Why Viewers Stay When The Stakes Feel Real

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We sit down with Producer Dan from Deep Pocket Monster to break down why storytelling keeps viewers watching even when they do not care about the topic. We walk through a real video structure and pull out the practical moves that create stakes, emotion and retention. 
• storytelling as the core YouTube growth skill 
• treating every video as a gift of time 
• context plus curiosity as a click formula 
• showing struggle and risk to build relatability 
• voiceover-driven structure for unscripted challenges 
• pattern interrupts through raw moments and pacing 
• using music cuts and silence to spotlight meaning 
• external want versus internal need for deeper arcs 
• opening and closing loops to guide attention 
• integrating sponsors as helpful characters in the story 
• reminding viewers of the why in long videos 
If you want to see some of the stuff that Dan's been working on, Deep Pocket Monster and everything will be linked in the description below.

Transcript

Why Storytelling Beats Metrics

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The way to win on YouTube is storytelling. For the most part, we kind of ignore it. We are so into our own heads about CTR metrics and all these other things. And this has literally opened the box and given you all the secrets on how to do that. This podcast has done that for you. Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that helps you catch them all. I'm Travis, and I'm here with an incredibly special guest. And I think some of y'all are gonna know exactly who I'm talking about. But before that, I want you to know this particular episode is super important because we're gonna talk about something that can never be talked about enough. And it's how it's how you grow your channel if you're really good at this and it's storytelling. And one of the best people you can talk to on the entire platform is someone who works with Deep Pocket Monster and has done so for a long time. We got producer Dan. If you've been watching the channel, you know producer Dan. Producer Dan's always in there. What's going on, Dan?

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Hey Travis, thank you so much for having me on. Uh, I love the show, love what you're doing, and happy to be here to talk storytelling, man. I I could talk about that all day.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

And we darn nil will darn nil will. Uh, but if you're new here, uh we help you grow a YouTube channel multiple different ways. Sometimes we interview creators, sometimes we answer questions directly. Today we're gonna take you on a journey as to how to storytell. And the reason that I we're doing this particular episode isn't just because Deep Pocket Monster is a really incredible channel, but I actually was in Seattle just a couple of weeks ago and I saw Dan give this presentation about storytelling and how Deep Pocket Monster produces some of their videos. And if you don't know, we're gonna we're gonna talk about what that channel is. But storytelling is so important. And Dan had what I consider almost a masterclass in this. So get ready to take notes because this is incredible. And by the end of it, you might even tear up a little bit. I love this presentation. But Dan, let's let's find out more about you. Uh, before Deep Pocket Monster, who, first of all, who are you? And then what do you do for Deep Pocket Monster? And then uh where how did you get started?

SPEAKER_04 1:51

Sure. Well, yeah, my name is Dan. I'm producer, Dan, on Deep Pocket Monster. I basically do everything and anything that we need to do on the main Deep Pocket Monster uh channel. We have two within the brand. There's the Shorts channel, Short Pocket Monster, and then there's Deep Pocket Monster. Short Pocket Monster is completely pat. Like he's literally editing, shooting, doing all the voiceovers, all him daily. So that's a crazy feat that I that's like that that's all him, uh, which is crazy in itself, right? Uh for those shorts creators out there, you go look at that. That's that there's a lot of lessons to be learned from what he brings to the table there. Uh, but with the long form channels where I put put my focus, and that's uh Deep Pocket Monster. And I will be Pat and I work together for with every video from idea all the way through analytics. I spend a lot of time sitting in the channel analytics, spend a lot of time working

Dan’s Path Into YouTube Production

SPEAKER_04 2:42

with Pat on the voiceover scripts, shooting things, creating these different videos, coming up with different ideas and then merch and all these other things that we've got going. So I've just kind of kind of got my hand in a lot of different uh things, but my main focus is on the stories for the long videos, and some of them are very long.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

They're very long, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

But but prior to that, I was actually I I have a film background, so I went to film school uh here in New York, where I'm from, and uh then I was working for Major League Baseball and Disney for 11 years in the live streaming uh side of it where we'd do live streaming sports 24-7. That was that was my life for all that time, uh, which was fun. It was fun working in sports, getting to literally get paid to just I was literally watch sports. I would insert the ad breaks for the live stream audience, and then we would cut clips and do a whole lot of different things. And uh that that was fun, but it wasn't it wasn't my dream, you know? It wasn't what I many people have dreams to work in sports. My dream was I wanted to produce entertainment content, and I didn't want to do it in Hollywood, I decided not to go to Hollywood in 2006. I was inspired by a what was called web series then. They weren't called YouTubers yet. YouTube was only like a year old at that point, by a Star Wars parody uh web series called Chad Vader Day Shift Manager. And if you ever watched Chad Chad Vader Day Shift Manager, it is Darth Vader's like younger cousin or younger brother, Chad, uh, who is the day shift manager at a supermarket. And in 2006, I was working in a supermarket in produce. For three years, I worked in produce. I I liked that job too. Uh, but I worked in produce and I was in film school. I loved comedies and parody, and I said, I want to do this. How do you do this? Like, how do you create your own content online? In 2006, even in through 2012, when I graduated my second film school, professors are like, there's no money online, don't worry about it. You want to be a producer, you gotta go these routes, right? They weren't wrong. They just weren't fully right. There was paths were being developed. And then, you know, 2012, I ended up listening to a podcast. I was a I'm a big pro wrestling fan, so I watched uh listened to a lot of pro wrestling podcasts, especially then. And I was like, there's gotta be business podcasts online, right? Like it's gotta be. 2012, I'm looking up business podcasts. Well, I'm listening to like Stone Cold's podcast and Jericho's podcast. And uh I come across this podcast called Smart Passive Income by this guy, Pat Flynn. And I start listening and it's blowing my mind all this way, so you can start making money online. I start deep diving. How do I how do I do this? How do I do YouTube 2015, get married 2016, have our first kid? And I'm like, I need something to work because I need to get out of this 24-7 grind of sports, start diving into YouTube and and how do I how do I make create a YouTube channel? Went to Vid Summit in 2018, changed my life. I volunteered, got to work right next to Daryl, who's the guy who runs that event and and and founded it. And um, I got to be uh a production assistant for him on a 24-5 live stream that he had, and I was following him around, ended up getting, put the camera in my hand for 22 hours between two different days, gave me the and I'm an introvert, I don't naturally go up to people and talk. So I'm by myself, you know, out here in in out there in LA, and I'm like, I don't, I know who these people are, but they don't know me. But now I've got Daryl's camera in my hand, and I can instantly start having conversations. That it's like if you're looking to get started, you're looking to connect. Getting in person at events, look, I know it's tough. I know it's not easy. It was not easy for me. I couldn't afford getting there. But my mentor at the time, Owen Video, Owen Hemsa, he told me you need to get to Vid Summit, whatever means possible. And I did. And that that gave me the connections and network to be able to work with people. And 2020, Pat comes to me and says, Hey Dan, I've got this idea for a YouTube channel. He's like, but it's not in the business space. I had worked with Pat a little bit up to at that point. We had made connections through these events, and uh, and he was like, It's about Pokemon. Like, I'm a millennial, I love Pokemon, of course. Like 99, I was wrestling in Pokemon. That was my life in '99. Yeah. So, like, of course, I had been out of it for a while. I've always played the games, but I was like, let's do it. This this sounds fun. Didn't we didn't start the channel thinking it was going to become what it became, but but here we are 20 years or 20 years later. And I'm in two 2006, I wanted to create entertainment web series online that I could produce. I don't need to be the person in the video. I just want to be producing it and not at the beck and call of Hollywood or some other you know studio telling me what I what I need to do. I wanted to be able to have a say and actually matter. And here we are now creating hour-long, two-hour-long, almost feature films every single month on this channel. And so long, long roundabout answer to your your question, but that kind of gives the the story in my history.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

And the thing is, uh, you even downplay a little bit uh the fact that you really didn't have a lot of money and stuff to go to Vid Summit. And it was something that you risked, it was a big risk for you. And this is something that I want a lot of creators to understand. Like, this stuff doesn't just necessarily drop in your lap. You know, of course, every once in a while you're hear a story. I was just in the right place, right time. Dan uh really took a risk going out to Vid Summit, which is a very expensive thing. But I've always advocated for it. If you can get out to Vid Summit, it's a great place to go. Tons of creators, you can make tons of connections, and that changed really his life at this point. Um, and getting connected with Pat and now, because when I knew Pat, I didn't know him personally, but I you know had seen him around Vid Summit, talked to him a couple times. He was the business podcast guy. Like no one knew him for Pokemon at all. So it's really funny that so many people know him for the other side. I know him as the podcast guy. So it's it's really kind of hilarious how much he's grown. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But again, the reason that I brought you here is because storytelling, especially when it's an hour long, a lot of your views are hour long. Uh, and that is uh a production nightmare, I have to think. You know, just the understanding how things are gonna work and everything. Um, and because a lot of it, parts of it are scripted, but parts of it aren't, you kind of don't know necessarily know where the story is gonna go. I would ask you about that, but you're actually gonna go over that in this presentation. So, one more time for anyone who's watching now, this is the part where you need to sit back, relax, and get ready because uh this presentation is really excellent and explains why storytelling is so powerful. You can get the right title and thumbnail and everything else, but if someone clicks into your video and you know how to tell a story, then you will lose them. And it doesn't matter what your niche is because pretty much everything is telling a story, whether it's instructing someone how to paint something or talking about your day, there is a way to tell a story every single time for every single niche. And this is going to give you a lot of great tips on how to do that. So, Dan, why don't we get into your presentation? Show us what you got, tell us how Deep Pocket Monster tells a story that even people who don't watch Pokemon content, which is me, at the end of the presentation you gave, I was tearing up. It is an amazing story. I wanted to watch all the content. Uh, I can't wait to see this again.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Yeah, absolutely. And yes, for sure, anybody can bring storytelling into their content. Your store, your, your content, and I'm gonna preface right now, base just before we even get into this, that your content doesn't need to look like Deep Pocket Monster, nor should it. We're not in this to say, hey, we've got the the you know the code, now go and do do what we do because we're so good. No. The goal is tell the story in how your audience, how you one you want to communicate and how what your audience wants from that. Storytelling could be as long as this hour-long, you know, video that we have, or a four and a half hour long video that we have, or it could literally be one line, one sentence. Everything is storytelling. Sports, I worked in sports for so long. Broadcasters, they're literally telling the story of the game. That's what it is. That that's the that's what

The Umbreon Story Breakdown Begins

SPEAKER_04 10:52

keeps us engrossed and wanting more of it. So whether you teach or any of that kind of stuff, the it's it's the you've got opportunities where storytelling, and we're gonna get into this big point, but this is the main point before even anything, is relatability. And that's where we connect with the audience. Is storytelling is how we make that kind of a connection. All right. Well, like we were just saying, you know, you don't have to know Pokemon cards. You don't have to know Pokemon for any of this uh to matter. And the point of that, the the real the real thing we want to see here is that it's not about the Pokemon cards from Deep Pocket Monster. It's about how we use storytelling that get us comments like this. I don't even collect Pokemon, but I watch this from start to finish. What an incredible story. I don't collect or understand what they do. It was definitely dope to see. Genuinely beautiful to watch this journey. I don't even collect Pokemon, but the genuine kindness and excitement kept me here. I never just straight up watched a video without skipping 10 seconds. This is kind of a first. Why am I crying? I don't even know these people. I love that one. Got home from the gym at 12 in the morning and opened YouTube, not expecting to watch an entire hour-long video, but here I am, and man, I didn't think Pokemon can bring out tears like this. The fact that I spent the last hour of my life watching a grown man collect cardboard and I don't regret it, is great. I particularly love this comment here, and in the last few as well, because the real point that we could see out of this is that we should value our viewers' time. We've got our viewers, we all have things going on in our lives. These guys could spend an hour of their life watching a grown man collect cardboard and it'd be the biggest mistake of their day. Be like, why did I waste that time? But to sit here and say that I didn't regret it, that's that's the the goal that we want to hit with every single video. And Pat loves to put it this way: Pat loves to consider every video that we do as a gift for the viewer. And he picked that up from Ryan Trahan's, who said the same thing, which when you think about Ryan Trahan, a lot of people think about the same thing. It's like I look forward to seeing his videos. And what's what's the point about that? The point is that the same amount of effort and time and keyword thought that goes into gifting someone that you care about, a present, a gift, that should be the same thought we're taking into the videos that we make and the stories that we're telling, because we're literally saying, hey, go and watch this video. Use up your time, whether the video is one minute or an hour or four hours or an eight-hour stream. Like this is where you have to think. I am using these viewers' time or I'm expecting these viewers to watch. I should make sure I'm putting in just as much thought as I would into a card that I'm writing to a loved one for their birthday, for any other, any other thing, right? Because we know them. And we should know our audience that same way. So, what is Deep Pocket Monster? So, right here is the main channel. This is the Deep Pocket Monster main channel. As I said, there's a short channel as well, but this is uh the main core channel. It is a long form channel, and the main character, the creator, the guy on the video is Pat. He's a father and a successful entrepreneur, entrepreneur, and a Pokemon card collector. All these things play roles into how we tell our stories. He sets out to complete Pokemon card challenges. And when you look at the channel and you look at these most recent videos that we have up here at the time of this recording, uh, we see that there is a thumbnail pattern. Usually a binder, some kind of question mark, uh, Pokemon cards. We see Pat. We see a title pattern, right? Collect every Gengar ever. Uh can I finally complete this set in 83 minutes? Complete this set in 48 hours or lose it all. These patterns that we understand our audience sees and responds to. There's also an emotional pattern. I don't know if you can if if you can see this, if you're just listening on audio, you can't see this, but every single face here of pads is stressed out. I call it pat in pain. The audience doesn't necessarily like to click on happy pat as much as he would probably like that. They really like to click on pat in pain or just pat in stress, right? And why

Voiceover As The Story Engine

SPEAKER_04 15:30

I believe it's because it's far more relatable. It's we don't relate with people who just get things easy, who just win all the time, who get everything that they want. What do we relate with? We relate with struggle, we relate with not getting things as easy as uh the next guy, right? So for us, it's important to highlight that. It could be very easy to structure all these as like Pat's this perfect entrepreneur who does everything right and makes all this money and could get whatever, and none of that's relatable. None of that would be enjoyable. And actually, it wouldn't even be true because he's not perfect, he's not able to he fails just like everybody else. And that's an important part, piece of this puzzle. But today we're gonna focus on this particular one video collect every Umbreon ever Pokemon card challenge. And in the title and thumbnail, I like to always think about uh two, it's an equation. Context plus curiosity equals the click. The context here in this title and thumbnail, we see the context is Umbreon and Pokemon cards. What is context tells us? It tells our audience this is the right video for you. Curiosity in this particular uh title, every and ever, and in the thumbnail, it's the emotion. Pat looking stressed. This adds stakes. This means there's something on the line. It's and then there's an open question that comes into your mind when you read this title. Well, how many is that? Is that even possible? If you understand and know Umbreons, you know there's a lot of Umbreon cards. How is this going to be possible? This is going to be something that maybe I need to find out. Maybe I need to click and find out. Context plus curiosity equals the click. If you have too much context, you it might, the video might seem boring or may come across as I don't need to watch this right now. If there's too much curiosity and lacking context, you might get the wrong audience coming in because your audience might not even realize it's for them. That's why you want to find a balance of these two. And as you learn your audience better, as you get a better relationship with your audience, just like you would a friend or a family member that you've spent countless times time with, you can write a card to them and probably continue writing and know all the words that you would say to them versus meeting somebody for the first time on the street that you have no clue who they are, it would be so much harder for you to write a meaningful letter to that person. That's the same thing, the same thought pattern you should take into your title and thumbnail. But let's let's take a look at the intro that comes after you would clip, click, uh, click on this video. And I'm gonna show a number of different clips. Some of them might be a little bit longer or whatever, but we want to make sure we're going through this story uh uh well. So this is what would happen if you were to click on this video. And by the way, spoilers, if you do want to watch this video and you don't want to be spoiled, you might want to watch the video first and then come back to this. Uh, but if you don't mind being spoiled, like that, we are gonna have some spoilers for the video in these clips. A lot of spoilers. So just putting that out up front.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

I was at home getting some orange juice, like I do every morning. When all of a sudden, I got a DM from Kevin, a longtime fan of the channel, who said this. I hate to do this, but I have to sell it. Have to sell it. Sell what? Your cards, your home, your kidney? I still have both of mine. Anyway, I go inside to see what this is all about, and I couldn't believe it. He's thinking about selling his Umbreon Master Collection. I knew he was collecting every English Umbreon ever, but he wasn't able to finish it. He needs to sell this collection for financial reasons. He said, if I were to sell it, I'm hoping it can go to somebody who will appreciate the set and finish it off. Man, this thing is beautiful. It's not just all these Umbreons from the English set. Uh, there's still 11 missing, and a lot of those are big ones. It's all cards that include Umbreon Cameos, meaning Umbreon is in the card, even though it's not the name of the card. This might be I don't know. Wow, it would be so cool to have every Umbreon ever, and to get a head start like this would be amazing. But there's one big unknown. How much is he gonna ask for it? He answers back. Six thousand dollars? That's a lot, but it's also Umbreon. That's actually a really fair price. Plus, I'd be helping out a fan who really needs the money. I don't know, dude. I don't know. Kevin, I'm in. You know me, you know I hate seeing sets like this incomplete, and I'm happy to take the baton from here. But right then, I get a reply that I didn't expect. I said before I say yes, can I think about it? Force. I mean, I don't want to pressure him, but this must mean a lot to him. I don't want to force him, and so I tell him to take all the time he needs. Dude, every armor would be so cool. During breakfast, no answer. At the store, no answer. On the lake while fishing, no answer. Bully with Gonzo, no answer, and no pins either. And it wasn't until late in the evening that I finally heard back from Kevin. I've been going back and forth on this all day. It's really difficult for me to let this collection go. However, I know if anyone will appreciate it and give it a good home, it's you, Kevin. I would 100% give it a good home. And I didn't know this at the time, but in a way, this was fate.

SPEAKER_04 20:34

So, as you can tell, based on the intro, that it's a voiceover-driven style. That is the key to how we put our stories together, is that we drive it with voiceovers. And the reason for that is because we are challenge-based, and because those challenges are legit, the the challenges are not scripted. The voiceover is when we script, the voice is when we bring everything together. We do it that way so that we can go out and record everything possible. And that gives us a lot of freedom to then come back and say, all right, what was the story and how can we tell it to keep it engaging, to keep it interesting, so that you're not just coming on and just going, okay, like this is just about Pokemon cards. But in fact, it's truly the story of how this of this challenge itself, this story of this goal this man is trying to achieve. That's the story. This is what it's truly about, not about Pokemon cards. Pokemon cards is just the space or the topic that it's in. But this does also cause us to have a lot of footage. We record a lot. Sometimes it's five hours of footage, sometimes it's 50 hours of footage, sometimes it's multiple cameras, sometimes it's one camera, sometimes we have shots that are great, and sometimes we have shots that are terrible. You kind of deal with what you've got, but when you could bring it all together with the voiceover, that really helps us and gives us a lot of freedom to not have. To so much think on the spot to say the perfect things on camera. It's more, let's just get it and understand as things are moving along, we can figure out the story as we go. We do know that it's either going to go in one or two other directions. He's going to complete the set or he's not going to complete the set. So with that in mind, knowing like, hey, I there's a variable, we don't know which direction it's going to go. But if it goes this way, we can kind of take this direction. If it goes that way, we can kind of take this direction.

Stakes And Relatability On Camera

SPEAKER_04 22:25

But let's let the dominoes fall as they go. And then we could figure out the story after. So this beginning. Why do we choose an orange? Why is he drinking out of it? Why did he drill into an orange? Start drinking out of it with a straw. Honestly, this is very much an autoplay play. On YouTube, in more recent years, they've done autoplay, whereas if you're scrolling on your phone or basically anywhere now, in any of the different uh ways you could watch YouTube, a video will start autoplaying. You might never even see the thumbnail if it comes across your screen. So for us, we want to figure out ways to do something visually interesting in the beginning so that it causes someone to kind of stop scrolling, causes someone to say, what is happening here, right? And you could kind of read the captions or something because it's not playing with audio for the most cases. But also, this shows a bit of Pat's character, who he is, being a fun dad, dad joke. So like I'm getting orange juice like I always did, right? There's just this playful character. It tells you a little bit of who Pat is. He's not this stuffy, stuck up like business person. He's he's having fun, he's he's enjoying life. And we could see this even plays into some of our uh viewers here because we got this comment that said, the first video I've watched of yours, but when I seen you pull a MacBook out of your pocket, I was sold, subbed, right? It's interesting, it's fun, it's it's weird. And this is YouTube, and it's okay to be fun and weird. It's okay to not just do what everyone else is doing and bring in your own unique way of doing things. Now, sometimes it's not about joking around all the time. There's serious topics that you probably wouldn't do this in, but allow yourself the permission to have fun and to be weird. So let your weird quirks out that you might hold back on because you think, oh, people are gonna judge me. But I even though I think this could be fun or I think this could be could be weird. This kind of stuff helps viewers ask questions, and those questions keep them focused. Because if they stop asking themselves questions, we're thinking, what's the next video? I'm gonna start thinking of other things. I'm gonna start thinking about what's the next thing I need to eat later today. When am I gonna get lunch? When you know, when's the next thing gonna happen? You wanna constantly be it's a cycle of ask a question, answer a question. We also had to show the risk. $6,000 is a lot of money, especially for our audience. It's a lot of money for Pat, especially for our audience. We needed to show that this was not just an easy, sure, yeah, I'll spend six thousand dollars because we want there to be the right kind of connection with the audience. But it is a risk for Pat as well. So we want to make sure we're showing that. We don't want it's not it's not about making it look like, oh, okay, he could just get whatever he wants and he's just down to do anything. No, this is something he has to sit down and think about. And so it's important to show where the risk is, where to show, like, uh, I am I thinking about this. And then for Kevin as well. Kevin says it's really difficult for me to give this up. We're showing Kevin's hesitancy. We don't always show, paddle buy collections from people. We don't always show the people he's he's buying from. For us, though, once this conversation happened, it was like, hey, we got to show that this is a collector, right? This is this isn't, he's not out here as an investor making money to just flip cards and doesn't care about the cards that he's collected. So this collection for him has been something that he actually cares about, something he actually spent time on. And it's a hard thing that he has to give it up, but he's got to give it up for financial reasons. And we'll find out more about that later. But it's just this idea right now is we want to make sure that the audience understands that this guy it's hard for him. This now makes the majority of our audience who are collectors and other people who aren't even collectors understand a little bit about what it means for a collector to collect these cards and to have to then give it up. And then he says, I didn't know this at the time, but it would be fake. We keep letting the dominoes fall, right? It's all these questions are answered. Okay, we're gonna buy the collection. He's gonna get it from Kevin. Kevin agreed. Question answered, but now we need to open another question to keep the viewers focused, to keep that interesting, the interest in the story moving forward. What's the next thing moving the story forward? We keep letting these dominoes fall. It's very easy to overshare. On YouTube, it's like I gotta overshare everything right at the beginning. I'm gonna share everything in this video with you and tell you the whole story right from the beginning. But that all opens up too many loops at once. And sometimes our viewers can get very overwhelmed with too much right from the beginning. We gotta let things go. We stay with that the simple question answer and we we follow through and allow multiple questions to be answered as the video goes. Just like if you were to hit one domino and it starts to go and then it splits off into two lines and then maybe three or four lines, but you let it kind of split off as it goes, it's a little easier to take in versus everything falling in all these directions all at once. So we want to be directing the viewers' thoughts and directing the viewers' attention.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

You want to talk about the stars aligning here. This is crazy. So I'm buying this on Ryan collection from Kevin, unfinished. We're gonna finish it off real quick. But he didn't want

The Mission Shifts To Giving Back

SPEAKER_02 28:02

to deliver it via mail, which I completely understand. I wouldn't want to do that either. So I asked him, I was like, Kevin, where do you live? He lives in Dallas. And guess what's happening in Dallas in 2026? Card party. And I was already scheduled to fly there to do a reveal video because nobody knows this game. I mean, you know probably by the time you're watching this, maybe, but he doesn't even know. So I told him that I'm gonna be in Dallas for business in a couple days. This is perfect. We're gonna meet up for a late lunch later today. Oh my, this is gonna this is there's no way that this is all happening like this. It's all happening so fast. And as I leave my home to visit Kevin's home and the home of Card Party Dallas, I can't wait to see everything in his binder and begin my leg of the every Umbreon ever collection journey.

SPEAKER_04 28:42

So you can see here there's a pattern change. Very clear pattern change from how we were before. Before it was very voiceover, voiceover, voiceover, a little bit on camera, voiceover, voiceover, voice over. You can keep doing that, but that can also wear down on your audience as well. So giving an opportunity for something more raw on camera, this brings in the attention's the audience attention. You you lean into your seat a little bit more and go, oh, okay, what's happening here? This feels uh less contrived, right? Voiceover can feel contrived. Even though it's not, it can feel contrived. It can feel like, hey, we're we're putting something together uh after the fact. But in a case like this where he's recording on his way to go, this feels more raw, this feels more real, this feels more anything can happen. So finding that balance of going back and forth between your styles of how you're editing, how you're recording, sometimes that can be helpful. And it could also be like a pattern interrupt. Uh, so if you do a video in a certain way where you're always talking on camera in a certain type of way, and then you change it up just for something real quick, sometimes that's the most interesting part of a video and will keep people hooked even further. And they'll be like, oh, that that was really interesting. That was that was different. Uh, and it was nice to see uh something out of the pattern that had been going there uh and and bringing the audience's attention in.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

Really excited to see his collection. You know, he's selling it for personal reasons. A lot of people sell collections for various reasons, able to help this person out, and he's gonna help me out. Oh man, can't wait to see it. Now, I haven't seen the full collection yet, but there's one particular Umbreon, the Grail of all Umbreons, that I'm pretty sure he doesn't have yet. And no, it's not the Moonrion from Evolving Skies, but the 2007 Gold Star Umbreon, like this one here, from Pop Series 5. And when I curiously look at the price, no listings, and when I check the sold listings for that gold star. Oh my gosh, a raw version for $5,500. This is the celebrations one with the celeb that's that's that's not what we're looking for. Although technically we need that one as well, but that one is a reprint. We need them all, but first I need to acquire the collection. Why am I nervous? Like I don't know exactly. Meeting new people always makes me a little nervous, but he's a fan. But he's also selling me a huge collection of Umbreons that I haven't even seen yet. And what if they're wrecked? What if he's a scammer? What if I'm going all this way for nothing? Well, I've arrived at Son of a Butcher for lunch, and now we're about to find out. I'm guessing that's Kevin there. Maybe. I don't know. Who I don't even know what he looks like. Okay, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Dude, thank you, man. Good to see you. Dude, beard game on point. Look at that beard. We're excited to eat, yeah. Plus, I want to get to know Kevin first before we get down to business. Thanks for taking time out of your day, dude. Oh, yeah, no, it worked out. This current moment in time, nobody knows. Hard party in Dallas next year. That fist pump. I think he's stoked about it. And so am I. And as we wait in line, I'm curious to learn even more about Kevin. Do you have kids? I do, too. And his youngest, who's 10 years old, was the one who introduced him to Pokemon.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

When he started getting into helping him, you know, sort into his finder things like some of the hardware is actually really cool. Yeah. Maybe this is something that we can do together.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Man, this is exactly how I got into Pokemon myself. And it's definitely brought the entire family together, even while the kids are a little bit older now.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

So you could tell, I wanted to show a bit longer of a clip here, is there's this emotional roller coaster. Ups and downs, positives and negatives. You constantly kind of feel this up and down that keeps the one, it's literally actually what's going through Pat's head at the time. And two, it helps the audience understand, hey, there's there's a ride here. We're going up and down. That's that's what you want to do in storytelling. When things start to feel really good, you start to go, you start to go down and you start to remember those negatives. That's that's something you'll see in every movie, every TV show is this emotional roller coaster. But it's also the honest thoughts that are happening in his head. Uh there, here's the positive, right? At the very beginning, we uh we have him at the coffee shop and he's saying, like, I'm getting to help somebody out who needs them the money. Like, this is a great, a great thing that I could be able to do, is I'm buying this person's collection, and they, you know, get get to have this money. So I'm glad about that. However, one of the cards that's absolutely needed is pretty much the same exact price as the entire collection that he's buying from him. Now we've got the risk and another negative of, okay, I'm about to spend $6,000, but I'm gonna have to spend at least another $6,000 and probably much more, and it will be more to complete this entire collection. And then another risk and another another negative that again is literally in the mind, I've never met this person before. What if he's scamming me? What if I came all this way and it was all for nothing? One of the things that I always tell Pat when we're shooting together is just speak out your thoughts. Speak what you're thinking right now. Because a lot of times we won't speak what we're thinking. Uh, and it's not even that we would use that on camera. In in some moments here we do, but a lot of times we don't because we it also is to help us inform us later when we're writing the voiceover. What was I thinking at that moment? How was I feeling in that moment? That is going to help us tell the story so that an audience member can now begin to put themselves in your shoes. Because the way an audience member gets into your shoes, the way someone viewing something, or the way you even listening to someone tell a story, or you reading a book, you start to read a book and you start to imagine yourself as that main character. You watch a movie, you start to imagine yourself as one of the characters. You think about your favorite movie of all time. I'm sure there's some character that you connect with and imagine yourself in their role every time. That's what we begin to do with storytelling and with these videos, is we want to make sure it's the inside that connects, the thoughts, the internal thoughts that we're having, not just the outside. And then we're put at ease. We see Kevin, he seems nice, seems like a really nice guy. And then another positive is that they share stories about their kids, they connect together with their kids. The majority of our audience are families watching together around a TV. This is why our stuff is so long, because we make our content for TVs to be played on TV. What I love about being played on TV, it's way harder to skip. It's way harder to fast forward. You're not gonna sit there on a remote and just be like pressing the fast-forward button or whatever, like you would on a phone where you're just gonna double tap, triple tap, whatever you're gonna do to get further ahead. Way easier to do that than it is with a TV. So people, if your a viewer is gonna put the video on TV, usually they're putting it on and wanting to sit back. I want something that's gonna last a little bit longer and be entertained, something I could sit in and sit on my couch and get on the edge of my seat watching that, or I could lay down and be watching. And so, because the majority of our audience are typically families

Raising Risk During The Card Hunt

SPEAKER_04 35:42

watching together, and that's the reason Pat even started the channel in the first place, was because of his kids. He got into Pokemon through his kids. That could be something we could literally skip and avoid all the time, but it's the very important part that we should be leaning on and showing because it's the relatable connection that people will have as Pat as a father, and he has to work. He's a busy businessman. So is the parents of the kids watching us. Their parents are busy, they work, they have to put this together, and we get this little bit of time to have fun and watch a YouTube video, open up Pokemon cards. These are connecting points that we need to always be thinking about and find ways that we can connect more.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

And now we get into the stakes for Kevin. I asked Kevin the all-important question. With this much story and history behind this collection, I just had to know.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

So why are you selling it today? It was it was tough. Kind of got to a point where it's a lot of the bigger cards that I don't see myself being able to get to complete it. Um and I toyed with selling it a few times before, and my wife was always like, No, you're not, you're not selling that. Like that's that's your binder, you're not selling it. And then when after you and I had that initial conversation, she said, Okay, he's the only person that you're allowed to sell to, because you and I both know that he will not just do it justice, but it's not something that you're just gonna turn around. Yeah, yeah. And and uh wow.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

So a lot of times I buy collections, I just give them away. Right. This would be one that I would keep and cherish and honor.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

And I hope that when you do see it, like that's ingrained in your mind that yeah, this isn't going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

And yeah, like I said, this would be a collection I would want to complete and honor for sure. I'm excited to see it. Thank you again so much. Oh, oh, good catch. All good, all good. That was a close one. Yeah, probably best that we eat first before we bring out the cards. And speaking of, here's producer Dan producing food. Thanks, Dan. Nice shirt, by the way. And wow, that's a huge onion ring.

SPEAKER_04 37:46

It's important uh to show to show these moments here, showing how important it was not only to Kevin selling this collection, but also his wife. Knowing that it's it's not just him, but his wife not wanting him to sell it. This'll actually play a major role later in the video. And so when you're going back and editing, this is why it's important to for us to be recording everything. Because there's things we might not realize in the moment when we're recording this, and you'll see how this develops that we didn't realize in the moment uh what would connect and what would change uh from the start or from the idea going into this uh to what it would become. But having all of this recorded and then being able to go back, we're able to now tell the story in a way where we're uh laying down the plot, right? And laying down the characters and where they fall. Uh, because we have all of the recordings. We have everything recorded and we could share uh the right, most important things that are said uh to connect and get the audience to go, okay, if this means something to his wife, which it doesn't always mean uh to to spouses or to partners, like just like their hobbies might not always be supportive of it,

Making Sponsors Part Of The Plot

SPEAKER_04 39:08

to have a someone who is supportive of that means this is really important to him. This is important to him and to his family. So it's clear to the audience that he's a collector. There's a moment here where you can see Pat thinking and feeling and this is where I want the audience to feel something. I want the audience thinking Pat you can't take this collection from him. I I want the audience thinking right here, Pat. What if you completed it for him? That's the kind of moments that we want that I want the audience to think in, and you'll see and understand why, but we never say that here. We never say that. I specifically want the viewers to feel it. And this is where editing also plays into your storytelling. Editing is a huge role in that. Music is a huge role in that, pacing is a huge role in that. I don't want you to get overwhelmed when I tell you all that. These are little things that that that you can you can work on, but but over time you start to think, I can, I have all these tools that I could play with to tell this story. How do I get the audience to feel something before I say it? YouTube is very much, very much right now, just tell you everything. But how do I get you to feel something and then tell you what you're feeling? And that's when you go, oh my gosh, that's what I was thinking. Let's watch this one more time and pay attention to how you feel through this edit.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

I toyed with selling it a few times before, and my wife was always like, No, you're not, you're not selling that. Like that's that's your binder, you're not selling it. And then when after you and I had that initial conversation, she said, okay, he's the only person that you're allowed to sell to, because you and I both know that he will not just do it justice, but it's not something that you're just gonna turn around. Yeah, yeah. And and uh wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:11

So you can see the cuts, the lack of music, the the cut-ins, and this raw feel. And then there's this intentional pacing to the back and forth. This is a real conversation. Literally, just threw two Osmo Pocket cameras down and captured their conversation. We could literally just stay on Kevin, just say, all right, we're just just gonna stay on Kevin for this. But there is importance to, I want the audience to see how Pat's feeling right now and make I want the audience to make an assumption on what they think Pat is feeling right there because now they're connecting themselves to him. I want the viewer to put themselves in either the shoes of Pat or Kevin or both. And we also need to establish our previous patterns because usually he'll buy these collections and he'll try to complete them and give away, or he'll buy a collection and then go on a live stream and piece the whole collection apart, take it all apart and give it out to multiple people. Because there's a lot of people who can't get cards and people who need to sell their stuff and they need to sell it. And it's like, okay, yeah, just you could sell it and a bunch of people get stuff out of it. They're not gonna give it away, but Pat gets the opportunity to give it away on a live stream. So that's typically what we do. This this type of video is not something that we're typically doing. So it also puts the question back in the viewer's mind of, uh, yeah, but this is probably what's gonna happen, right? He's gonna give it and he's gonna give it to more people, and that's a good thing, right? It's great when more people get to have it. And then there's this pattern interrupt where Pat knocks over a cup. And this was not intentional, this just happened. But we love to lean into these things. There's a going thing that happens on the channel where Pat screws up handshakes and we end up highlighting it. Go in, he shook a guy's pinky once, right? Like that's kind of where it started. And then all these times he'll go in for a handshake, it's like fist bump or whatever. All completely what happened. Most of most people would think, I just gotta edit that out so I don't look like an idiot. I edit out, you know, so you know, no one sees that. I don't want someone thinking that, or it's a distraction. You think it's a distraction. What I love about this is it's a pattern interrupt. We're feeling these emotions at that point, and then he knocks over the cup, which is just great because it's just how how he is. Knocks over the cup, and we boom, we cut in on it, and now it's something to laugh about. Like the best laughs always come after a little bit of a tear or a little bit of an emotion. It sticks with us a little bit more. Um, so why do we do that? Relatability. Relatability. I could easily, as a producer, go, I gotta make Pat look good, right? Because this is I get paid, I gotta make sure the guy that is on here get looks good. And never show his faults, never show where. Where he messes up. Um but that would be a detriment to this to the story and a detriment to the audience. Because this is where the audience goes, Oh man, okay, I'm I scrub handshakes all the time. Oh my gosh, I dropped a cup the other day and it like went all over my keyboard, right? Like these are things that happen and we go, oh my okay, he he maybe he is like me. Right? That that that's the kind of connection that we want. Instead of just editing out those mistakes, sometimes you could leave a few of them in. Now you don't want to be constantly making mistakes and then it's really a distraction. It's just in these moments, hey, you know what? Something funny happened. Let's leave it here as a pattern. Interrupt. And we finally get the binder reveal after all of this time. We're like 10 minutes into the video at this point, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

And he presents me with the binder. Awesome. Fault X binder, doing it right. And it was at that moment I couldn't believe what I was seeing. No way, dude. This is sick. Very subtle, too.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

And with the yellow flipper on the back.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Oh, what?

SPEAKER_03 45:04

So you just added this on recently? Yeah. No, so I actually completely redid the entire binder.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

The DPM logo, the Umbreon etching, the yellow trim. I've never seen anything like this. You did this just because you knew you were gonna sell the screen. Okay. Kevin, this is incredible. And I haven't even opened it yet. I check in with Dan because I'm anxious. Let me know when you're ready because we're about to open this bad boy up.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Oh wow. I thought it was cool because it said press start. Yeah. It's like the intro, you know, so it's flash screen to a video game. Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

I've seen this a bit recently. It's been made popular by someone named Peeplop on Instagram using pictures among the cards to tell a story. Did you do this after you knew you were gonna sell things?

SPEAKER_03 45:46

You did. Yes. Oh wow. Is it not gonna make it harder to let go after it's very hard to let go, but like we've talked about before, I I know it's in good hands.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Wow, I don't even know how to process all this. Oh man. Oh, and you have placeholders already.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Yeah, so you don't have to worry about moving stuff around. Once you find the card you need, it swaps right in. That's so gorgeous. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 46:07

So clearly you could tell Kevin put time and effort into this binder. We had heard a lot about Kevin not wanting to give up this binder. Now we finally see this binder, and it's like, whoa, he put in a lot of effort and time into this. But did you catch the music shift that happened in there? There's there's a little bit of a pacing that happens, and again, it's to get the audience to think something specific. Let's let's catch this one little part again.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

Did you do this after you knew you were gonna sell speed or you did? Yes. Oh wow. Is it not gonna make it harder to let go after it's very hard to let go, but like we've talked about before, uh, I know it's in good hands. Wow, I don't even know how to process all this.

SPEAKER_04 46:50

Oh man. So the music, which is exciting and pumping and moving, cuts to no music. And that is a signal that helps the audience understand this is something to pay attention to. It helps

The Payoff And Why It Hits Hard

SPEAKER_04 47:05

it stand out. You can play with adding music to make something stand out. You could play with taking away the music to make something stand out. There's so many little ways that you could play to uh hit these moments that become important story points for the audience to feel it. That's always the key. It's always about feeling it, not putting it in their face, right? I wanted uh his it's very hard to let this go stand out. Instead of it's very hard to let this go, like text into the screen, right? Like that's not like that's just like okay, that's this this is annoying for me. I don't want that in my face, right? So, but if I could allow it to stand out and be felt, now I have a different emotion to it than what would be a stereotypical YouTube type content. Now let's check out the purchase and what happens here in the shift of the mission.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

I could look at this for hours, jeez. But it was almost time to go, so I wanted to do one final thing before we head out. Hey, can you take a horizontal picture of us? I need it to capture this memory, but in the back of my mind, I knew this wasn't easy for Kevin. I could even see it on his face while we were chatting earlier. I'm gonna ask you one final time, Kevin. Sure you want to sell this? Yes. Those are for the channel as well. Dude, what are you doing, bro? What is this, dude? More? I forgot also. This is a near complete set of champions path. Kevin with more to give away, not just these slabs. And even as I'm paying him on mobile, he's giving me tips on which ones are going to be hard for me to find, beyond, of course, the gold star.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

The biggest one is the SIR from Prismatic and Aquapolis.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Before we head out, after I sign one final card for him to take home.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

I do have a request. Yes. Can we record a quick video of you saying hi to my kids?

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Of course. The easiest yes ever. What's up, Parker? What's up, Colson? I'm here with your dad, and I got some fun news. Junior, your order's ready, by the way. I have some fun news to share with you. You will be going to card party next year, right here in Dallas. And little does Kevin know, I'm gonna be treating his whole family to come to card party when it comes to Dallas, but I'll save that surprise for later. For now, it's time for this binder and I to start a new journey together, and of course, the goodbye that comes along with it. Do you want to take one last look? No. I've had I've had my time with it. I made my peace. Oh, this is really special. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for trusting me with this. And I will do it justice.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

I know you will.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Say hi to the kids for us, and thank you to your wife as well. I will. Thanks, sir. Take care. And as I head out to do some card party business with Dan, I sit and think about what just happened. Oh man, that was cool.

unknown 49:45

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

I like I feel weird holding it because it's look at look at all he put into this. There there's like, this isn't just cards. This is a story. This is this is him. That's what it feels like, right? It doesn't feel like you're no. I I know I bought it from him and paid money for it, but this is his collection. I think we have to finish it for him. Okay, we're doing it. This is now a video where we're completing the set for Kevin. I feel like that's what I have to do. Yes, we have to do this for Kevin. And I have to always remember to wear my seatbelt, or I might not be able to complete this or any other challenge. Remember, to wear your seatbelt kids. If you do have seatbelts, use them. Oh man, can you imagine the look on his face when I give it back to him? He was even mentioning some cards that he didn't include that we should include as well. So I gotta I gotta make a new list, finish that off, and give it to him for for Christmas. Dude, I'm getting so excited about this now.

SPEAKER_04 50:47

Okay, so the purchase sets the challenge into motion. It's about 13 minutes into the video. So technically, we have a 13-minute intro, if you will, say, from there to the actual uh exchange of getting this binder. We would never do this in most cases. Most cases he's got the binder in hand within the first minute of the video. And so to be able to get to 13 minutes for us was that was why it was so important to have so much question answer, so much driving of the story to allow an intro to be that long. If an intro is 13 minutes and there's nothing that happens for those 13 minutes and there's nothing keeping me, it's going to tank the video. But to be able to keep people asking and getting to 13 minutes and it finally happening is how we're we're able to keep people's attention. But then we get in the car ride, and that's where the mission gets in motion. We could have we have the challenge, which is the A storyline. I need to complete this collection. I now have a whole big portion of it in my hands. I need to collect this, finish this collection. But then there's this B storyline, which is this new mission, this more emotional inner mission. I like to call this the external want and the internal need, is usually what would be called in storytelling, right? There's an external story, internal story. This can happen in all storytelling, honestly, across the board, right? There's the external thing, we need to complete this Pokemon card collection. The internal thing, I want this to get, I want to gift this back to Kevin because of how much that would mean. Now we've got an two different storylines essentially that are running parallel to each other that we can bounce back and forth between. And if you notice again, there is a there were music shifts that were happening that were getting going from like music, pacing, interesting, right to raw in the car. And raw in the car was that moment was unexpected moment. Here's something to pay attention to. Here's where we want to show his actual thinking.

unknown 52:53

Right?

SPEAKER_04 52:54

We could just go, well, we're gonna complete it for him. How awesome would that be, right? And like do all this like smiley to camera stuff. But if we show him actually thinking and taking that time that he did to actually come up with this and think about this, helps

Simple Story Rules For Any Niche

SPEAKER_04 53:08

also show the realism of what happened and be able to bring the audience in instead of layering music all into that until we hit our pattern interrupt, where he clearly forgot to wear his seatbelt. And again, you get this moment of like tears followed by a moment of laughter. Now, also seriousness, because we don't want people to think, especially with kids being in our audience, that it's okay not to wear your seatbelt. It was something that we caught, we didn't even catch it in the car. We catched it like after, I think later on after he's driving, he puts it on. But it's like that that whole part there, there's no seatbelt. And we like, we have to mention this. We have to share this. This is an important thing to share. But I also didn't want to interrupt the emotion by being like, hey, put your seatbelt on. And so even though we wanted to kind of show that in the beginning, it felt it was right at that moment where we put in the seatbelt uh PSA, that if you will, to always remember to wear your seatbelt. And which is funny because we premiere every video. I don't recommend premiering every video, by the way. But because we premiere every video with the momentum that we have and that these videos are long enough to do so, uh, all the comments in the chat were just like, why are you not wearing your seatbelt? Like all these like seatbelt comments. So I mean we knew like, yeah, okay, it was it was standing out. So we were glad we still put that in because we don't want to influence not to wear your seatbelt. Um, but it did give us a good uh pattern interrupt to go from the emotion again, roller coaster, emotional roller coaster. Like this like emotional moment to a moment of laughter. Here's a comment. The second you said you were going to give it back to him, my jaw dropped. I locked in the whole rest of the video. I'm at 1330, and I'm praying at the end he gives it back completed. I got to 1330, Mark, and I'm like, DPM should complete it and return it only only to be instant only for it to instantly be the goal. Made me smile. So did did the storytelling work? Did the did it work to pull that out? That was one of the fears. I'm sitting with my editor, and we were going back and forth over how to edit this scene. It was about three hours of us on a Discord screen sharing call going over where he's in premiere and editing, uh, editing this. And I'm going like, just bring this back a little bit more. Bring that, I want to feel it. And I was worried, will they not feel this? Will they not feel it and bring and bring that thought to mind? And I've seen

Closing Thoughts And Where To Watch

SPEAKER_04 55:36

comments like this, and I've I'm like, yes, they felt it. Nah, bro, at 1357, I started to tear up. This was amazing, dog. I was just thinking, what if he gives it back? But you one up to me. This is awesome, dude. 1330, I felt that ickiness through the screen. We all as enthusiasts understand the time it takes to put the time it takes to put into a binder. It becomes so personal. To take it away would have been a mistake. We made the right guy famous. They felt it. We don't have to break down all the we don't have time to break down all of the challenge and the rest of like the video. There's an hour more of this video. So we're not gonna break down the whole rest of it. All of these parts were were pretty long here. Uh, but I'm gonna show a couple of quick scenes here to show how risk gets increased while he's actually out on the Pokemon card challenge.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

I've never seen this one.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

I haven't seen that one in a long time. Which is not good for us, but I'm hoping we'll see it eventually. And that's when this guy, who's been standing here the entire time, drops a bombshell on me. Wait, what? Oracle? We have the Oracle already, which is a cameo card. See right there, there's Umbreon. But you're telling me there's a signature card of this one too? And not just one, but two? The Crispal up? Yeah, okay. And then there's the Kevin Wayne. It's a two more. Two more. What was your name? Michael. Michael, thanks for that. Sorry. Okay, two more to add to the list again. So definitely a well-deserved thank you for Michael here. The guys are gonna keep looking out for more Aubreons for me. But in the meantime, let's explore more Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_04 57:16

So the risk increases when he finds out there's more cards he doesn't even know about. Again, this legitimately happens. We could set it up where, hey, we've got the perfect list, we're just gonna focus on this list, and all the others that are outside the list we're not gonna include, we're just gonna do this and make the video all about the list and just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, get it done. But when these realizations happen, it again brings it back to this this is clearly unplanned. Right? This is clearly not just something that's made up and scripted. These are real people, random people we're running into, and then being like, hey, your list is not good, it's not right. It's not real. And it's not uh, you don't got everything. And now it's like, oh my gosh, we're increasing the drama. I love as YouTubers, when things go wrong, it often is like awesome, because I can make this into a story. This becomes far more interesting when something wrong happens. Everybody else, it's like that's terrible. Why would you want that? But for us, it's like, oh man, like this is um this is great for content. I mean, it's not great because it's like now we gotta go and find these, and oh man, I gotta create a whole new list. And Pat's got to go in and do research to find all of like what are the other cards that he's missing, and what if there's more? Because if there's two, there's more. And I'll tell you, there was more. It happens a lot throughout the video. Uh, and so he'll go from 10 cards left back up to 13, back down to 10, only to go back up another two or three again. So this is this constant back and forth, which ends up making this video an hour long because this discovery over a couple of months' time, finding cards and then having to go back and find them. Relatability, struggle, conflict. Three really important words to think about when you're storytelling relatability, struggle, conflict. And I want to show you here how we integrate sponsors into our videos. I love integrating sponsors into our videos within the story. If there are companies that are willing to work with us, to work within the story and do something that tells a story, it actually is a win-win for everyone. And let me show you how we do it here.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

And speaking of generous, I want to take a sec to thank today's sponsor for this video, TCG Stadium. They've always supported the channel here. And when Jimmy, the founder, learned that I bought this collection to finish it and give it back, they wanted to pitch in and help out.

SPEAKER_03 59:41

Dude, yeah, of course. He's absolutely gonna flip out when you give him the binder back.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

It's gonna be crazy. Oh, yeah, I can't wait. Thank you so much, man. Yeah, for shopping busted, all right. TCGstadium.com. More about them later, but for now, a bunch of people are checking out this binder. So this sets up the sponsor as a character in the story.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

This this is important, and this is why I'm sharing these sponsor moments, right? It's not about sharing the sponsor on here, but it's about sharing how we're using the sponsor within the videos itself. Yes, there was a spot, right? We're we're sharing the brand. They were clearly saying they are a sponsor of the video, but we're also saying they're gonna be involved with the story itself, and that matters. It sets them up to be the winner, not just a taker. Sponsors can feel like they're just taking, and I just want to skip, they just want to move on. Let me show you how they become a winner in this video.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

The next day, I woke up to an email from Jimmy over at TCG Stadium, and here's what he said Umbreon card found. Hey Pat, how's it going, man? I hope the Umbreon hunt's going well. I searched around for some of the more rare Umbreons for you and came across this one here. Oh my gosh. The Umbreon EX, no way! And it's huge. Do you need it? If not, no worries, I can keep looking for others just in case. If you do need it, I'll send it over soon with some other cards for Kevin's kids to open too. Thanks for letting us help again with the challenge. Jimmy, yes. Oh yes, that looks amazing. Bro, thank you, and thank you to TCG Stadium for sponsoring this video. Be sure to stop by TCGstadium.com and check out their products. And you'll definitely want to make sure you subscribe to their email list to get first word about new sets and new drops. Also, use the code PAT10 at checkout to save on your order too. Thanks again to Jimmy and TCG Stadium. I look forward to adding that Umbreani X to the collection for Kevin when we get it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:32

So that was a big card that Pat was struggling to find. And it was a huge win that the sponsor was able to track it down and be able to get it and help be part of completing this for Kevin, along with other things that they'll be able to do uh for Kevin and his family. And it serves also as a reminder of why we're doing this. Yes, we got the ad in there, but when they found this card, showed the ad, then again, the why. Reminder, this is not for the sponsor, this is not for Pat. This is for Kevin. This is why we're doing this. On the long form videos, you need to remind your audience all the time of your why. Why is this happening? Especially the longer you go. If you do hour-long videos or more, you want to keep having some form of reminder because, you know, the yes, at 13:30 is when we kind of fell in love with Kevin as as a viewer, but if we don't hear about Kevin for another 45 minutes, we might forget about him, right? So we want to be having those reminders of, all right, this is not just like Pat collecting it for himself. This is this is for him. I want to see what happens. And for the sponsor to actually have this win, we don't get retention dips during these sponsor moments because it's part of the story and it feels natural. It doesn't feel like an interruptive sponsor break. So if you have sponsors and not every company is willing to do this, not every video is good for this, right? Sometimes it's just get your sponsor spot and put it in there. Uh, but if you've got companies that are willing to work with you and become part of the story, it'll be a win-win for both of you because now people who think of this company will go, oh my gosh, they're the ones that helped with this. Like I want to support them. They were part of this. Now it's a win for them, even bigger win than just, I gotta get past this. It's so annoying. Let me use that nice little uh skip ahead button on YouTube, right? Those are the that that invention right there is a really nice thing. But if you don't have to use it because it's part of the story, that's a win for every one of us, including our audience who don't have to hit that skip ahead button. Uh so, so how do we pull this off?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Okay, now it's time to reveal Operation Dusk. Oops, that's the wrong plan. This is Operation Dusk, aka delivering Umbreon secretly to Kevin. So here's the plan. I'm gonna tell Kevin I'm flying from San Diego to Dallas for a card party site visit and to film some footage. That way, it won't be weird why producer Dan and a camera's with me. I'll invite his family to a nice dinner, and during dinner, I'll surprise him with the Umbreon binder. He should have no clue what the real plan is, but first I have to message Kevin to see if he and his family is even available. And yes, he is in. So December 3rd, it is, which means from today, October 23rd, I have 41 days. Operation Dusk is in motion.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:25

So this is again uh sets as a reminder for our audience, right? It's to get them excited. It's to get them excited for how this end of this video is gonna go. We start to understand, hey, there's a there's a path here, which we actually were inspired by Home Alone for this. That's why we if you go back and watch that first, the first map, it's the Home Alone map that Kevin McAllister makes uh for um setting all of the the traps around the house. And then Pat literally drew this all himself. Like that that's all him making this poster, which is pretty crazy. I I would have stick figures if I did that. Uh but it's it's another reminder of the why. And key, the family will be at dinner. Remember at the beginning when he talked about his wife and his kids. Now we know his whole family's gonna be there. Well, as an audience member, I've I want to see what the family's gonna react. I want to see how everyone's gonna react. It's not just like Kevin, like just you know, they're just meeting uh, you know, somewhere. It's like, no, the whole family's gonna be there for dinner. This feels like, you know, it'll be uh an important timing for it to happen. And it to be around the holidays is we know this is gonna be significant. So let's see. He gets the cards and it's time to put the binder together.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

And we got about eight hours until the flight leaves to Dallas. And so far, Operation Dusk is progressing according to plan. Kevin even reached out on Discord just to make sure we were still on for dinner at the Gaylord Hotel in Dallas tomorrow, the location where Card Party will be. Which again is our cover story. So all I have left to do now is the Dirty work. I also have some ideas in mind that are hopefully going to make this extra special for Kevin. You'll see. And after over an hour of work, let's go deliver these Umbreons secretly to Kevin. It's done. Except it wasn't done. After midnight, when I couldn't fall asleep, I realized that the binder needed one more special thing on the very last page. Now it's done.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:39

So he's collected all the cards. Spent a good 50 minutes of video time or more collecting every single card. The audience knows we're gifting it to Kevin. The audience knows all the cards are there. We need something that's gonna hold them. And something that's not just about the the emotion of the moment. What's one more open loop that we can do? One, what do these pages look like? We didn't reveal, he says something about uh there's things I want to show you that are on these pages, but you'll see that later. Two, what's on this last page? I don't know, I didn't I didn't see it. Pat literally did come up with this last page after midnight, just before the flight. He told me after he landed, hey, I did something to the last page. This was all him in the moment thinking of that. But also when it comes to the storytelling, we need to make sure we we highlight this last page because we want the viewers to literally be asking what's on the last page. Always be directing what is the viewer thinking? What is the question they're asking? That's that's the takeaway you should be taking from this. It's not just how do I do this emotional storytelling, but how do I get the viewer to ask a question, to get them to watch, to get the answer to that, at the same time having an open question that keeps them going to the next one. So then we get to the mission and the reminder of the intro.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

I have an early flight to Dallas, so I can get situated at the hotel before dinner. All right, Dallas, here we come. And as I take off from San Diego, as the sun starts to rise, I just can't help but smile, thinking about this entire journey I've been on. From the Discord messages to meeting Kevin in person and realizing that out of all the people in the world, Kevin chose me to do right by his collection. So why are you selling it to them?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:33

It was it was tough. My wife was always like, okay, he's the only person that you're allowed to sell to because he will do it justice.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:39

And Kevin, I hope you feel that I've done exactly that. Mid fight, I post a message on Instagram. Quick site visit for Card Party Dallas today. Of course, we know that's not the primary reason, but Kevin does follow me on Instagram, so this should further solidify our story with him leading up to dinner tonight. And a couple hours later, I landed in Dallas and met up with producer Dan at the airport. We got the big surprise tonight. How are you feeling? Feeling good. This is uh crazy. It is crazy because while I'm in an Uber on the way to the hotel, I remember what it was like to get in an Uber the moment after I bought the collection from Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

Dude, that was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:13

I like I feel weird holding it because it's there, there's like this isn't just cards. This is a story. This is this is him. And we're just a few hours away from giving this part of his life back to him.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:25

If you ever want to do a recap of your video, do it before the last end or open loop of your video. Do it before your video ends. We used to do recaps early on in the channel where we would open up a mystery box and then kind of recap a few things after, and no one would care. They would leave. The video's over. I don't need to see your recap, I just watch the whole video. But if you want to include any form of recap, and in our sense, it's reminders of all the things that have happened. We want to put you back in the same place that Pat is thinking on when he's flying there, also. It's this reflection of all these crazy things that happened that led to this moment. You want that to happen before the open loop, before the open loop is closed, because that's where you'll you're still keeping the viewer. Now, it doesn't mean you now spend another hour doing recaps, but it's if you want to recap, make sure you're not doing it at the very end where no one cares anymore because they've got their answer and they're able to leave. And we also use this to serve as a reminder of the last 45 minutes. There's a lot of things you haven't seen from this video and these clips where he's out searching for these cards. We need to remind everyone of the most important emotional points. The most emotional points of Kevin with his family, why we're doing this, how much effort it took to get there, that he's still needing to put things up to let Kevin believe that it's a different uh situation happening than what is actually happening.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

I give Dan some beef chips from Hawaii, which is his form of payment. Oh, these are the best. All right, Dan, are you ready to see the binder? You're gonna be the first one to see it. Oh man, I'm excited for this. Do we show them or do we wait till Kevin sees it? They wait. Dan is so mean. Sorry, guys, Dan said so, but don't worry, you won't have to wait too much longer. Okay. Oh, that's cool.

unknown 1:11:14

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:15

He's taking it all in just like how I hope Kevin does. So I got all the Oracle cards. And I kind of have to rearrange some stuff because we put the first editions in there too. It looks so cool without all the energy cards. I also had a fun idea to mark which ones were new and which ones were already in the binder before. The ones that were already in there have Kevin's purple sleeve. The ones that we added are the sleeve. And those sleeves came from Ian. Thanks, Ian. Then I get excited about something else. Flip to the next page. Oh wow. And then after that, oh man, that's cool. The grand finale. Oh yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:50

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

I think he's gonna like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:52

That's perfect. Approved? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:55

Let's go. Tonight's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:57

The reminder of the last page. Even though we did share, hey, there's a last page or whatever, getting to see someone reacting to it. Now, obviously, I wish I reacted better. I could have been more expressive and all that, but this was a real moment. It's like, here you go. The Pat literally put the camera down. We're just recording, like we're just going all as all the time, as much as we can. So a moment like that, it's just just raw in the moment. So seeing someone else's reaction goes, okay, there's something here now. Like it's one thing when Pat says it, but to see someone else react to it, that's that's where you start to see, okay, now I'm reminded that I gotta, I I don't just want to see Kevin's reaction, I want to see what's on this last page. It's more of a reason to keep asking, right? It's keep asking questions and keep watching. And now we meet with the family.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:47

Speaking of Kevin, he should be here anytime soon. It is a Wednesday, so there's probably rush hour traffic on the way here.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:53

Plus, this hotel is so big. Maybe he's lost. He's got two kids. And you know how kids can be sometimes. Dress code? What if he can't get in because I didn't tell him about the dress code? I drink too much water. I'm gonna have to peek.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:00

I think they're here. I think they're here, I think they're here, I think they're here, I think they're here, I think they're here, I think they're here. Breathe, Pat. Breathe. Here we go. Oh, you're good, dude. How are you, man? Good to see you. How are you? Good to see you, Parker. Yeah, nice to meet you, Colsa. Jenny, pleasure. Thank you so much. And just like that, everyone was here, and I wasn't as nervous anymore. It's always the part leading up to the thing that makes us nervous, right? Like back when I was about to meet Kevin for the first time. Why am I nervous? Like, but it's not just Kevin this time, it's his whole family, and they were amazing. His kids play sports, and they both even play the cello. And as a band and orchestra nerd myself, I thought that was really cool. In fact, we connected on a lot of things, and for the most part, during dinner, learning even more about Jenny, Kevin, and their amazing family, I forgot about the Umbreon binder, and Kevin didn't even ask about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:43

So showing Pat being nervous helps the audience connect to his energy, connect to how he's thinking. Right? This this is all about relating to the audience. Pat's super nervous. It's just how he literally feels in that moment. And the voiceover is sharing out all the thoughts that he's actually having in his head. There's more to this whole scenario where we're trying to figure out where we're all sitting, and it's it's just this back and forth there, too. And it's it's connecting to the audience to feel nervous, to set up the risk. What if this gets spoiled? What if this doesn't go the way that we think it will go? And so I'm gonna show this last clip here. Again, if anyone doesn't want to be spoiled, this is going to spoil the rest of the video. But um, so there's your warning.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:30

So it's a little bit rearranged due to some of the cards that have been picked up. I'm not exactly sure how he's feeling right now. I know he wants to see it, but maybe this will be tough for him since he's let it go.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:39

It's a little bittersweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:43

So we can see how the progress is. So love that start. So we got the first editions in there now. Okay. So I added those in. Yeah. Kevin examines the binder very closely. You got the hollow and the reverse. He's seeing his old collection transformed for the first time. I'm sure this isn't easy for him, but I don't think he has a clue what's about to happen. These are from the the champions, the championship decks, yes. And of course, his eye goes immediately to the gold star Umbreon. That's the big one. And we both let Jenny and the kids know just how unique and rare this one is. I then point out the new regional championship cards on this page, too. Oh, and the staff. Wow. Yeah. I I had to get them all, of course. Because that's you catch them all, right? It's a couple more. And then I point out the EB Games one from Australia. I knew about it. It was one that I just didn't think was. It's an exclusive from Australia. Right. They speak English, so I was like, it's every English.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:37

This is an exclusive in Europe, and I included that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

So it makes sense. On the next page, the Prismatic SIR, and even that new promo that recently came out. This was not even out when you sold this to me. And now at the end of the binder. So we got them all. Got them all. It's done. We got them all. Wow. Kevin takes a moment to let it all sink in. That's pretty good. So thank you for helping and allowing me to finish this.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:02

And there's more. There's a story.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:04

So we have the initial message you sent and some of our follow-ups. And right here, I've been going back and forth on this all day. Really difficult for me to let this go. And then I have our picture. Yeah. The picture we took together on that day that I picked up the collection. Dang, can you take a horizontal picture of us? That was a moment that I'll remember forever. And there's one more page. And I hope you do too. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:27

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:28

It wouldn't have been complete unless it got back in your hands. And I know how much this meant to you. Thank you for letting me finish it for you, but this is yours. I can never have this. No, this is yours, Kevin. This is home. This is its home. This is going home with you, man. Right where it belongs. And it was so many people who got involved. TCG Stadium, they threw in one as well. They even sent some stuff for the kids too. Jenny's making use of the table napkins over there. Well, I could just see Kevin smiling beneath his hands there. Here's a note from Jimmy from TCG Stadium. Like, thank you for being part of the Every Ember Your Own challenge for Kevin. This is for you. These are for the kiddos. I know you haven't had Phantasmal Flames yet. So the kids are stoked. They're both going to get involved with this booster box in these sleeves. I think the reality of this is setting in for Kevin now.

unknown 1:17:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:21

So the emotional roller coaster comes to an end. I'm so glad that we had a couple cameras set up because we were able to capture Kevin's reaction. But most importantly, we were able to capture his wife's reaction. Because for some people, the tears come as soon as they see Jenny start to cry. For the rest, it'll come when they reveal the last page. And the page is revealed and we see Kevin's emotion, right? The whole video, we've been waiting for Kevin's emotion, and we see Kevin and Jenny cry. If that's all we were waiting for, the video's over. We want to keep that last thing in the viewer's mind. What is on this last page? That's where that connection comes. It's home. I'll give you two. There is a little Easter egg. If we go back into one of the clips that we watched earlier when Pat was initially in the car going to Dallas to originally buy it, the voiceover says, as I leave my home to go to Kevin's home, and the home of Card Party. We're setting in even early in the video this idea of home and what it means to be back home, to have something returned home that was lost. The theme of this video, right? It's much deeper than Pokemon cards. It's much deeper than than just what's the challenge. It's this internal need that connects us to the stories that we love. So how did the audience react? I know I can't be the only one who got teary-eyed in the ending. I'm so glad you use your platform for person uh and your personal worth for everything like this. Everyone else saying, I actually cried. I started crying the second I saw her in tears. Just teary-eyed, I'm ugly crying. Ugly crying currently. The way your videos make me cry needs to be studied because WTH, it's just cardboard, but it's not just cardboard. It's community, it's family, it's love. I'm not even at the end yet, and I can't keep it together. With all the negativity in our hobby recently, I'm grateful for videos like this. Thank you. Rarely do I like a video on YouTube to keep my algo pristine. Been a longtime fan, but this video was such a fresh uh breath of air in today's Pokemon TCG collecting. This made me actually tear up a bit. This is more quality than your usual bangers. This is what the kids would call a certified hood classic. And for the first time in months, I liked a video on this site. This one. Please keep cooking packed. We all understand, Kevin. Sometimes we have to give up our hobbies to be the dad we can the dad we can possibly be. Shout out to all the dads out there. Keep it up. You're doing great. The collection holds memories with him and his kids. I'm glad to see it's home. This is why it's so important to know your audience. Not just who they are, not just the demographics, but how they think. What they're feeling right now. In the Pokemon card TCG community, in the collecting community in general, there's a lot of negativity. There's scammers, there's armed robbery, burglary, there is people violently attacking each other in box stores like Target. This is what people are thinking about. This is the content that is fed and put in front of people constantly. As uh and it's the same thing that happens in media and news, is we are fed negativity because we're we will instantly click on it. But if we know what the audience is feeling right now, we know how do we approach telling this story and sharing this thing to maybe make a change for a few people. And I'm gonna selfishly share this last comment right here. But at fifth 5952, producer Dan made the right choice to make us wait for the binder reveal that was so touching. On long form compared to short form, you have the ability to be a little patient. Not too patient, but you have the ability to be a little patient, and that patience sometimes can pay off. Because just like the famous quote that everyone everyone always remembers is Maya Angelou, people will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Story is how we understand the world. It's literally how us as humans understand the world around us is through storytelling. We're constantly telling ourselves stories when we see things happen. We see a car crash, I start to imagine what may have happened there. I picture myself in that car, my family in that car. We start to tell a story of what would have happened. That's how we understand the world around us. That's why we connect to stories. It's why we even watch the news and we want to hear stories of things that happen to people, or we watch videos like this and we imagine ourselves in that in those characters. Whatever video content you're doing, you have the ability to connect deeper with your audience if you understand how they're thinking. And even a one-sentence story could make the change for them to now connect further with you, no matter what type of content you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:50

I want to say one thing about all of this, and this is to wrap it all up. Creators, whether they've been on the platform for a couple of days, a couple of months, or a couple of years, have a skill that's needed in order to succeed on YouTube, and it's storytelling. And for the most part, we kind of ignore it. We are so into our own heads about CTR metrics and all these other things. When the reality is the way to win on YouTube is storytelling, and this has literally opened the back the box and given you all the secrets on how to do that. This podcast has done that for you, and now we gotta go away. I I mean, I gotta take some notes in my I've watched this presentation before, and I have to say that I have uh I felt some sort of way at the end. It was very uh very engaging and very um emotional. And even this time, I knew it was gonna happen. It was still very emotional. I think that says a lot that a presentation about storytelling can still bring out feelings. And man, a masterful way of doing that. Dan, thank you so much for sharing all that with us. It was an incredible, incredible experience to to break down a very successful video, why it was successful and the things that were done that while you're watching it, you don't realize were done for a specific reason. But in watching it now, it's like, oh, now I I it's like the matrix. I see the ones and the zeros and the zeros and the ones. Incredible stuff, man. Loved it.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:11

Thank you, man. It's you know, obviously that's the magic of editing, the magic of putting everything together. And so you're you're seeing how it's made, and and um, for some, that maybe removes some of some of that those things when we understand how movies and all that kind of stuff are made. But in this case, we're taking real life and just telling a story in an engaging way. It's taken a long time to figure it out for us, but I don't want anyone to walk away feeling overwhelmed or feeling like this is like they that they have to do this type of storytelling or they have to do it in this way. That that's not the case at all. And that's why I want to repeat multiple times is just the idea that a story could be one single word. I I want you to even simplify it down to how do I get someone to ask a question in their mind and answer it by them feeling an answer, and then you give them the answer, right? That alone makes a huge difference. And that you could literally be doing a video where you're reviewing a fish tank, but there's something that you get that person, what's where are they at? Where are the core people that are going to buy that fish tank? How are they feeling right now? What are their thoughts? What are they going to do? If you know your audience well enough, you can add in a one-line sentence that gets them to feel so connected, they go, oh my gosh, this is the fish tank I need to buy. It's not because the glass is so good, it's because the story that you told connected with it, uh, as long as it's truthful, as long as it's real, and and and you make that relatable, relatable connection with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:33

And basically, if you can make people feel, you will win. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, if you want to see some of the stuff that Dan's been working on, Deep Pocket Monster and everything will be linked in the description below. If you're listening to the audio podcast, it'll be in the show notes. Uh, and if you've been listening to the audio podcast, I heavily, heavily, heavily recommend you click the link to watch it on YouTube because some of the stuff was very visual. And especially that last scene, you have to watch it on YouTube. And I want to thank Dan for just giving us a presentation that really a lot of times you'd have to go somewhere to go see. So thank you so much for that, Dan. And everyone else, we'll see y'all in the next one.