TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Putting The Create Back In Content Creation

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 53

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Auto-clip your long form into viral shorts- https://link.vidiq.com/podcast-to-shorts

Get the vidIQ plugin for FREE: https://vidiq.ink/boostplugin

Want a 1 on 1 coach? https://vidiq.ink/theboost1on1

Join our Discord! https://www.vidiq.com/discord

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/Na8rto6X_M0

We bring John back to unpack leaving a staff role for creator life, why viral shorts didn’t feel like success, and how a mission to help creators beat “slop” changed everything. We answer audience questions on TV viewers, brand ROI, streaming strategy, and AI editing’s limits.

• redefining success from views to impact and mission
• separating formats when shorts overshadow long form
• subtitles, metadata and clarity reviving old stories
• outside perspective as the only reliable “metric”
• cutting ego, tightening hooks and payoff discipline
• TV watch time depressing sub conversion on travel content
• pitching brands with ROI proof and affiliate data
• multi‑streaming pragmatics and YouTube‑native packaging
• repurposing landscape to vertical without bad crops
• AI editing as assistant, not storyteller
• simplifying platforms to avoid burnout and ship more

John's Instagram - https://instagram.com/HeyJohnScott
John's Creator Advice - https://youtuber.help/
John's Viral Shorts Course - https://viral.school/


SPEAKER_01:

Hey, welcome to the Only Podcast. It's here for you more than you're here for us. I'm here, Travis, every single week, telling you how to grow your YouTube channels and also talking to super interesting people. And I've done that today. I'm successful yet again as I brought back an old favorite of many of you who've been around the VidIQ Ecosphere for a very long time. John is back. How are you doing, John? Hey, how's it going? You're not dead, which is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm dead.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just super busy.

SPEAKER_00:

Very quiet.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're going to talk a little bit about that where John's been. We're also going to answer your questions here, as we always do every single week. Gonna have a good old time talking about YouTuber-y things and all the rest. If you're new here, of course, we try to help you grow your YouTube channel and uh hang tight because we're gonna answer some questions that have been submitted to us. We'll also tell you how to do that later on. And uh let's just jump into some fun stuff, YouTuber-y things. Uh, let's talk about a little bit about where you've been and what's been going on with you. So, just a couple months ago, uh you had you have gone off from Bid IQ. We'll actually go into like your history of the because it's kind of interesting. Uh, to do your own uh main channel stuff. So now you yourself are a content creator in and of your you are company John. The company is John. Uh tell us how that transition has been from going from a job, you know, that you go to. I mean, you don't leave the house and go to, but you know, a job, uh, to just being your own boss and everything. Tell us a little bit about that. What's that been like?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, confusing to be honest with you. Um, when I left Vid IQ, it was because on my main channel my shorts were going viral and they were paying all my bills, basically. And so, like, my last video was about that, and I started focusing on that. And um then people in the comments started asking me to teach them how to make the viral 3D shorts that I was making. And so in my spare time, I made a course. And like the month that I made the course, I be I barely made any videos on YouTube, so I had like very little income coming in when I was making the course. And so I put that out and I got back to animating, and it didn't feel as fulfilling, I guess. I I think it's because all the comments and stuff I was getting were obviously children or really dumb adults, and it's like you're gonna get that with shorts entertainment, right? Sure. But when every comment says 6'7, you're just like, what about yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So if you had to uh let's talk about uh perception versus reality, right? Like, because you've done everything from uh helping other creators uh you know do their channel stuff to being the the guy himself. What are the perceptions you had going into being full-time for yourself versus the reality of that?

SPEAKER_00:

I think uh I didn't I didn't quite know what my mission was, what what my purpose was. And I've since found it, but it took it took jumping into having success to realize that that wasn't what success was to me. And so when I started getting comments like, hey, my first short just went viral, and I'm like, that feels way more fulfilling than getting millions of views for some reason, and so I kind of started heading that direction. And you you know I've always struggled with like niche. Well, if you're if you're 36 or older and you struggle with niche for years and years, screw it, just get a mission instead. And so now helping creators is my mission, and I don't know, I forgot about niche a while ago. So yeah, it helps, honestly.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's just for people who don't know, uh might as well get people caught up on how we met. Um, because we've known each other for and this is weird, John, for a couple years now. It's hard to it's weird to say that. Dude, it doesn't seem like it.

SPEAKER_00:

It seriously feels like yesterday.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it seems like we just so the way this worked is um a couple years back, I was running a program called uh VideQ Max, and it was a group coaching uh program here, and John came through as as one of the students, which was really great. And um, he was in the Discord while we were doing a live stream audit, I think. And I think your channel came up, I believe. You were being audited by Rob and stuff, I believe. Is that right? Sound right to you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the channel was at Mocknicks, and it was an animation channel. I wasn't I never even had my face on YouTube at that point.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right, which is really interesting because it's completely different now. So um I remember watching that and going, holy crap, this guy can can really can really go. He can edit. So I was uh thinking about doing my own kind of personal channel uh with some stuff, and I really wanted really good editing. And what John didn't know at the time was that I was holding off on doing the channel until I found an editor because I knew that the editing part was gonna have to be on point for it to be any good. So I was like, hey, do you uh do you do anything on the side? Would you be interested in doing this thing? And I sent him a message and I wasn't sure what you would say. I'm I'm curious as to what your side of this felt like because I don't actually know that. Like, what was that day like? Because you were on the stream and then the same day I'm like, What are you up to? Tell me what that was like because I've never heard your side of it.

SPEAKER_00:

At the time, I was living in Germany and I was watching a lot of VidIQ, but I wasn't getting the advice that I needed. My channel was very specific, and best practices didn't really hit the spot for me. Yeah, and so I knew that I had to connect to somebody personally and get outside perspective. And I always submitted to the thing like trying to get on the stream to have somebody look at it. And uh I knew when Max come up came up, you guys advertised like Max gets priority, you pick one from Max every time. And so I sat there for a while. I didn't have much money because I I was still like becoming a citizen, so I didn't have a job. Um, in in Germany, like they have something called it's like a work school where you go as a student and then you get paid like five bucks an hour or whatever. Okay, and so I sat there knowing like I this is not something I can afford, but my whole life where I've gotten has been through networking. And I know that if I go in there, I'm gonna connect to somebody that will lead me somewhere. And so I struggled with that a bit, and I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna pull the trigger. And so I put the money in, and then one day later, I got the DM from you because one day, yeah, I got I immediately got on the channel and I was like, okay, so that was the goal, but it was to I wanted people to see like what I was made of, and then it worked out. Yeah, I would dude. I remember when after that stream, after I talked to you a little bit, I went to my wife and I said, You know what'd be really awesome if I got to work at VidIQ at the end of this. Like, that would be the dream job. I s dude, I swear, I said that to her, and she's like, That would be really cool. And then a couple months later, she's like, You got your dream job. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, it really worked out.

SPEAKER_01:

So, what ended up happening was um we worked together on uh a channel called Travis Tries the World, which of all the content I've ever done on YouTube, I am most proud of all of that. There's not a single video that we worked on that I'm not proud of, not just because of how cool the stuff came out, but like we it was so collaborative. We would sit on calls for like an hour and just come up with ideas and some wacky stuff we would do. And I I do miss that to a certain degree because like we had I feel like some of the most creative stuff I've ever come up with has been with in a call call with you. Um, but you made it all come to reality, like your editing style, your ability to do special effects and stuff that I can't do made that stuff come to reality. And then there was an opening uh for a thumbnail designer for VidIQ, and I'm like, I know you can do thumbnails because you had done some of mine. I'm like, this is be a good step in, this would be a good way to get you in the door. And it wasn't long before you were doing edits, and then you were on the channel, and then you were doing all the stuff, and then and I'm not surprised by any of this. I knew you were talented when I first met you. So, you know, as things went better for you and you started creating content, obviously your your personal stuff started to take off, and you you made a big pivot. So you went from you know, when you first went into vidIQ at the animation channel, when did you decide to like make a channel that has nothing to do with like you showed your face? Like, what did that come to be? How did you come to that?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, when I first started collaborating with Travis, it was about two weeks after I started the Hey John Scott channel um with with Travis Tries with you. Uh like I'm talking about you in third person as if you're not here. And um I I remember thinking, well, now I got this free time, like I kind of I want my version of that too, and I still didn't know what I wanted. And if you go back into all the videos that are privated, I tried a lot of different things. I even tried like Moist Critical style commentary, which got my first copyright claim, I remember. Or it was like a warning or something because it was a meme that had the audio claimed by some unrelated anyway, it doesn't matter. Um, I I just remember trying a few things, and right around the time that we got me into doing thumbnails, that's when I'm like, okay, I've got a job. Now I can focus on Travis and me, and like the time freed up. And so after experimenting for a while, I did like creator help stuff for a second on there before I joined vidIQ. And then I knew that I had learned so much from Tim Schmoyer about storytelling that I wanted to give it a shot. And I put out three shorts back to back on Instagram that told a story, and they all did super well. And I told everybody at VidIQ, like, hey, look, these are getting like hundreds of thousands of views, and maybe I make a video about that sometime, and I didn't for a long time. I also uploaded those to the Hey John Scott channel and they tanked big time. Dude, a couple I mean, it was actually like two years later. I I was I tried a bunch of different niches, like ADHD related after I got diagnosed with ADHD, and then I was like, okay, maybe I do creator self-help to avoid um you know distractions or productivity or to talk about productivity, that sort of thing. Um avoid burnout was really the big focus. But eventually I just put up a new story about a firehouse that was like it looked like a water tower, and I thought, well, maybe I get back into storytelling. Put that one up, my channel hit, and then I thought, well, what the hell? What why why did these three do so bad? And so I deleted them, and then I re-exported them with new metadata with subtitles on them this time because I knew that that was better. The subtitles, it gets people engaged. I put them all up, they all went millions of views, and since then I'm like, yeah, well, this is a shorts channel now, and so that's that's kind of where it went. I mean, that it I don't know. I as soon as one story hit, I'm like, something's something's not right here. And so YouTube had finally figured out from that one video that that's what people wanted. And honestly, I think YouTube probably makes bank off of the shorts feed because it's like a drug. And so it I anytime I put like a long form on there a couple months ago, I tried blog or vlogging and stuff, it like won't give it. It's like John, you need to go do shorts, right? So that's why I that's why I moved away from the channel in general. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we talk, we talk about that in VidIQ. Like, um, you know, YouTube wants you to put all types of formats on your same channel, but not all types of formats can succeed on the same channel. You could literally probably take your long form stuff you've done, put it on a completely separate channel, and it would definitely do better than it does on the main channel. So it's like, you know, what are we supposed to do as creators? And I know that um we we have to kind of uh we we go, we we will tell you what YouTube tells everyone, right? We will inform you because a lot of creators um don't hear all the information we hear about YouTube, but we're also gonna tell you like what we've seen. And what we've seen is despite the fact that we know for a fact, YouTube wants you to be able to put everything on one channel that we just see the proofs in the pudding. Uh, if you have a channel that does really great with shorts, it's very rare, very rare, not impossible, but very rare to see longs do just as well on that channel. It just doesn't tend to happen. It doesn't mean there aren't people out there that don't do it. Of course, there are a couple of channels that are able to do that, but for the most part, it just isn't a thing that typically works. So, John, I know that like you were super analytical and you would like in a lot of ways, like a y a younger me would do the same things that you're, you know, you do, or you'd like super research things and really jump in and try to understand concepts so you can use them in your own content. Um, what would you say is like one or two of the things that really took you to another level, especially with your content?

SPEAKER_00:

Um I think it was a revelation I had recently that that I could point out. Um, so it's something that I tell people that I help now. I didn't realize what the analytics were doing to me until I saw it happening to everybody else. And uh just just real quick story. Um I got added as a mod to uh subreddit called Shorts algorithm because they saw me giving advice on there and they were like, hey, will you mod this? I'm very busy, and I'm like, sure. And um nine out of ten posts over there are people talking about analytics. Most of them are slot, but I'll get into that later. Uh, but they talk about analytics and they get lost in them. And the people that I help in my community now, I found like the one metric that works that stops confusing people. They're like, it got 90% retention. Yeah, but it got it's a 10-second video. Like it all these things, they try to they try to keep one set rule that works for everything, and it's not the case. And there are variables that we don't see that make people focus more on the analytics and not on creating. So the one true metric to me is perspective, outside perspective. And when I started getting outside perspective from other people, especially when I started at vidIQ, and through my failures at vid IQ, that's when I'm like, oh okay, now I get it. But until then, I was I was as lost as any other creator. So that outside perspective is huge for sure. And have you ever had somebody tell you a story where you already knew the ending, but you had to sit through it because you're polite, and so every now and then they'll go into like a different detail, and you're like, This is I know the point that you're getting to, and this has nothing to do with it, but you're not gonna say anything, you're yeah, okay. And then they finally get to the point and you're like, Oh wow, and you're so polite, you don't want to be rude. The internet doesn't care like that. The internet doesn't have to be the polite, they'll just walk away from the conversation. And so, any unrelated detail, anything that you think might be funny, anything ego centric, get rid of it, kill it, right? Get to the point, and as soon as people understand that they can trust you, then you can start building that personable relationship. And uh, that took a while too, because I thought, man, I I got some funny stuff here. Sure, it's funny to me and my friends, but to somebody that doesn't know me, they don't give a crap, right? So that was another big one that I I have a tough time teaching that to other people, especially as with storytelling, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that that's that's good to know. So of course, storytelling is like huge, obviously, and it's one of the things you really concentrate a lot on. Um, outside perspective is really important, and and all the things you're saying are are just different aspects of what make a content creator more solid, more well-rounded. You know, we talk about little strategies here and there, but one of the things that I I really want people who listen to this podcast or watch it on YouTube uh really gather is that it's it's it's all these little things, not just one big thing. There's not this one thing we're gonna tell you, oh, use this tag in your videos, and you'll get all these views. I think you just have to recognize that the we're we're talking about appealing to humans, and that in and of itself is a complicated thing. It's why I don't really spend as much time worrying about the algorithm. I am a person who's really interested in human beings and like why humans do the things they do, which is why I've been super successful at helping other people grow, because I'm not worried about, oh, you're you're I I mean, I do talk about click-through rates and stuff, but to be honest, I'm more like, well, why did they click? And then why do they stay? And that's the psychology that you really need to get into. It's another level of thing. Now, some creators um succeed by doing and they don't even realize how they're doing it, they just know that this is good content when they make it, and they they've never looked at their metrics in their life. You see that a lot with some big creators, like I don't know what a CTR is, I just make a video and it does well. Well, it's because you subconsciously know this stuff anyway. It doesn't mean that you don't need to know the stuff, they just already know it, even though they don't recognize that they know it. So everything you're saying is 100% true. And sometimes the output outside perspective will prove to you that you're doing things that are egocentric, that you're just blathering on about stuff that people aren't interested in. And um, that's why there's things like the skip ahead feature on YouTube now, which is yeah, you can't skip ahead on a conversation, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Just be like skip 10 seconds. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

You w I wish I'd go 2x, man. Let's get to 2x speed on this thing.

SPEAKER_00:

It's why community is so important. Like, that's why Max was so huge to me. That's why Discord is so huge to me, because it's as simple as hey, why where did you drop off here? When did you stop paying attention? Or when did you get bored? And the stuff people will say you never thought about. Right. You might you might look at the retention graph and think, okay, that's where the dip is. It's because of this reason, but you don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

You don't know until somebody tells you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, having someone else look at the same thing and come up with a completely different answer is is actually critical. This is why you can't necessarily go to your non-creator friends and ask them if they think a video is good. Um, you kind of have to go to people that uh kind of understand what is good and then ask their unabashed uh opinion.

SPEAKER_00:

So or your audience. Or a comment will tell you for sure if you if you want them to be honest.

SPEAKER_01:

A good step in the right direction, that's for sure. All right, so we got a couple of questions. We're gonna do uh just a couple today. I think we'll have some fun with them. Uh John, um I will I can't remember the last time you you were on the podcast, it's probably been a minute or so. We have a lot of new people that are watching and listening now, so probably won't recognize any of these names. But let's go ahead and do the first one. So there's a couple ways you can uh send us uh a question. If you're listening to the audio only podcast, there's a link in the show notes that says send us a text message. This first one, I believe, is a text message. Uh and it is from Chris and Lynn Lydia. Hi, Vidye crew. We run a travel channel that's been active for 18 months. We're happy with our growth so far. 600,000 views and 66,000 watch hours. That's awesome. But our subscriber count is relatively low at 4,000, which works out to about 150 views per subscriber. All right, before we get too deep into this you can see where they're starting to put maths together, don't necessarily have anything to do with each other, but they don't know. But let's just keep going. In your podcast last week, okay, this was weeks ago, Tori mentioned that for her channel, 40% of the watch time comes from TV. And this was considered high. On our channel, 66% of our watch time from the past year comes from TV. We suspect this is a major factor in our low subscriber-to-view ratio, since subscribing via TV is much more cumbersome than a mobile and desktop. By the way, I would agree with this. Uh, I know that you will tell me that subscribers aren't the only metrics of a channel success, and I agree to it in a certain extent, but can someone please tell brands that? And this that is that is a truth bomb. Let's continue with the question. That is a truth bomb right there. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Number one, do you have any strategies or advice for converting TV viewers to subscribers beyond standard CTAs at the end of videos? Or is this a limitation we need to explain to brands when pitching? Now, this is cool. It's so a lot of people this won't directly relate to because they're thinking, oh, I don't I don't pitch the brands and stuff, but there's some things that we'll probably talk about here that I think are important because TV is becoming larger and larger on YouTube, and you should be trying to create some of your content for TV. I know for shorts that isn't as big, although from what I understand, people are watching shorts on TV more and more than they ever have before, which is kind of wild. Because I actually do get recommended shorts on my TV. Uh, and I watch a lot of YouTube on TV. But as far as like the TV thing, what are your thoughts when it comes to this, John? Because you haven't worked with you directly, I'm like, you could do some TV content for YouTube easy. Like you have some great pacing and stuff that would be amazing. So, do you have any strategies or advice for converting TV viewers to subscribers? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, uh, well, the reason that they're focused on subscribers seems to be the brand angle. Yes, right. Yes. And so before I get to the conversion, I I almost wouldn't even like make that an important thing, but I'll explain why here in a second. Um, when it comes to brands, if you if you have 100 subscribers, but you can show them the data that they'll buy their crap, that they'll buy their product, you say, hey, look, these people are interested. Look at here's my demographic. What like they want to buy there, the people that watch my stuff want to buy your product. And so if you're trying to pitch to an unrelated brand, they're gonna look at the metrics. But if you try to pitch to a very specific brand that you could help, like you offer them value, you don't have to worry about that stuff, and it's all about the presentation. So that said, when it comes to the subscriber thing, I honestly think it just happens organically, like you're not gonna have a magic word to say that that even if you tell them to subscribe, sure. But on a TV, I just think that the watch time is the most important. I recently had a person I did a creator breakdown for, uh, I still gotta give it to them today, but they had the same situation, they did cruise content. Uh I found out after some research that about 90% of cruise viewers, they they don't watch because they're going on a cruise. They don't have a ship booked, they watch because they want to re-experience the cruise. And so the advice I'm giving this person is uh the reason reviews are the most important uh like uh topic for cruise is because people are just trying to experience it, and the narrator is actually getting in the way of what they want to experience. So I guess whatever makes that uh TV viewing uh situation like what do why TV? Why do they enjoy it so much? Typically, TV is background content, it's relaxing content, it's comfort content. It's not like let's turn it on TV and get a bunch of information and study, you know. So I guess kind of finding the perspective of the TV viewer and seeing like what they really enjoy and doubling down on that. That's without specifics of your channel.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right, right. And I think what you said there is really important. Um, there's there's so many aspects to this. First, let's go back to the subscriber thing. Just like you said, yeah, brands are important, uh, are interested in subscriber fees because they don't understand subscriber numbers because they don't understand what it actually means. They think if your subscriber number is high, that means they're gonna get a good return on investment. The only thing they really care about is the return on investment. Uh, and the way you can start out with that is if you have, I mean, you're big enough that you can get um YouTube affiliate sales, do a couple videos about um products that you use, and then put the affiliate links in your um description, and then you'll have analytics for that. You'll literally be able to go, I did a video about this you know, hairbrush that I had, and look how many sales I generated through Amazon. I can do the same for you. So the idea is that you you build up the information ahead of time and then you can pitch to them uh with that because that's the only thing they really care about. Sometimes they don't know that that's what they need to care about, but that is the only thing you need to care about. And by the way, we have a video on here in the podcast and on audio podcast with Justin Moore, who broke down how to pitch everything to anybody, no matter what your channel size is, and he is incredible. And if you look, if you're watching a YouTube video, you can see John right now with Sponsor Magnet, the his book. Uh Justin is amazing, and he helps small creators get ridiculous amounts of money. Like, stupid. I need to talk to him, really be honest. Uh, I need to do that. Um, so there's that. Like, if that's what you're worried about, there. Um, and is it a limitation to explain? So we just kind of explained that. I think at the end of the day, you do just want more views. Subscribers are great, but they don't equate views. Um, really great channels get more views to subscribers anyway. So hopefully you're experiencing that if you're a successful channel. And and while again, I understand that brands tend to look at that stuff. If you can show them that if you give me this money, I'm gonna make you more money, they don't really care at all. Like they don't. Um, and I have a friend who um who's making a really incredible amount of money with very few views on his channel. Um it's it's kind of breathtaking, and it really like opened my mind to that. Okay. Next question from Marshall. Hey, VidIQ team, my name is Marshall from Australia, from the upside down, as I like to call it. Uh, and have been listening to the podcast since about April of this year. Since I've been listening to your advice, it has helped me get one of my three channels I run going off since last year, when I restarted the channel in October of last year. What would be better for my small channel that has 27 subs at the time of running this email doing live streams on Twitch, YouTube, or just recording it like I already do, uh, then uploading it? So I guess they're saying that one of their I assume it may be gaming. I don't know if it's on Twitch, you would assume maybe gaming here. I was trying to figure that out. Yeah, yeah, it's and by the way, a lot of these uh emails are truncated. Some people tend to send really long emails, and I gotta, you know, kill my darlings to get the right email in. Um so at this point, they're basically, I think, before we get to the second question, it's like, what would be better for your small channel? Um, doing live streams on Twitch, YouTube, and or just recording it and then uploading. I think really you need to do the content for the platform you're on. I don't, I don't like, I mean, unless you have something really spectacular that happens on Twitch specifically and you weren't streaming on YouTube, uh, do it natively on YouTube. Stream on YouTube and then use the I there, I don't know if it's out yet, but I know they have a feature coming out that'll take best clips from your your live stream on YouTube and immediately make videos out of them. So you should just be uh multi-streaming, in my opinion. If you're gonna be streaming at all, just multi-stream, meet people where they are. Because I'll be honest, like if I see there's some things I watch on YouTube streaming that are also live streaming on Twitch, but I'll watch it on YouTube because I don't have to worry about commercials there. If you don't have the Twitch prime, not even Twitch Prime, but like you know, Twitch subscription or whatever, you might get commercials. And even you, even if you like Twitch, most people have Amazon Prime, which means you know, there's a good chance that uh some of you might have um premium, which means you don't have to worry about ads, so you're watching it on YouTube rather than Twitch. And I don't like seeing personally, um, and you might not be able to get around this replays of Twitch streams on YouTube that haven't been formatted for YouTube. Like you see a bunch of Twitch things come up, and like, that's that I don't even know what that is. So I I personally don't like that. So I think, in my opinion, that's what you should do. But what what do you think, Eric John, for this first question?

SPEAKER_00:

I I want to back you up first. I do watch some Twitch streamers, but it's only the ones that look like like my screen right now, where it's just me in the bottom corner and then they're looking at their channel or they're looking at whatever content they're looking at. Um and that's like because there's nothing else, it's just Twitch, like all the Twitch crap. I don't, I don't, it doesn't help anything, right? If they respond to them and that's off screen, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I'll watch, dude, I'll watch like two hours worth because it's like I don't feel like I'm left out, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

But yeah, so I totally back you up on that. Yeah, um, I guess I got I I know you go where people are, right? I know that lesson. I've learned that lesson. And yet I didn't learn it, apparently, until recently. Um I so so when I was starting all of my offers, like the the course and my community and stuff like that, I I use Kajabi. And it's like you can build a podcast, uh community course, you can sell books on there, whatever. It's just a it's an all-around creator platform. And uh I started my community on there, and I got like one person, my paid community, and I got one person in there for like a month, and it's just me and him talking, and I'm like, I'm putting like all these updates and tools and all sorts of crap in there that help me when I create. I'm like, man, what what is keeping people from coming? And then I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna switch over to my Discord because I have like 700 people in there that are already in my community. The moment I switched, people were like, Oh, you got a community? Yeah, jump in. Jump like and now I got like I got like 20 people in there paid, and it's it's so nice because I went where people were. And so the more you simplify your whole structure, I do I couldn't even imagine doing another channel right now. Like, I just focus on the one, and then like I use the the John Scott on Instagram to promote it, and like it's a back and forth. And anything more than that, I'm actually hurting my business because I'm spreading myself too thin. I'm focusing on things that have no ROI, and so it's just like, yeah, simplify, go where people are for sure. That's that's definitely what you want to do. That's a lot of stuff to do.

SPEAKER_01:

You know who recently who who just and I you know it's funny considering I consider this person kind of a mentor. You know who also is learning this lesson? Uh Darrell Eaves. Oh, yeah? As he's moving his community back to Discord, so it was on Discord, he made a private thing, now he's moving it back to Discord. So I feel like in some ways I'm just the smartest person in the room, but uh no one seems to know it. Okay, what's the second question here? Okay, second question is how is it best to go around uh sponsors? As I have now got my first sponsor for two of my channels, even though my second is currently a bit behind my sports channel. I assume they mean in size. What is the best way to prompt the sponsorship I have to my channel and what should I be doing with it? And I believe what they're actually asking here is how do I get people to engage with the sponsorship thing on their channel? Final question is it a good idea to have social media for each channel like Instagram and TikTok to promote my channels and content to other audiences in hopes they'll come to YouTube to watch or not? That's the only question I'm really gonna worry about focusing on because we already talked about sponsorships and stuff before. Uh, is it worth doing uh the complete focus on YouTube only? Because you know a little bit about this, because you you were on YouTube and you've done incredibly well on Instagram. And now that you've kind of done both, like what is the strategy when you have like I know your love for like YouTube, but by the same token, you gotta pay the bills, right? And you gotta go with the successes. And it doesn't mean you couldn't be successful, you could still be as successful on YouTube, but you've done so much great stuff on Instagram stuff. So what What would you think the when when you're trying to explain to someone about this?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh right now, just to to give context, I have a channel that's that it is creator help, but it's more like creator rant because there's some things that I could never say at VidIQ. It's not family friendly at all. That's fair. That's fair. And it's called it's called creator rant. It's, I mean, I just kind of popped it down there. But you can see some of the stuff that I talk about is yeah, it's things that are going wrong with YouTube. It's talking about slop creators. Uh, but what I found, let me just scroll back up because that one's not good. But um, what I this only has 106 subscribers because it's just brand new. Yeah, and what I'm finding is that it is still paying my bills because I'm showing my social proof of the people that I help through Instagram. So creator rant is, dude, I've had that logo by the way, for like three years. I showed it to Dan one time. He's like, dude, that's so funny because it looks like me, and I never used it. And I had to, I had to create a brand to like put behind the course that I made. And that's I was like, all right, fine, I'll use that one. So anyway, um, that's that's like a small channel, and I'm still getting what I need from it because on Instagram it's John Scott. And so if you if you run a big like franchise or whatever, people don't want to follow Coke, they want to follow the CEO of Coke. And so that's kind of what I do over there. And so people get to know the guy behind Creator Rant and what he can do for them, and then it's over here for my general content, over there for like get help directly from me, and I just got this guy a million views and that sort of thing. And so, in that same vein for like a sports channel or whatever, your main content can go on YouTube and you can do shorts and stuff like that. Um, but posting your um I'm gonna go Gary V about this, but okay, put posting like all day, every day, you're behind the scenes, whatever you're doing, post it. Post it, post it, post it. Because you might get five, ten posts out there, but one of them will hit. It's just a numbers game over there. And so uh when that one hits, then everybody knows who you are. Like a lot, at least those people do. I know getting people from one platform to another is tough. So really just take the platforms, simplify it as much as as you can, and like have a goal in mind for that. And that's what I did with Creator Rant. But I used to be in the same boat where I'm like, but I'm gonna try here, here. I only post on TikTok, so nobody posts my sh my stuff on there first, right? Because if you do, then they're like the owner. And um, yeah, so I don't I hate TikTok. But anyway, that's that I just try to simplify as much as I can. Otherwise, I would I'd be spreading myself too thin. And everything you do when you're spread it thin is is useless, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like as a as a smaller creator, concentrating on so many things might be a hindrance and it might slow you down because just I mean, when you're established, it's hard. If you're not established, like unless you don't have a job and stuff and you don't have nothing else to do, okay, if if that's the case, fine. But I just feel like you will slow your overall um growth down by quite a bit trying to spread between all these different platforms, trying to understand what they are. Because generally speaking, just taking a piece of content and posting the same exact thing elsewhere doesn't always work. Um, if you're really analytical about it, like John has been, and he figured out kind of some secret sauce, you know, a year or so ago about it. That's one thing. But by and large, he had to do a lot of work to get to that point anyway. So I feel like what he just said about the Gary Vee part is actually very true. Like, take your shots, figure out what works, and then start to figure out like, okay, can I spread this across multiple platforms? Can I do this? So, you know, whatever time you have during the course of a day or a week, concentrate that on something that you can succeed at and that is uh viable and something that's not gonna burn you out rather than just trying to be everywhere all the time, all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

So one one really important caveat to this, and I I listened to Gary Vee for years, right? But it only made sense. This this advice only made sense when I was pissed about something. When I was so passionate that I was gonna post it regardless, I didn't care how it performed. Once I started doing that, and honestly, it happened after I left, but um I got I got so caught up in all the slop that was going on, and I wanted to help curb this slop. And by the way, slop not synonymous with AI, it's there's a crossover, right? But it's it's content that requires zero effort or human input.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so, like stolen content, form clips, prompted content, non-reaction content, like the ones where they have the mouth full of water and they just watch somebody else's like that's stealing, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so every day I'd see it and I'm like, I can't hold my tongue anymore. I have to say something. And how do I what's my mission is to put the create back in creator and to help curb this slop. And it all just came together. When it all came together for me, I don't care what I post anymore because it's all it's all in one direction, it's all with that goal in mind. Yeah. So if you're just if you're just making channels to make them hoping one will succeed, it will be much more difficult than if you post something you're passionate about or good or good at, you know, something that you know. So just take that however you want. I I figured that really needed to be said because that's how I learned.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, I I respect that. I respect it. Uh, you can also send us an email at the boost at vidiq.com, but I thought we'd do something different this time for the next two questions, and that is look at comments that were left on the YouTube channel. I thought this would be kind of fun. Um, this one's from Dr. Terry Wenner, I think it is. Uh, I use landscape for long form, but shorts require vertical layout. I have to change them, and I don't think shorts look as good. Is everyone doing this or is there a better way? And as someone who's done both, I would love to know what what your secret sauce would be for something like this. Do you shoot for the edit of the short so that everything works, or are you just taking what happened and then making it long and short?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, um the only way I'm gonna explain, okay. First of all, I don't if I'm gonna shoot a short, it's gonna be with my phone specifically, and I shoot it vertical.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh if I'm converting content, I found a way that works for me. But the the angle that you're seeing right now, if you if you crop it in, I can't really show, but actually maybe I can. If you Yeah, there we go. If you start to crop it in, like the vertical will start to hit like this. And then for some reason, like not for some I don't know why I said that, but like you want your eyes on the eyeline, right? So this is where you want your eyes, and it feels like I'm very, very close. But the only way to correctly crop this and have the thing that you're supposed to look at on the eye line is to do it like this, and so shooting vertical specifically for vertical is why that works. But here was my workaround. So I did a short for this, and in Premiere, it's like super fast to cut yourself out now. Like in Premiere beta, it's Adobe Premiere for those that don't edit, but all it is is a click of a button and it gets rid of your background. And so now I kind of found a better way, like, dude, this took maybe two minutes, and like it's so easy, Travis.

SPEAKER_01:

I can't do any of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

I can't do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, no, I can't do this stuff. I'm glad that uh like I look at this and I'm like, that's gonna take me two years to make.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it it takes two seconds now. Before it would have taken me a long time, but because there's just one button for it, AI is a great tool for creators who want to still be creative. And so now this is what I do is I just cut myself out of the background and I'll drag myself if I want to put myself up. The eye line is where it says more ad sense revenue. Okay, but if I want to put pull myself up, I'll just like darken the the bottom or whatever. And so that's how I do it is cropping, cutting out whatever, just filling in the space with other things, and that's kind of what I'm doing now. It is very difficult to turn your uh long form into a short form unless you are like this far back. And when you're this far back, you can do podcasts and stuff like that and turn it into, but like you have to start filming this far back, and when you do, you lose a lot of detail. So it's up to you how you want to do that, but I just figured that's how I do it. I'll show you that.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that uh any kind of the thing is that even if someone did do exactly what you just said, it might have sparked something in them to go, oh okay, no, I don't have to go, but if I do this and it, you know, you just sparked a new way for them to do it, that's fine. And we see that all the time on this channel. Like we we uh we'll say one thing and then we'll get an email like a week or two later to go, oh yeah, I was thinking about this thing, and you just you just you know gave me an idea, and it's I love that. I think that's fantastic. We have very smart people that watch this podcast, which I love, and very creative people because we're you know we're all creators, so anyway. Uh last question. This one's interesting because I feel like so. AI is a tool and controversial among creators or not. Um, there are some good things from it, for sure. This is one I'm actually kind of excited about, so I hope it gets good. And this is from Katie with a camera. Katie with a camera says, Do you think AI editing will produce videos that are similar to each other? Like, will AI edited shorts all have the same exact editing style? I don't think so. But what are your thoughts on like AI editing specifically, like for content, not just you know, thumbnails and stuff, but like actual content. Do you think it'll get to the point where it'll be something that you can rely on?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not sure what AI editing is.

SPEAKER_01:

So, like video editing, it like you put in because some some companies actually have this.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I mean, I I know I know video, but like what does it do? Is it like taking a long form and cutting it up?

SPEAKER_01:

Is that so like OBIS? Currently, yes, but the idea is that at some point it will do everything, include adding music and all this other stuff. There's a couple of companies out there, I can't remember which one I saw a video from, where allegedly this, and you know, you can't really like you have to take them at their word that like they'll show you this clip and it's like, holy cow, it's really good. And they're like, this was done by AI. Like, whoa, they did the music, it did the zoom ins, it did everything that you would think you would need someone uh with human cells to do.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, I I get what you're saying. I think as it stands, yeah, and honestly, I don't see this changing much in the future. Okay, but AI sucks at psychology, and the moment that AI will get better at psychology is the moment that psychology changes.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

How quickly do we get used to Chat GPT saying certain phrases? Sure. Right? Like within the week, we're we're sick of it saying the word fluff now. And that it's like, yeah, but like two weeks ago everybody was like, Yeah, I don't want to hear any fluff. And now it's like, okay, let's get right to the point. No fluff. And now everybody's like, What could it just stop saying fluff? Could it just stop could it just stop using M dashes? Like, it doesn't matter what they change it to, we're gonna get used to it. And so Interesting. If if AI advances to a point where it's like ever dynamically changing, sure, but it still can't I I feel like it still can't accurately predict what psychology will change into, what hooks will get us next. That's why marketing is so good because they keep up with how humans evolve. And sure, AI might be able to do that, but it's still gonna take human effort to to get it there. I mean, I don't know. I just don't see it hooking the same way that I could.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and the other thing is um I I think I think one good thing about it is it can do a lot of the the rough cuts probably pretty well and get you to a point where you just put the sauce on top.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, as a tool, great. I have no problem with AI. I dude, my business would not be where it is without AI, like building websites and stuff, using Zapier to connect Discord to like a purchase. I don't know how to do that, but the little AI tool or Chat GPT helps me get through it amazing, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So uh I just when people use AI to do everything and then they feel entitled to make money from it, stuff like that, that's where the issue is. Everything else is like, yeah, AI is great, every AI improves a lot. If you AI generate your script and say it word for word, I gotta be honest, it at least the audio is gonna be slop. Like just like have an opinion, have some conviction, right? But if you take your existing content, you let AI cut it up, and then you put your touches on it, put the human input. Yeah, I could see that work, especially for podcasts. Yeah, yeah. But like when AI starts to I don't I don't know anything about Opus, but I know what it used to do. It would just like kind of take what it thought was good. I didn't think those were good, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I watched the podcast and I'm like, why didn't they use that?

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00:

They were a robot, right? Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It is interesting though, if you think about where we were literally a year ago, we weren't even at the point where half the stuff that happens now could could even be done. Like now we're at a place that's like it's it's crazy. Every couple of months, it grows exponentially. Well, at any rate, the things that you are up to, what are what are you gonna be doing for the next uh what what's 2026 look like for you? Because we're not we're almost at the end of 2025 as a recording of this.

SPEAKER_00:

I um so uh with the mission of putting the create back in the creator and stopping the slop, basically that's that's where I'm at. Like, dude, I can't I almost want to stop modding that one Reddit because it's just all bad. And I I keep trying to correct people, but it's overwhelming the amount of people that want to make money with no effort. They're like, oh yeah, like I I took uh queso's clips and then I put subtitles over it, but why did I get denied monetization? Yeah, but and then you tell them and they're like, Yeah, but everybody else is doing it. And it's like just because they haven't been caught yet or they slip through the cracks doesn't mean it's YouTube's not cracking down on it. They're cracking down so hard they're getting rid of channels that don't deserve it. Right. So it's uh it's a mess, but yeah, sorry, that that's like kind of where my mission is. And so slowly but surely I'm getting more creators into my personal community, which is called real creator community. Okay because it's like there's so many that just dude, you're not a creator, you're a prompter. Like you're you're a thief, you're not you're not doing anything. And so uh yeah, I got a little street team in there that we do um like report parties and um copyright take down putting like I teach them when I started John Scott LLC, I went through like 2,000 of my clips that got stolen, and I I got so many channels deleted. Like I should have recorded it, dude. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that would have been cool for a video.

SPEAKER_00:

But anyway, yeah, that's the state of the the creator world. And when I was just doing shorts and getting millions of views and stuff, I felt like I wasn't I wasn't making the world that I wanted to see. Like I wasn't being the change I wanted to see.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Now I feel like I am. Um two days ago, one of my first students said, Hey, my shorts just started hitting millions of views. And I went to his channel and he had one that was like 10 million, one that was 30 million. Wow. I'm like, damn, I got something here. That's crazy. And so um just putting that out like that fulfills me more than getting them myself. It's I don't know, it's it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's the way I've been for pretty much my entire career, especially here at VidIQ, because I was coaching and then everything else. It's it's been less about me and more about uh everyone else. So uh if you want to check out John, there'll be some links in the description and the show notes. And you know, he'll be back around. He's around, you see him around. Just keep it keep your eye out, especially if you're watching the main Vit IQ channel. You might see him pop up here and there, uh maybe on the live stream or something. So keep your eye out for that. Yeah, I hope so.

SPEAKER_00:

That's that's what I'm hoping. I missed him. I think I'm missed the community.

SPEAKER_01:

We missed you too, John. We talk about you all the time. In a good way, believe it or not. But I think they're gonna be like, it's gonna be bad. It's all bad. Anyway, we hope that you've enjoyed. Of course, you're watching the YouTube channel. You can hit subscribe, hit that like button if you do. And if you have hype points, why don't you hit that hype button? I mean, why not? Just hit the hype. I don't even know what that means anymore, but hit the hype. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, leave us a five star review. We always love those. See y'all in the next one.