I think the number one or number two profession on kids' minds is becoming a creator or a YouTuber. Maybe now it's a TikTok person. Whatever the next thing is, but this is the thing they want to do. They don't realize that there's other ways to think through your goals and dreams than being directly impacted, affected, monetized through the channel they're presenting on.

Richie Norton:

Let me use an old school experience or example. People on TV, movie stars, musicians, you think they're making all their money on TV, on the radio, through their music. You know what? Maybe they started that way but if you look at the ones who have leapfrogged in their wealth, their position, their influence, their impact, it's because they sold something else.

Liron Segev:

Yes, yes. Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

You know what I mean?

Liron Segev:

Completely.

Richie Norton:

YouTubers, they might use Beats. Where do you think those things came from? You know what I mean? Why do you think that happened? You look at a movie star, you think they're making a lot of money. Now, they're actually making a lot of money from their jeans that they're selling on fricking Instagram.

Richie Norton:

People got to think a little differently and think of "What am I doing and why?" Not just the little weird channel or segment that's relevant because tomorrow? You're demonetized, the adpocalypse happens, something changes and where do you sit? You're lost unless you have a greater picture view of what you're actually doing.

Liron Segev:

I think completely, completely agree. It's about not having all your eggs in one basket. We all know that that's the golden rule. At the end of the day, we're still building our YouTube castle on a rented land. It's somebody else's land and we get the privilege of building our channels on it, but we have to abide by their rules and those rules can change.

Liron Segev:

Richie, with your experience, all these YouTubers that are starting to come to you, are you finding today that more and more YouTubers are realizing that "Hold on, I need to understand that YouTube is a component of my business, but I need to look elsewhere to be able to monetize"?

Richie Norton:

That's a really good question. I'm going to answer it directly really quick, and then I'm going to give a little background. The ones that are experienced and have been doing for a long time are looking for other ways to monetize. They are doing everything they can possible to think outside of YouTube because they're extremely successful and they see the writing on the wall. Well, it's both good writing for the future and it's bad writing because they've seen too much. They have seen what happens, right?

Liron Segev:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Richie Norton:

The new ones, no idea. They're just happy to get a thousand views, a million views. And if they get 50 bucks, they're stoked... As they should be. When I wrote The Power of Starting Something Stupid, I'm not going after trying to work with YouTubers. I work with people in all kinds of industries from venture capitalists like you mentioned to major Fortune 100 companies to creators, influencers in all kinds of industries. It wasn't on purpose. When I wrote this title, The Power of Starting Something Stupid, I didn't realize that people with stupid ideas would start coming to me asking for help. I was just sharing my experience.

Richie Norton:

Then I quickly had to learn. Imagine just hearing, I don't know, 10 different stupid ideas a day, or a hundred of them when I start counting up all the emails, or thousands of them a week or month, or tens of thousands of them, if not more, a year. I've heard the weirdest things you can't even imagine.

Liron Segev:

Now, that's a book waiting to be written.

Richie Norton:

Well, follow me on Instagram Stories. They disappear but I share some of them there. But what happened was I realized really quickly I couldn't be the subject matter expert on everyone's stupid idea.

Liron Segev:

Okay. Makes sense.

Richie Norton:

Because I don't know what they're doing. You know what I mean?

Liron Segev:

Yes, of course.

Richie Norton:

I don't get it. But when someone asks me for help, I realized I could focus on their business model.

Liron Segev:

Nice. Yes.

Richie Norton:

And business model isn't just a pricing strategy. It's all-encompassing. It's comprehensive. It's everything from your company brand, your personal brand... And I'm not talking about a logo. I'm talking about the way you show up in the world all the way down to what was more important to me, bringing it back to my brother-in-law and my son, is your life and your lifestyle.

Richie Norton:

Let me explain. Let's pretend someone has this idea to sell this widget and I go, "Cool. Let's do it." They want to make a million dollars and I go, "Cool. Let's do it. Here's how." And let's say they even do, which is not an exaggeration, then I'd say, "Cool. Are you good? You made your money. You did your thing." "No, no. I'm busier than ever." I learned real quickly talking to so many people that when someone tells me they have an idea for something, that's not actually the thing they want. They just think this idea will get them to where they want to be.

Richie Norton:

Let me give an example. Someone will say, "I want to start this widget," but in reality, they thought this would be the way to help them have freedom of time and freedom of location and financial independence. When someone tells me they want to start a gym on the corner with a physical building... Which is wonderful, awesome. I have tons of really strong people as clients, lots of them way stronger than I will ever be... then I say, "Okay, hold on. How old's your son and daughter? Oh, they're 13 and 15? Hold on. How long will this take for you to turn a profit? Five years. Wait a second, won't they basically be out of the house by the time you're done?" And then, "Hold on, are you telling me that you want to be able to travel the world in Europe and Asia and hey, South Africa? You're telling me you want to do that? Aren't you going to be the one opening the doors and making sure the doors are locked at night?"

Liron Segev:

There's a disconnect.

Richie Norton:

And they go, "Oh." I go, "Doesn't mean you can't start it. I'm just saying you can't be the owner-operator. You have to be the owner-investor. Someone else has to do all that crap for you. Are you a micromanager and you're controlling?" "Yes. I have to make sure..." Okay. Just remember, I'm not saying right or wrong. You can do that, but it's not going to give you the freedom that you seek.

Liron Segev:

Got you.

Richie Norton:

Now, we work backwards. I also like to use the example of the castle. A lot of people, let's pretend they want to live in a castle metaphorically, they'll begin with a moat and then they never get out of the moat and into the castle. The moat's the work.

Liron Segev:

Right. Right, right.

Richie Norton:

The systems get concreted because they think that in the future, five, 10 years from now, they'll be able to be free and be out. But in reality because they've been running that track so many times, it's what they continually do forever. Because how do you get out of that? You built it this way. How does it run all of a sudden? How do you all of a sudden walk away from that? You don't. This is the majority of business owner-operators.

Richie Norton:

But, if you wanted to live in a castle, have that freedom of time and location and financial independence, why not just go travel on the road right now and build a business with economic and strategic moats that support the castle, the center, the middle? Instead of tiptoeing up to your dreams and putting your feet in the water maybe 10 years from now, why don't you just do the thing right now and build the business to support it rather than take away from it? This is a very different way of thinking.

Richie Norton:

Now, let's apply it YouTubers. YouTubers, what do they want? I don't know. Everybody wants different things. They want to share a story. It doesn't really matter, but let's just use the same example of freedom. Two people can do the exact same business or the exact same channel and very similar videos. Let's say they get the same number of views and the same number of brand deals and they make the same money. Let's say they have even the same number of kids in their family, whatever.

Liron Segev:

This is [crosstalk 00:25:21].

Richie Norton:

Right? One person or one family has all the time in the world and the other one doesn't. Why?

Liron Segev:

Why, yeah.

Richie Norton:

Systems.

Liron Segev:

Exactly.

Richie Norton:

One family is sending their kids to Disneyland while they're at home editing, pretending they're in Disneyland, and the other one is at Disneyland enjoying their time and they've outsourced their editing. Because I work with so many YouTubers, I have an entire editing team where we edit hundreds of videos every month of people so that they can have their time back and their freedom back. But what's interesting, I found, is when I gave them their time back and their freedom back, based on having them not do the editing anymore, not losing their creative ability, what I realized is they weren't... Not everyone, but most weren't using it to have more time with their family, which is fine, no judgment. They use it to make more fricking videos.

Liron Segev:

That's exactly what I was going to say. Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

When people say, "I don't have time, I don't have education, I don't have experience, I don't have money. I don't know what to sell. I'm not getting enough AdSense crap. I'm not getting brand deals that I want," I say, "That's your choice. That is 100% inside your ability to get or not get. It is not something outside because as soon as you believe that it's inside, you do something about it. If you continually believe that your success depends on YouTube's algorithm... Which is a large part of it. I get it... But as soon as you believe that it's outside of you, you will do nothing to change it."

Liron Segev:

By the way, I did warn you guys up front that this going to get deep and good. I'm already making notes just as we're talking here. Let's roll with this example. You've opened this door. We're going to walk straight through this. We have a creator. Now, this creator is motivated. We hear this all the time. People want to be a full-time YouTuber. Now, I love the question of well, what does that mean? We've worked through that. We want to buy more freedom. We want to be able to travel so I batch produce a whole bunch, send it to an editor and now I've got this freedom. But in order to make this practical and to make this real, I've got to make some money and, exactly what you said, YouTube AdSense is great but realistically, the big money is made with other stuff.

Liron Segev:

You've spoken about a brand deal and you're saying if it's internal, you'll do something about it. What are some tips that you can give us? If I'm [inaudible 00:27:53] and maybe I don't have a big channel, maybe I don't have millions of millions view per video, what should I be doing to think like I'm a big business to put my mindset correct so that I can approach brands and secure those beautiful brand deals?

Richie Norton:

Great question. Let's put it into context. I am not a professional YouTuber. I've dabbled in it. I've had a video reach over a million views on Facebook. I've done little things here and there, but I know that my success, or lack thereof, on YouTube wasn't necessarily because I tried or I didn't try. It was because I didn't focus on it and it's okay.

Richie Norton:

And then somebody will say this but go, "But I am focusing. I'm doing everything I can and it's still not working." And then I say, "Well, let's put it into proper perspective. Let's talk through that." Plus, let's not forget that these people who I know and you know or not who have had the fortune of growing a real channel worked really, really hard for it and over time. Again, similar to looking at starting the Model T or the telephone or Twitter, we're looking at people in the future that are present now. You know what I mean?

Liron Segev:

Right. Yes, yes.

Richie Norton:

And they go like, "Woe, woe is me. Why don't I have that?" And you forget the five or 10 years they put into finally getting there. That's [crosstalk 00:29:21].

Liron Segev:

That overnight success took five years.

Richie Norton:

Exactly. I have incredible respect for anyone that has taken the time to grow something, their YouTube channel or anything. I also have just as much respect for the person who really wants something and is trying really hard and it's not working out. Mad respect. Who hasn't been there? Even the most successful. Let's think about that.

Richie Norton:

Let's make this super real. I guess I have to just use random examples because we don't know who's listening. Let's also assume, listener, that you could swap out the numbers or the idea with whatever is relevant to you. Don't get stuck on the example. Let's say that there is a creator and let's just say, for example, they want to make $5,000 a month. There's one person. Say there's another creator who doesn't care about money. They just want to get a million views. There's that person. And there's a million people. Whatever. And then there's another person who's like, "Hey, I'm just in it for the art. Whatever happens, whatever happens."

Richie Norton:

There's the money guy, there's the art person, there's the person that wants to make money doing their art. Money and meaning, sharing a story, I get it. Let's just start with the $5,000 thing. I don't know what it would take and how many views because I guess the CPMs might differ based on the ad and the content and all that kind of stuff. But to make $5,000, you'd have to get X number of views directly. [crosstalk 00:30:56]-

Liron Segev:

And just to be clear, we're not talking about a brand deal at this stage. You're just thinking CPM YouTube AdSense.

Richie Norton:

Yes and no. In my head I'm thinking, "I don't care where it comes from. I want to make $5,000."

Liron Segev:

Yeah, okay. Great. I think that's a good angle. It's "My goal is I need five grand a month."

Richie Norton:

Yeah. "And I'm going to do it through video." Now, I'm making this up on the fly. This isn't something I've actually thought through, but let's break down the actual numbers. That is five brand deals at a thousand dollars each. That's one brand deal at $5,000. You see what I'm saying?

Liron Segev:

Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

And you can break those numbers up any way, shape or form. If you're not married to the idea that it only has to be on YouTube, well now we have LinkedIn and yes, we have Twitter, for what that's worth. And yes, we have IGTV and yes, we have YouTube. Now I'm going to get super crazy. If you open up your fricking yellow pages and you find someone who spent $10,000 on the biggest full page ad in there, you know that you could call them right now and create a better video they could put on their website right now and distribute it on all these different channels for $10,000. They would love for someone to do that for them.

Liron Segev:

We got to pause here because that was super critical. Here's a real, practical, right now tip.

Richie Norton:

They're spending it where they have forever.

Liron Segev:

Where daddy used to and granddaddy used to so therefore, you do the same thing.

Richie Norton:

And maybe it's still working. Maybe it's still working. It's obviously a conversation. You're going to have to talk on the phone or go in there or have a real good email, be a real human.

Liron Segev:

Of course.

Richie Norton:

And I get that maybe your creative isn't necessarily creating ads for people so don't get stuck on with this stuff. What I'm trying to say is the principle of creative thinking is-

Liron Segev:

Yes, that's-

Richie Norton:

It's rarely applied to the fricking business model. Why don't creators think creatively about making money?

Liron Segev:

I love this. I love it. Love it, love it, love it, love it, love it.

Richie Norton:

Are you kidding me? You're in this to make money but you're not even going to think about it? You're just going to hope that somebody cool tweets it out? That's not a strategy.

Liron Segev:

But that is taking real practical steps which you can do. There's nothing stopping anyone from literally doing exactly that. Your goal was to make 5,000. It's not necessarily off YouTube AdSense. It was to get you that 5,000 so that you have the freedom to do something else with your time, your money, et cetera. This is a great strategy. What's wrong with that? Love it, love it, love it.

Richie Norton:

Let me do something else with you. Let's do a calculator. The average person in America makes about, I don't know. What is it, 56, 58,000, $55,000 a year. Let's just say $50,000 for fun. I actually have a calculator in front of me so I don't mess up. Let's say that you divided 50,000 by a hundred-dollar eBook or microtraining on how to use lighting or how to do a video or how to do your hair or how to do anything. Just a how-to video, a hundred bucks. Let's say you figure out, take the time to learn how to properly package something like this up and sell it. How many would you have to sell to make the equivalent of an average American in America? You would only have to sell 500 of them. You divide 500 by 12, you only have to sell 41 of them and now all of a sudden, you're making just as much as your mom and dad.

Richie Norton:

Sometimes, people will come to me out of nowhere and say, "Hey, I've worked for a year on trying to create this thing or sell this thing and I haven't made any money." The first thing I say to them is, "Oh, well, when is the last time you asked somebody for their credit card?" Their face drops or I can't seem them so I imagine their jaw dropping. It is the most simple thing in the world to say out loud that the reason you actually haven't gotten paid is because you never ask someone to pay you.

Richie Norton:

What happens is creators do this all the time, myself included. This is specific not to just making art and throwing it out there. That's a very different thing. This is specific to people who are trying to make a living out of it. They work, work, work, work, work and wonder why they never got paid when in reality, what happens right before you get paid, you ask someone for money. That's when you sell something, but let's make it super real for people who are just getting views. If you know how many views that it takes to get a certain dollar amount, you can't actually really get frustrated at all by not having that dollar amount because you didn't earn those views yet.

Richie Norton:

Because people always mix and mingle their art with their money which is fine because YouTube's done that to us, but you can actually separate it and go, "Actually, I think my art is fantastic. I think my video's amazing." You can start separating in your mind the work I do versus the money I make might not be the same thing. And then once you do that, then you actually can marry the two and say, "Well, if the way YouTube pays me is this way, then it would require for me to make this video get this type of whatever."

Richie Norton:

Then, it becomes a problem in the brain for artists on integrity. Am I selling out? Am I only making videos for the views? The answer is maybe.

Liron Segev:

And it's hard to hear it.

Richie Norton:

And maybe you are. Then you have to grapple with that. Am I authentic or am I not? The thing is, this isn't a right or wrong. What it does is it allows you to actually intentionally make the choice. If you put a stick in the ground and say, "I am not going to make content that gets shared and viewed because F the algorithm," well then you can actually feel really good about that. "My stuff's awesome and people aren't seeing it because YouTube sucks." You made a choice. Or, "I'm going to change the way I do it only to... This is the extremes, right?

Liron Segev:

Right.

Richie Norton:

"Only to get the views and I'm making all kind of money." Cool. That was a choice. But in reality, it's not either one of those things, is it? I would ask myself, "How can I create the art that I want without selling out and get the views I need to make the money I want to make?" Ask a better question, get a better answer. When you say "I can't because," you close off an opportunity to actually solve a problem because you've told your brain, like a calculator, "If I do this, I can't do that." But if you say, "I wish I could do this without this bad thing happening right now," you actually allow your mind to open up and allow creativity to fall in. When you're walking around, taking a shower or doing the dishes and you have that eureka moment, it's actually not a eureka moment. Your brain's been working on it for a long time. All of a sudden, you have a solution and then you go and try it and then it doesn't work, but you learned something new and then you do it again. This is life.

Richie Norton:

What bothers me is when there's this either/or thinking like, "Oh, they're successful because they've sold out." BS. Or they're not successful because they're unwilling to get scientific about the algorithm. BS.

Liron Segev:

Exactly. Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

You can do whatever you want but just be decisive. What we're getting to is people have goals but if I have a goal to write a book, I'll always have a goal to write a book.

Liron Segev:

All right. Exactly.

Richie Norton:

The moment I decide to write a book, the book is written.

Liron Segev:

Hundred percent.

Richie Norton:

It's moving from goals to decisions but making proper decisions that are in alignment with the lifestyle you want, the money you need, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Liron Segev:

I cannot emphasize how strongly I agree with this. I speak to so many creators who say, "I'm not getting the brand deals," and my first question to them is, "How many brands have you reached out to?"

Richie Norton:

That's right.

Liron Segev:

And they go, "Oh, I haven't." Well, how do you expect them to say yes when you haven't taken that first step?

Richie Norton:

That's right. There's nothing more wonderful than when a brand reaches out to you. That actually happened to me and to some of my friends because all of a sudden, they're aware. You earn that privilege and right at some point. Sometimes it's luck, but most likely it's work. But what they don't learn is that these people getting these great brand deals usually were asking for them for a long time but even better than that, the ones that I know that are doing the biggest ones, they were doing brand deals for free.

Liron Segev:

Free. Yes, yes.

Richie Norton:

They were making videos for things and not getting paid, but then some other brand would-

Liron Segev:

But it was strategic.

Richie Norton:

Yeah. And then some other brand would say, "You did that for them. Can you do it for us?" "Sure. How much does it cost? Fifty fricking grand? Let's go." You know what I mean? What's funny about this conversation is we're almost pulling back the curtain a little bit behind the scenes and just allowing people to know it's more work than you think, but make sure you're working on the right work, the right activity, because the wrong activities... If you say, "Why aren't I making $5,000?" and I say, "When is the last time you asked [inaudible 00:40:52] $5,000?" Then I would say, "You haven't worked a day in your life. You haven't worked a single day because if work to you is to find this money, you have to work on sales activities. You've just been preparing to work." And you're like, "Oh crap, that sucks." You're like, "Yeah, but it's real."

Liron Segev:

But it's real. But that's the way it works, and I think the one downside of this whole always connected social media world that we're in, we always hear about the unicorns. We hear about a channel that blew up overnight with two million subscribers. We hear about someone who did a fantastic brand deals with Dunkin' Donuts for a hundred grand and they've only got 10,000 subscribers. We hear about-

Richie Norton:

That's a lot of doughnuts, man. That's a lot of doughnuts.

Liron Segev:

I live in Texas. You'll be surprised. We hear about the unicorns and we make the assumption that "If I'm hearing them all the time, it must be the norm." What people do not realize is that to cultivate a relationship takes strategy, takes thinking, takes a spreadsheet, takes actions, takes years of planning in order to finally get to a certain point where the brand says, "How much money do you want?" But all that leads into strategic thinking, but also taking action. A lot of stuff that Richie is talking about is pulling back the fluff, leaving the smoke and mirrors away, clearing all that out and saying, "If I need to get to this end goal, one of the basic steps I've got to take, reverse engineering it so that you can know that these are the milestones I need to hit so that I can unlock the next one, the next one."

Liron Segev:

A GPS is an amazing piece of technology but unless you put the destination, it's pointless. But once you've put your destination, it will tell you the best way to get there. It will tell you about things along the way that you need to avoid, but you got to have a destination. What Richie is saying is be specific about what the destination is so you know how to do it, how to get to that destination, and whether it's on YouTube, off YouTube, whether it's a relationship, whether it's just rewiring your brain, whether it's allowing you to be stupid, that's perfectly fine because those are all steps getting you to the end in mind.

Richie Norton:

Yeah, dude. I love that.

Liron Segev:

Richie, it's always fun. I mean, we could talk for hours and hours, and I highly encourage anyone who sees Richie at any event... Well, please, goodness, when we'll be able to travel again, and we're all well and we're all safe and we're able to travel, please take five minutes, go hang out with Richie. You'll walk away a changed person. As you heard now, he just calls it like it is, and he'll call out your BS and he will tell you that you are just fooling yourself because you know what? That's what a real friend does and that's what you need to hear so that you can start making the right decision.

Liron Segev:

Richie, I wish we could talk forever. Tell us where we can find you. Tell us where we can get your book. Give us plug myself moment right now.

Richie Norton:

It's cool. Well, just Google stupid Richie and I'm everywhere. richienorton.com or richienorton.com/76daychallenge. My [inaudible 00:44:03] is 76 days. I have this challenge. Tens of thousands have taken it where it kind of takes you by the hand, step by step, to kind of implement your idea, including your videos, whatever it is you have in mind, to turn them into a project. I think one of the challenges people have is they think so big that they actually never start because it's too big and they think to do something that big, they need all these resources when in reality, thinking big without thinking small means you'll never start at all. You need to start small.

Richie Norton:

Do one video and see how this goes. Do one brand deal. See how it goes. Try and sell one product to one person and see how it goes. Maybe you don't like it so stop doing it. Maybe you like it and it works. Keep going. Maybe it doesn't work so you change the way it's done and you figure it out. But yeah, check that out and then I have a podcast, Richie Norton Show, where we interview really cool people the same way you're interviewing me and you're amazing.

Liron Segev:

We're the cool people.

Richie Norton:

Cool people like you. We can dive deeper into this but at the end of the day, for me, it's really just about creating freedom of time. Money is cool, but if money makes me have less time with my family, then I don't want it anymore because I work for my family. I work for time to travel and have fun. If putting a video at my face while we're doing that isn't congruent with me, I won't do that.

Liron Segev:

Don't do it, yeah. Absolutely.

Richie Norton:

There's all kinds of ways to be a creator. If you don't like the way other people are doing it, don't do it that way. If you want to have a different kind of lifestyle, do it that way. There's no right or wrong. It's not better or worse. It's a preference, but people fail to think of their preference as a choice. They think of it as, "I can't do it because." As soon as you bring it back in house and you believe inside that you are a hundred percent responsible for your success and your lifestyle and your money, what you want to do, then it will show up on the outside and you'll start seeing the results that you want.

Liron Segev:

[crosstalk 00:46:00]-

Richie Norton:

Let me tell you one last thing because I know we have to go. I'm going to keep you here forever. We're going to talk forever. People don't always know where to start, even though we talked about so many things to do. Just real quick, it's an acronym that I created called START. Serve, thank, ask, receive and trust. Serve others for free. Earn the right to thank them for the opportunity to serve them. Earn the right to ask for help. Earn the right to receive. Don't be a mooch. Don't be transactional. Be transformational and then trust the process. Serve, thank, ask, receive and trust. You follow that formula and you're going to see magic happen.

Liron Segev:

You see, and then he leaves us with that. I mean, really? I've got a million questions. Okay Richie, we have to do a part two.

Richie Norton:

I love you, bro.

Liron Segev:

There's no other way of doing it.

Richie Norton:

You're amazing.

Liron Segev:

You rock. Always wow. I mean, how do you leave us with that? Seriously?

Richie Norton:

It's that cliffhanger. You got to come back for episode two. We're going to keep going.

Liron Segev:

That's what it falls down to. Guys, everything is going to be in the show notes. All these links will be there so please spend some time. Promise you, it will be the best thing you'll do and yes, it applies to YouTube, but yes, you know what? It applies to life in general. It applies to the way you interact with people. It's going to applies to the way you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to sleep at night. Everything just starts to take on a different meaning. Richie, man, brother, always fun. Always a pleasure. I appreciate you making the time for us.

Richie Norton:

Yeah, dude. I love you, man. Let us know when we're going to start making more and more products for you guys and everybody else.

Liron Segev:

You know that's-

Richie Norton:

We'll just keep doing this. We'll just keep doing this. You guys are cool. All right, man. Love you, bro. Thanks so much.

Liron Segev:

I appreciate you being here. For the rest of you guys still hanging out here, don't forget to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast applications and share this episode with at least one other creator, someone who is, perhaps, struggling, someone who needs a bit of direction. Richie will sort them immediately out. This is a great episode to be shared. Please make sure you share it with at least one other creator. At the end of the day, we're one happy creator family. We want to look out for each other, which is why we're here. We'll catch you guys on the next episode of TubeTalk next week Thursday. Thanks for hanging out.