What If Success Means Staying Steady

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We sit down with Quinn from Snazzy Labs to unpack what it really takes to run a profitable tech YouTube channel without chasing constant growth. We talk through monetization beyond AdSense, staying relevant with a small team, and how to protect audience trust while still building a business. 
• starting a channel for money while staying grounded in the real costs 
• why AdSense rarely funds a team even with huge views 
• building revenue through brand integrations, affiliates, and merch 
• resisting expansionism and letting “stable” be a strategy 
• developing a repeatable video process based on core strengths 
• using analytics lightly: out of 10, click-through rate, retention 
• writing for retention with an attention-getting device upfront 
• choosing sponsorships carefully and avoiding fights with the audience 
• managing mental pressure by focusing on true feedback and community comments 
If you're listening to this audio podcast or on the video and you're on YouTube and you love this, hit that like button. I would love that if you did that. 

Transcript

Cold Open Growth Myth And Hook

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're pulling in anywhere from a quarter of a million on an okay bad video to, you know, well over seven figures on a good video. But I have a staff of three, and our ad sense wouldn't cover even one person's wages. And there's this idea that you have to keep growing on YouTube, otherwise you will die, and that's just not true. If you look at my view count over the last four to five years, it's been relatively static. My audience is not shrinking. But I have this internalized belief, and it's not really true. I'd like to make this clear that people don't care about me. I don't go, hey guys, what's up? Hope you're having a good afternoon. I'm Quinn from Snazzi. Nobody cares about that. Okay. They're there to watch content. And that content should be immediately interesting and

Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:40

engaging.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that isn't just cool. We're Snazzy. I'm Travis, and I'm here with a very special guest. I have the great pleasure of having the original Snazzy Labs, the only Snazzy Labs. Quinn, welcome to the show. Thank you, Travis. You're really far down your list on good content creators. I disagree, strong disagree. Uh, if you're not familiar, Snazzy Labs has been on uh YouTube for well over 17 years, which is crazy, over a million subscribers, 260 million views, and is one of the most respected tech channels on YouTube. And if you're new here, this is what we do. We talk to people in the content creation space and kind of learn their story. So let's get right into it. Uh, Quint, tell us a little about your channel in general, and then tell us how you got started. Like what were you doing before YouTube?

How Snazzy Labs Started

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Sure. So I'm an old man now, I'm 33. Uh, I started my channel when I was 15 years old. So I was working uh at an elementary school as a janitor uh for three hours every day after school cleaning the building because I wanted money. I was a 14-year-old kid and I was making $5 and 15 cents an hour, pretty good salary. And uh it finally came to the point where I had started consuming to kind of kill time a bunch of tech podcasts and kind of tech-related content. I had always liked tech, but I had never really been on YouTube beyond like watching a cat video and some of the early YouTubers. Being a YouTuber wasn't really a thing back in uh 2008 or whenever it was. And uh I came across a YouTuber that was making videos about iPhone cases. And I thought, this is the weirdest thing ever. Who would want to watch videos about a guy talking about iPhone cases? But I had just bought a new iPhone and I needed a case, and so I thought, well, let's see. And then two days later, and probably 40 videos later, I knew everything about all of the iPhone cases and which one was the best and which one I was gonna buy. And I saw that this YouTuber who I really liked and created uh respected was getting a bunch of free stuff. And so, as a 15-year-old kid, I thought, I want some free iPhone cases, and this doesn't seem that hard. So I got out my uh my old uh Sony CyberShot and started filming videos on stuff that I bought so that I could eventually get free stuff, and I guess it kind of worked out.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

It did work out, it did. It's funny you say that because in a weird way, um, when I first wanted to start on YouTube, it was the same thing. Like, oh, I saw these tech videos, I was all in them, and I wanted to do tech content, but I didn't have the money to buy anything, so I just found something that I had and then made content about it. Um, but I think in the moment I felt kind of in the moment I felt embarrassed about it, but that video did well later. Did that, did that kind of did you feel like when you first started in such a now 17 years ago, different tech space than it is today? Like everyone's in a tech space now. But even then, like there were some pretty talented people. Did you kind of feel like, oh, this won't be good enough, let me just get some reps in? Or did you think that from the very beginning, like, I think I have something unique to offer the audience?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

I was very much copying other people that I thought were good at it. However, it was such early days that there was no semblance of production quality. I mean, everybody, if you were fancy on YouTube back in the day, you were maybe putting something into Final Cut Express or into iMovie and adding, you know, an intro and some background music. But it was mostly just if you go back and watch my original videos, I didn't even put them in a video editor. I'd literally push record on my camera, I would talk for 10 minutes, and then I would, because that was the limit on YouTube, and then I would stop it, and then I was and I was done and I'd upload it. And so, yeah, times have changed for sure.

What YouTube Looked Like In 2008

SPEAKER_00 4:12

I mean, substantially, like there's there's include so if you look at like the landscape of now of 2026, um, we have things like AI, but we also have shorts, live streams, we have things that didn't exist when you started. Can you just help people know that are starting uh right now what the landscape looked like back then? Because if you were to try to create a tech channel now, um the the kind of bar is so high uh for a lot of different reasons, from like the perspective of thumbnails, um for uh video production quality stuff. But back then, like what was an average tech video like?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Oh, it was the whole landscape was crazy. I mean, to put things into perspective, I was already making YouTube videos when Fred, the first YouTuber, passed one million subscribers. So the first guy to get a million subscribers on YouTube, I was already making videos. So it was not, there were no YouTubers. People, when I started, I didn't even know about the YouTube partner program. So I didn't even know you could make money on YouTube. That was never the goal. It was just, oh, I want to talk about tech because I'm interested in it, and maybe I can get a you know a free pair of headphones or a case here and there or or whatever. But no, we didn't do thumbnails for years. Um, I would just choose one of the pre-selected YouTube thumbnails that was just a screen grab from the video. I didn't titles were crazy. And if I go back and look at them, some of them were really boring and hyper descriptive, and then some of them were like really early forms of clickbait that I didn't even realize that worked pretty well. And uh yeah, it was a completely different landscape. There was uh uh very different than today. For good and bad, I think the the plus is that because there wasn't that much uh competition and nobody really knew what being a YouTuber was yet, it made it a lot easier to get in a long time ago than it would be today. But on the flip side, there was a lot less opportunity, uh both financial and from a viewpoint perspective, because you know, there were only a few thousand people in the entirety of tech consumption on YouTube on the planet. So, like if you were a big YouTuber, you maybe got a couple thousand views of video, and that was the big leaks. And now um there are so many people in so many areas on the planet that are ready to consume good content, and so you just have to make it. So it's a really great time to start making YouTube videos. I think I think it always is, even though doing it today would be a lot different than what I would have to do a bunch of years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

So but in some ways, uh so much more um approachable for someone who just wants to get into it because your phone now has better camera quality than things like five, six years ago that you were paying thousands of dollars for. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Totally. Yeah. No, I my first camera was a Sony Cybershot that was 3.2 megapixels. It was I had a 128 megabyte uh memory stick that went inside. And I I think I upgraded to 512 megabytes, which was the big leagues. That's when I could hit uh 10 minutes. I think originally I had I could only do six or seven minute long videos. I didn't have a microphone, the lighting was horrible. You go back and watch my original videos, and they're they're unwatchable, not just from the lighting, but the audio is like yeah, they're they're bad. Um, but yeah, no, the the opportunities uh that exist today are awesome because equipment is great and software is great, even free software. Um, I mean CapCut and YouTube's own kind of shorts editor, they're really powerful. And that just did not exist back then.

Monetization Beyond AdSense

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Let's talk. I usually uh wait for later in the podcast to talk about this stuff, but I really want to talk about it now because I think it's super important to understand that your business model is not one like most tech YouTubers, is not uh purely on uh AdSense. Like that's just usually a drop in a bucket, it's usually something else. What different ways do you monetize uh for YouTube? Do you have like uh Patreon? Do you do you have uh merch? Like what do you do to do to monetize?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

We're kind of multifaceted, but I I do think that in general, one of the things that people need to understand, especially as they're starting out a YouTube channel, there's two things. One is that it's totally okay to start a YouTube channel and a business with aspirations of making money. There's this perception that, like, if you don't, if you can't start a YouTube channel with the goal to make money or you'll never make it, you have to do it for the love of the game. No, uh you you do need to love what you're doing and you need to create stuff that you're passionate about, but don't be naive to the realities of the world and the cost of running a YouTube channel. It takes your time, you're buying equipment, and it should be fun, it should be a hobby. You shouldn't you shouldn't start a YouTube channel. Probably some YouTubers might disagree, but I'm not gonna suggest you quit your job and say, okay, I'm gonna start a channel. I'm doing this. No, don't do that. Um, don't quit your job until you're pretty sure it's gonna work out. But um, on the flip side, it's okay to be worried about ways that you will monetize eventually. Having said that, uh, I also want to instill the idea in most people's heads that for the vast majority of markets and the vast majority of YouTubers, AdSense is never really going to be that great of a business. It's getting less and less good over time. And unless you have just absolutely insane volume, it's really difficult to make any tangible amount of money via AdSense. Um, if you look at my um, you know, my channel, my videos, uh, we're pulling in anywhere from, you know, a quarter of a million on an okay bad video to, you know, well over seven figures on a good video. That's especially as a new YouTuber, it's easy to look at that and go, oh my goodness, that's amazing. But I have a staff of three. I run a really small channel, really small team for a channel my size, and our ad sense wouldn't cover even one person's wages. So it's just not that much money. Now, if you're getting tens of millions of views a month, then yeah, it's a it's a pretty good gig. But most people are not doing that. And I'm certainly not doing that, and I probably never will. So I've had to branch out to get money in other ways. We started doing merch, um, and that's a nice little kickback that does a little bit here and there, but the vast majority of our money comes from in video integrations. So brands come to us and say, hey, we would love for you to talk about our product for 60 seconds in the middle of your video. And we write an ad, we shoot really pretty B-roll that makes it look like a custom ad. And then they can go, oh, look, Quinn of Snazzi Labs talked about our thing in his video. And uh that makes up probably 80% of our revenue. But we have uh Amazon affiliate stuff as well, where when we talk about our product, we say, hey, and if you want to buy it at the link below, we get a small kickback and it costs you the same. And there's a surprising number of ways that your audience will want to support you. Um, I've never done a Patreon, mostly because I am it's I've always perceived it to be it's always been easier for me to ask brands for money in exchange for a service. So I can sell you an ad and you will make sales from that ad and everybody wins. Whereas asking viewers for money has never been that compatible with the way that I work, because if a company will give me money for an exchange of goods, I would rather do that than another working person. But for a lot of other verticals, uh, brand deals are not as much of a thing. They're trickier to come by. If you're in a really small niche, some of your really kind of uh dedicated core audience would be happy to support you financially. So it really just depends what market you're in. And you can kind of get a vibe for it by just trying it out and just being honest about what you're trying to do. And some stuff will work well and some stuff won't, and things will change. I used to rely a lot more on AdSense than I do today. And so, and it's possible that in five, 10 years, I rely less on brand deals in the future than I do now. It just the market evolves and you evolve with it. And that's part of what I think is important about staying relevant on YouTube is not becoming complacent. Always be willing to kind of look at how things are changing, to try new things. And so when they do change, because they will, you're not left in the dust, which happens to a lot of people that don't kind of pay attention.

Staying Relevant With Small Teams

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Yeah. And for someone who's been on YouTube as long as you, there's a lot of creators that you can look at that haven't even been on, like maybe 11 years or something, that you just don't really see, they kind of have passed away in a weird way. Like you don't really see them stay relevant. You're super relevant, you're very well known in this space. How do you suppose you've done that? Like, what's the how do you continue to change and stay relevant as things and listen, tech moves very fast. It would be very easy to get left in the dust. How are you doing it?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Well, one thing that I would like to put out there, because and it's not a very satisfying answer, but I think it's often true. It's not the sole reason, but luck is a big factor. Um, we underplay, I think, in the creator community how much luck factors in. There are a lot of creators that are really talented. They do all the right things. Their videos look excellent, they're entertaining, they work well, and for whatever reason, it just doesn't really work out for them. And then there's other people that you might think are hacks, they're not talented, and they're sellouts, and somehow, for some reason, they're making tons of money, they're getting tons of views. The reality is that it's not always fair. It's not always something that is formulaically. That's one of the great things about YouTube is that there is no system that you can hack to kind of become the world's biggest YouTuber. But on the flip side, there is no system that you can hack to become the world's biggest YouTuber. And so some people will just find a lot of success and others won't, and it's not your fault. It's not, you should always try, you know, kind of re-innovating yourself so that you can find that niche in which you can thrive and survive. But there's a lot of people that do really awesome stuff that just it doesn't pan out, and that's just how it goes. So that's one small portion. But for as much as luck is a small factor, so is sweat equity. Working on making new videos and trying to change your formula and listening to your audience feedback, looking at analytics to say, okay, well, we talked about this thing for a long time, and I can see my watch time and my retention really dipped in that section. Maybe we should not do that in the future. All of these are things you can do to kind of make new stuff and make entertaining stuff. But this is, I think, the best advice I can give. And it's, I hate giving it because every time you go to VidCon or somewhere else, you hear this big YouTuber that's been so successful that just says, just make videos that you like, you know, you will. And you're like, okay, thanks. But that's not really like helpful. That's not a tangible action. Um, and I hate to be the guy that's gonna repeat that, but I will a little bit. There, I'm not suggesting that there's nothing that you need to know how to do. You should. And over time, and watching this channel and listening to creators talk about how they do their uh videos, it will help you. Analytics matter. You need to look at them. Um, you need to continue to create and innovate on the production space. You need to find a niche that somebody else ideally hasn't tapped yet. If you're just copying somebody else, you're not likely to find much success. Having said all that, one of the best metrics for having a successful YouTube channel is looking at your body of work, watching your videos, and asking yourself, is this a good video? Is this something that I would want to watch? Do I think this stands out as compared to the other C of videos? And if the answer is yeah, then you'll probably find an audience. Um, and that's kind of what we ask ourselves. I've met a lot of YouTubers who spend days of their week analyzing every single analytic in their YouTube Studio dashboard and going, okay, at this specific moment, this stopped working for us and and why? And I'm just like, oh man, that video didn't do as well. Uh it's time to make the next one.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Right. Yeah, you have to be disconnected from that because if you put all of your value in one video, like I am this video. If this video fails, I fail, then it's very easy to get burned out.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

And you have to look at trends. You can't keep going, oh yeah, this you can't be indignant and say, Oh, this is good stuff, and eventually people will like this. If it's not working, it's not working. But on the flip side, it's okay to wear uh a poor video performance pin on your shirt and be like, yeah, I'm I'm good, we're gonna make the next one better, and just to focus on making great videos because the reality is if if it's entertaining to you and you enjoy watching it, somebody else likely will too. And viewer satisfaction, which is this like vague metric that YouTube always talks about, and you're like, but that but that doesn't mean anything because it is comprised of a bunch of different factors that YouTube's not gonna tell you. And the reality is a lot of people in YouTube don't even really know what those are. It's a combination of click-through rate and retention time and inner engagement, and all of this stuff matters, but really it is a metric in that if people like the video and they watch it and they share it and they comment on it, and and then it's a good video. And YouTube's gonna go, oh, well, it's in our best interest to also recommend this video to a bunch of other people. And so the the top analytic in your dashboard should be do I find this interesting? And if you do, somebody else probably will too.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

That's fantastic. I do have a so I want to get into metrics here in a minute, just because I think it's I'd be interesting to pick your brain on it. But before we do, something else you said uh a couple minutes ago, I started putting together the last two tech people I talked to and comparing them to the other creators I've talked to recently. So I'm thinking specifically about Andrew Edwards and um uh Jerry Rick Everything, Zach from Jerry Brick Everything. And uh, between you three, you have different channel sizes, all successful in your own way for different reasons, but all teams are small. And then I look at the other creators that I've talked to recently, with either subsizes and the same, bigger, or around the same between all of these, and they all seem to have teams, which is interesting. I'm noticing that tech creators and the other tech creators I know don't really have teams, no matter how big they are, but with the exception of maybe MKBHD, um, but um content creators and other niches tend to surround themselves with more teams earlier in their content creation um kind of uh journey. Do you have any idea why that might be? Like what is it because we feel as tech creators that we can do everything or we just don't want to accept help? Or what do you think it is?

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Uh I think there's a few factors. I mean, there are other YouTubers. One that comes to mind that he's a much bigger YouTuber than I am, but he's not MKBHD Linus Tech Tip levels of big is Austin Evans. Yeah, Austin Evans. Um I think it's like 15, 10 or 15 people, yeah, which if you look at his monthly view count relative to someone like Marquez, who also has a relatively similar team size, but gets way more views. Yeah, yeah. Um, you might think, well, that that's dumb. Why is Austin doing that? But it's not dumb. Austin and his team have a really calculated strategy. Um, I think a lot of it is risk tolerance. Uh I think that the not to say that tech content is easier or uh quicker to produce, but because we work on more of a news cycle and the turnaround time is is quicker, we're not the type of people that are typically spending two months on a video and then hoping that, okay, this video's got to get 10 million views, like other channels on YouTube operate, especially like edutainment and um science videos. There's a lot of channels that do really, really well that have 10 or 15 people behind the team and they make one video a month. And you think to yourself, how on earth did they make money? But they do. Um but I I have always looked at it from the stance of you need to be careful about expansionism. I could have a bigger team. I probably should have another team. I've had friends of mine that have told me, what are you doing? You should hire more people. You should not be doing this yourself still. And part of me wants to continue to do it because I want my little finger on the controller and I want to be able to have more uh input on the product throughout the entire process. But the other part is that I have seen a lot of other YouTubers that have gotten um kind of a scent of success and thought, oh, this is my chance to get big and we need to build and we need to get bigger. And there's this idea that you have to keep growing on YouTube, otherwise you will die. And that's just not true. If you look at my view count over the last four to five years, it's been relatively static. My audience is not shrinking. Uh, but the growth is very slow. I mean, I'm getting probably 5% growth uh per year on average. It's not very much. And that goes against what a lot of the sage advice on YouTube might be that if you're not growing, you're shrinking. And that's just not the reality. And so I've thought, well, yeah, sure, if I hired two or three more people and we doubled our video output, it's possible that our audience would grow much quicker. And it's it's not possible. It it would happen if my video volume went up higher. But then I'm suddenly on the hook for $600,000 a year in payroll costs. And can I work? And am I required to work more in order to offset those costs that I now have? And what happens if the video count doesn't grow at the rate that I expect it to? Do I have to let people go? Is it a source of stress? And I have always wanted to run my channel like a business, but also like something that I'm passionate about and that I enjoy doing. And the reality is that for having done this 17 years, there's not a lot of other people that still do YouTube. You see so much about creators getting burned out that they're like, I can't do this anymore. I'm just doing this all by myself. And I think it's because we often set realistic, unrealistic expectations upon ourselves and on what we should be doing and how much time we should be spending. I run a profitable YouTube channel. I have a team of three, and I work 40 hours a week. So I work a nine to five. I go home at 5 p.m. I stop working. I hang out with my wife and with my daughter, and it's awesome. And I don't have to, and part of it is because, yeah, I did have to put in the sweat equity to get to that point. I'm not suggesting that you can start a YouTube channel and kind of just do it, you know, a little bit and maybe get there. It takes work. But I also think that this perception and idea that there needs to be constant growth, that you need to keep getting bigger, you need to keep hiring more people. Because if you don't grow, you should, it's just not true. And there's a lot of people that can run successful, profitable YouTube channels and just be complacent with. What they have. And that's what I am. And it's one of the reasons why I still generally like my job. Um, and it is a job, it's no longer a hobby. Um, I'm responsible to pay salaries. It's to say that I have as much passion about making YouTube videos today as I did 10 years ago would not be accurate. It's it's not as fun a lot of the days, but I'm here, I'm talking about it. I want other creators to start doing this job because it's still something that I enjoy. And part of that, I think, is because I didn't I didn't put all of my eggs in one basket and said, all right, we've got to get this going. Just do what makes sense and take risks, but don't be way too risky. Because a lot of times, for as many success stories as you hear about Mr. Beast and Marquez and Linus, there are way more people that failed.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yes, that is unfortunately true. Right. It's unfortunately true.

Building Videos Around Core Skills

SPEAKER_00 22:48

When you look at um your content creation uh kind of process, there's a couple of things I want to dig into. We'll dig into the early part first. Um, with tech, typically the story is the tech itself. It kind of brings the story forward. So you don't necessarily have to come up with an idea, like if you're a vlogger or something, like, oh, I gotta go to this restaurant and do that. It comes to you. In other words, the news happens to you and you react to it. But there still is, uh, especially if you're doing like a review of something, a storyboarding that still needs to be interesting to watch. Take us through the process of a video, for example. Um uh you do a lot of commentary videos too, where you commentary about you commentate about things um and and things that are happening in the industry. Take us through like uh from beginning to like posting what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

So the first thing that we do in any type of process is I I always have ideas in my head of this could be interesting, this could be a video. And when I come across one, I write it down, I put it in our notion database, and it just kind of sits there. And then over time, we'll go through every once in a while. And for videos that aren't necessarily topical, like you mentioned, sometimes they are. So, like next week, next Monday, we are doing a video on Apple's WWDC event because we do that every year. We always provide commentary. That's not something we have to think about. It's easy. But for other videos, many of our videos are just ideas that we come up with. Um, how let's tell people how to do home networking. How do you set up this specific weird uh smart home gadget that most people don't know about? But they go through an internal vetting process. And I wish I could say this, these are the metrics by which we determine whether or not something will happen, but it's not, it's kind of just based on vibes because I have enough experience and expertise to generally know when a video will perform well and when a video will not perform well. And I don't always get it right. A lot of times we'll spend a ton of time and energy on a video and we're really excited about it, and then it just does okay. And there's other videos that we're like, man, we've just got to get something out because it's the end of the month, and our video, our sponsor needs something posted, and we ship it and we think, oh, that's not our greatest work, and then it ends up having three million views. It just this idea that you can always know what's gonna happen and work is, I think, generally not true. However, I'll use this as an example. I'm really passionate about virtual reality, I really like it. Um, I do not make videos about VR because it is not a market that is interesting to most people. There are people that care about VR, and there are channels that talk about virtual reality, but they're not big tech channels. No, they're not. And it's because most people don't care about VR. I mean, I got a question over there, so I'm ready to be able to actually. How much dust is on it? Unfortunately, too much. That's crazy. You said that. Oh, that's crazy. So I don't make videos about virtual reality anymore because I I've tried it and they just don't, they don't work. They don't so you'll develop a kind of feeling for what your audience is receptive to and what they're not. And the best way to figure that out is in the comments and in the metrics that you're looking at. What's the view camp? Now, sometimes you'll have a video that doesn't perform very well from a view camp standpoint, but everybody in the comments is like, this is super well done. This is amazing. I'm super glad that that you made this video. And you can probably reshape that um to in the future have those videos perform better, but sometimes they never will. And that's okay. We'll still make videos sometimes that we know are not going to be big performers, but we make the video because we want to make it. Um, having said that, there are videos that when push comes to shove, I run a business. And so it's not just a hobby. I need videos that perform. And so we have a pretty decent feeling for how stuff is to perform. And then when I start writing a video, which I still do, I'm the sole writer on my channel. I will oftentimes get halfway through the video and go, I just not, it's just not vibing. I don't know why. And I'll stick it back on the shelf and say, okay, this isn't gonna work right now. We'll come back later. And on the one hand, it's tricky to do that because I've spent hours on it. But on the flip side, you don't want to have this sunk cost fallacy issue where you're like, well, I've already spent a lot of time on it, so let's just get it through. And then you publish a stinker that nobody likes, and then you should have just waited because maybe one day it could have been a good video. So you got those. Then you've got the videos that um you start writing and you're really feeling good about it. It's making a lot of sense, and you're you're excited about it. There's also videos where you start with an idea and you're like, this is what I think the video is gonna be. And then you write the video and then you look back and you're like, well, that that's not really at all what I thought the video was gonna be about. But I actually think it's really good. And then we start the production. I don't know how to work collaboratively on writing because I I don't. I still do it all myself. But luckily, if you're watching this channel, you probably don't either. You're probably doing every facet of production. And that's one area where I am different, where once the video is written, I have a production team and I sit down in a chair and the lights are already set up, and I read my script on a teleprompter, and then I help kind of guide the vision of the video and I help in the edit room and stuff. But I've got a really great and talented team that kind of just makes the video for me. Um, and they do the thing that they're really good at, and I like to think that I stick with the thing that I'm good at, which is writing. But I had to start doing all of it. And so that would be my suggestion to you is find your core competencies and focus on them. There are a lot of people, and I I chased down this rabbit hole for so long. I'll use this as an example. So I started back in 2008, like I mentioned, we hit record, we just babbled on for 10 minutes and then we hit stop and we uploaded the video. I did take a two-year sabbatical from YouTube. Um, I went and served a mission in uh Bolivia, so I was not doing YouTube stuff. And when I came back, Marquez Brownle and TLD Today and a couple of uh Jonathan Morrison, a couple of YouTubers had really upped the game on production. It went from being like, oh yeah, hit record and upload it, to I come back and I'm like, oh no, these guys are making like movies. And I desperately wanted to match their production quality, but that was naive because whereas Marquez and Jonathan were really passionate about cameras and lenses and focusing and lighting, I didn't really care about that. I just felt like I had to match what they were doing because that's what they were doing. And the reality was I was not as good. And because I was not super passionate about it, I didn't really care to learn all the principles of photography. And so my videos just looked worse than theirs. And I was spending all this effort trying to just make a kind of a crappier version of what they had. And I asked myself the question, well, then why would anybody watch me? And so what I had to do was take a break and say, what am I good at? What do I like in the content creation realm? And what are what are my core competencies? What makes me compelling? And I thought that it was my writing. And so I started writing different videos that didn't really have that much to do with smartphone reviews or with headphone reviews, which is what I had been doing before. And I started talking about stuff that I just thought was cool home networking and tutorials and taking stuff apart. I mean, we did a video six months ago where we disassembled an old iMac and I put a bunch of new components inside to turn it into an external monitor. We had a lot of fun doing that video. Um, and that's something that you're probably not going to see on Marquez's channel, or that's what you'd see on my channel. I developed a thing that, well, you come to me to watch this kind of stuff. And it's not the world's biggest niche. I'm not talking about the latest and greatest uh, you know, Snapdragon uh, you know, chip in the Samsung Galaxy, whatever. And so I'm not going to get tens of millions of views on every single video, but I found a niche that's big enough that it works for me. And over those years, I was able to focus on the stuff that I did best. And the rest kind of fell into place. My production is still probably not as good as Marquez's, even though I have a team that's really talented at production. And by the way, as soon as I was able to afford somebody that could do the stuff that I wasn't good at, I did so that I could focus on the stuff that I was good at. But I was also cautious to not go out and hire out every single thing and then wake up a year later and go, oh gosh, I don't really, I've never really had a handle on anything that we've been making for a year. And it turns out that my videos aren't good and we don't have no, there's no subscribers anymore. So you've got to be, you've got to grow at a rate that's predictable and makes sense and focus on what makes you you and what makes you good, but don't go ham and try to do everything because it's just not gonna work

Analytics That Matter Without Obsession

SPEAKER_01 31:14

most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Would you consider yourself a data nerd at all?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

No, really interesting. I am a data nerd with other things that don't involve YouTube analytics, but no, I am not a big YouTube analytics nerd. I look at them because I think you have to, but I spend maybe five minutes looking at current and old videos every single week.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

And what what are you looking for? What specifically are you looking at when you're looking at those things?

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah, so uh the the kind of quickest indicator, but it's one that I think you need to be really careful with, creators, because um a lot of people can bark up the wrong tree by looking at them, but the the one, uh the blank out of 10 rankings. So if you don't know, and I I know this has been discussed on this channel before, every single time you publish a video, YouTube ranks your video in view count relative to your prior 10 videos when they were at that same point in time. So one day and two hours after you published your video, this video is performing um it has this many views relative to your other last 10 videos when they were at the same point in time. And it's a good quick acid test to go, okay, well, this video, and by the way, it's opposite of what you think. Um, one out of 10 is the best, and 10 out of 10 is the worst. Yeah. So if you look at a video and go, okay, this is a nine out of 10 and it's been a day, it's not resonating as well with your audience, or or something has happened in the pipeline. So then I'll go into the dashboard and say, okay, what is it that seems like it's off? And tools like VidIQ can help with this a lot. Um, you can say, okay, well, it turns out that my click-through rate and my retention was quite a bit lower. So either I didn't have a very good title and thumbnail, or I did, but then people clicked on the video and it wasn't really what they thought they were getting into. And they decided to leave because they're like, well, this isn't what this video claimed it was about. Um, if there is a video that has poor average watch time, I'll look at that and go, okay, something in this video was not working because normally people watch for 10 minutes and now they're only watching for six minutes, and it's not because the video is shorter, it's about the same length as my other video. So it just wasn't as interesting. What did I do in the first few minutes of the video? That's a lot of motorcycle. What did I do in the first few minutes of the video that didn't capture people's attention? Um, maybe I put the ad in the wrong spot, or maybe my intro was too belabored and long. Maybe I didn't have a good start to the video. So there are things that you can look at and you should look at. But again, we get back to the idea that like hounding yourself and enslaving over what analytic number, like if you're cross-referencing everything, you've built out an Excel spreadsheet saying, Oh, this one had exactly 2.9% click-through rate, and the other one had 2.1% click-through rate, even though it and why it's just spending a lot of time on something that I think ultimately doesn't really matter because those videos are published, they're done. And you can repackage videos, you can, but all you can do is change the title and the thumbnail, right? The video's made. So, and changing the thumbnail and title does sometimes work, but there's a lot of people that spend a lot of effort saying, why did this not work? And it's like, well, it doesn't matter. It didn't work, you've got to make the next thing, and hopefully that one does work. And so that's why I don't spend that much time on analytics. You've got to know what you're looking at and you've got to make improvements. You've got to make notes of what ought to change. But I also think that spending your whole day in the YouTube dashboard, it's not making videos, and making videos is what's going to get you views.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

So and another thing, Phil, let's talk about retention, uh, which is really important for videos.

Retention Writing And Attention Hooks

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Like you have long videos. You're you're not an eight to 10 minute guy. You have a lot to say, which is great because it gives you a format that's like we want to sit back, relax, and watch, which probably is good for television viewing, right? Like you have like 20, 30, 40 minute videos. Um, but the thing that makes that difficult is you need to get people to be interested for a long period of time. And as a writer, you have a unique ability to understand how to do that. Give us some tips. Like, how do you get people to be hooked at the beginning? Like, what type of things are you needing to do to keep people engaged? Because for a long, it's very hard to keep someone's uh attention for five minutes, let alone more than that, 10, 20, you know?

SPEAKER_01 35:13

I think one of the biggest things, and this is something that I still see YouTubers doing because it's kind of like the meme, it's the bit on YouTube. But I have this internalized belief, and it's not really true. I'd like to make this clear that people don't care about me. They don't, they don't, they're not really there to hear my life story. They just want something entertaining to watch. And that's not true. People do care about me. They watch my videos because they like me, but I pretend they don't. Um, I don't go, hey guys, what's up? Hope you're having a good afternoon. I'm Quinn from Snap. Nobody cares about that. Okay. They're they're they're there to watch content. And that content should be immediately interesting and engaging. So I think one of the biggest and most important things is to use what I call an AGD, an attention-getting device. This idea that at the beginning of the video, you ought to pull people in. Sometimes that's a story, sometimes that's a quote, sometimes that's a clip of something ridiculous happening, but you have to set the scene for the video. It shouldn't be, hey guys, good afternoon. Hope you're doing well. Today we're gonna talk about this and we're gonna go, these are the processes, this is the step through this process. And hopefully by the end of the video, you know how to, no, no, no. You need to sell the video to them. What makes this entertaining? What makes this worth watching? And then you have to deliver on that promise. And that's where I think a lot of people also fall short, is they'll package the video amazingly. They've got an incredible thumbnail and an awesome title. The first 20 seconds of the video are awesome. And then after that, they're like, they don't deliver. So you've got to make that happen all the way through. But again, I come back to this idea of as I'm reading this, is this entertaining? As I'm watching this, is this engaging? And if it is, then it's probably gonna work and it'll work for other people too. Um, and that's one area where I think a lot of uh YouTube creators struggle. For as much as I said you've got to just get out there and make videos, I do think there is a balance between quality and quantity. There are a lot of people that think, well, I've just gotta, I've gotta push this video out. Because I if a video sucks, it's never gonna be good. And so you have you have to make a video good, you have to make it entertaining, and then you push it out when it makes sense to push it out. And the better your videos, the more likely they are to resonate with people and the more likely they are to perform. Now, I'm not saying that you should spend six months on a single video because uh a lot of times that that's not gonna work out and there is a rate of diminishing returns. We struggle with that internally, where, like you just mentioned, I'll oftentimes ask myself, well, at the end of the day, am I gonna get more views making a 30-minute video versus a 20-minute video? No. Uh and a lot of, by the way, there's a lot of creators that are like, oh, if you hit 10 minutes, you unlock like greater ad sense. So don't worry about that. Just make a good video. If the video only ends up being three minutes, that's fine. If the video ends up being 15 minutes, that's okay too. Um, you just need to make sure that whatever you're making is engaging and entertaining all the way through and to try and cut the cruft where it doesn't need to be. And those are kind of the tips that I have for making something sound and be packaged like you expect. But that's why I think retention is um an important metric, is it's it gives you a pretty good idea of where in the video did people start to lose interest. And on average, did they find this interesting? If only, you know, 10% of people are making it to the end of the video, maybe you ought to make it shorter or maybe you ought to make it more entertaining. And sometimes you can have a really good entertaining video, but the reality is it's just too long for most people. And so you just shorten it up anyway. Um, and you have to ask yourself, like, it's hard when you're in the creative mindset because you're like, but this additional content is useful and interesting, but you also have to ask yourself to who? If it's to 2% of your audience, then it's actually not useful or interesting to most people. You want to approach and attack the widest part of your audience possible because that's who you're making videos for, is not the random person here and there, but it's to the the the video as a whole, to your audience as a mass.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

I love that. What about um what do you think a misconcep uh someone who looks at you as like a successful tech channel and oh, he's got it made, he's got employees doing great. What's a preconceived notion that is completely wrong about, if not you specifically, a channel that's in your position? Uh and again, it could be something really simple like, oh, he doesn't have anything to worry about because it all gets done for him or whatever it may be. What do you think that is?

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Uh that success is guaranteed. So that's one of the things that I think there's this idea that, like, well, once I make it, then it'll be easier for it never gets easier. Every video is a battle. It's always trying to figure out what's the right balance of time and production and effort and cost and money. And, you know, is this subject? You've always got to kind of go through that step in that process. And once you've been doing it for 17 years, and once you have a team of really talented people that work on that stuff with you, it does get easier. But it's it's about kind of creating this idea that, oh, it'll just become habit, it'll become second nature, is not really true. And I think that's where people fall into traps, is they become complacent with their format. They find a thing that works, and so they just pull that thread forever and ever and ever. But eventually the thread runs out and you've got to change the spool. And so that's where I think you need to be careful is falling into this idea that, well, once I make it, then it's gonna, you never make it. You're always kind of just continuing to do what you can to get more or to sustain what you've

Sponsorship Ethics And Audience Trust

SPEAKER_01 40:24

got.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

So let's talk a little bit about sponsorships, but in a different way. Uh, not so much about like how to get them and stuff, but have you ever come across a sponsor that you either uh just I know probably the answer is yes a lot of the time where you're like, uh, I'm not really interested in that thing, but like was either so against what you were into that despite the fact the money was really good, you're like, I gotta say no. Or have you taken on a sponsor that there was pushback from the community after you did it? Because sometimes that happens. Either one of those would be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Yeah, both are true. Uh, we turned down hundreds of thousands of maybe millions of dollars a year in sponsorships that we just don't want to be a part of. It doesn't resonate with what I think is morally right or it's not a product that I think is good because at the end of the day, your audience trusts you and you have to treat them with the respect that they deserve. And peddling something that sucks that you know isn't of good quality is not going to benefit them at all. And you might not be that concerned about it because you'll see people in the comments that'll say, Oh, yeah, get that bag, you know, like we all know this thing sucks, but just do it anyway because you got to make money. Um, I would suggest you maybe not do that because um, A, your value is in being able to generate return on investment for brands. So if they don't get that expected ad spend in return on your channel relative to another channel, they have no incentive to ever sponsor you again. And so that's one concern. And by the way, not to scare you, but there are databases of creators that um exist to document cross-brand how creators tend to perform. Interesting. So if you're a pain in the butt to do work with and you're super indignant and um you're rude, and that stuff, that stuff makes it through. It's a pretty small industry. So treat your sponsors with respect. But also, if there is something that you think probably doesn't match what you ought to be advertising, don't. There will be another opportunity that will come your way. And it'll get to the point where, for example, for us, um, less than 5% of the inbound emails we get ever actually convert into a YouTube ad. It's very small. Um, so one in 20 that we get an email from that says we want to sponsor you actually sponsors the channel. Part of that is because we don't have that much inventory. So luckily we have a lot more people wanting to sponsor than we have videos. But a big part of it is that a lot of stuff kind of just sucks and I don't want to accept it on Snazzi Labs. Now, in the beginning, it might be a little trickier because you won't have that huge influx of volume. Um, but I think staying true to your principles of doing what's right and respecting your audience will do really, really well for you. On the flip side, once you've contracted or you've done a deal with a brand and you publish it and your audience goes, whoa, we don't appreciate this. And it's happened to me before. Um, you kind of have to determine whether or not that's worth it to you and your personal kind of moral compass. There are a couple brands now that I honestly don't personally have an issue with because I felt like things that were not great did happen in the past, but they've made huge efforts to kind of correct that. They've hired uh new people, they've fired the people that were responsible for that stuff. But still, every time I make a video with that ad, they'll go, this company's evil. And then I'm I'm not gonna sit in the comments and go, no, you're actually wrong. They've changed a lot and it's much better. It's easier to just not do the ad because something else will come. And so, andor, you know, if if you think that it's it's something worth advertising, you like it, then you can go, Yeah, I don't care what you think, and here's why you're wrong, but just be ready to fight your audience. And I would generally recommend not fighting your audience.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

That almost never goes well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Yeah, yeah. So So uh yeah, I just pick your battles and choose wisely. And most importantly, and this is the thing that I would like to convey is just because you choose to forfeit an opportunity today doesn't mean there won't be one there tomorrow. You don't have to take everything because, well, what if it I if I don't get another? If you're doing the right things, more stuff will come.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Yeah. I think it's really important that what you just said there at the end. Um and it's the same way with videos too. Like if you put out a video, it doesn't do well, it's not necessarily the end of the world. Uh certainly the funny thing about YouTube is it in it's like life in a lot of ways, where um really it's more like a toxic relationship more than anything. Like one day you're the best thing in the world. You're you've won, you know, YouTube, you can see through the matrix. The very next day, no one likes you, you've been canceled. You're 10 of 10, you got zero views in the first three hours, like it's over for you. And it's such a weird roller coaster.

Mental Health And Comment Culture

SPEAKER_00 44:49

How do you how do you protect your your mental space from or do can you like have have you figured it out over all these years?

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah, I so on one hand, because I've been doing this for 17 years, almost nothing affects me anymore. I'm just kind of numb to it. I've been called every word in the book by everybody. Uh, however, I I do think that you should really only give time to the stuff that you know is true. The comments that really hurt are the ones that are mostly correct.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

That's where when you get real feedback from people saying, oh, you know, you weren't honest about this, or you weren't thorough in this test, even though you suggested that you were, or I expect better from you. Those are the ones that are often the hardest. And oftentimes those people, at least in tech, don't know how to deliver those comments very nicely. Um, but look at the intent of the comment. They're spending time leaving you feedback. They don't, they're not generally doing it just to be jerks. It's usually because they like your content, they've watched it, they have something to give you feedback on. And so you can choose to take it or not take it, but take the idea and the spirit of what the comment is trying to convey rather than the actual wording itself. And then for everything else, the stuff that's just mean, who cares? It's just some random person behind a computer. It doesn't matter, it doesn't make it true. And so, you know, don't give effort and and air time to stuff that doesn't benefit you. And so that would be my biggest advice. And then the second piece of advice is um engage with your audience. I don't I see a diminishing number of YouTubers that are large in scale that comment ever on their videos. Um, they don't talk to their audience, there's tons of comments, people meme in the comments, but like the the creators aren't there. And part of the problem or part of the reason why is if you're running a company and a YouTube channel that has, you know, 50 employees, you're probably not spending a bunch of time. You don't have a lot of time available to comment on stuff in your videos. On the flip side, I probably spent I spend at least five times as much uh of my time in the comments than I do in analytics every week because that's where I feel that I can get the most receptive feedback. I can look at the numbers and the numbers will tell me what is happening, but I think that the commenters often tell me why that's happening. And so listen to your community, engage with them, ask them questions. When they comment and they write a really nice comment, just respond, say thank you. I really appreciate that. And don't diminish that over time. I probably write, I don't know, 40 to 50 comments a week. And it's because I'm responding to the people that have messaged me. They're not commenting into the void, they're trying to talk to you. And so talk to them and let them know that you care. And even if you're not responding to a specific person, other people will see that, they will notice and they will appreciate that as well. And so that would be my advice. Don't lose sight of the people supporting your stuff and don't ignore them because they're there for a reason and you should give them the respect and appreciation that they deserve because they don't owe you anything.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

They don't have to watch your videos, they're choosing to. Exactly. They've chosen you. Give them the respect. Okay, final

Skiing Surprise And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 47:49

question. Uh, tell me something that most YouTube viewers about uh that watch your channel don't know. And I don't mean something like, oh, my middle name's Keith. I don't mean anything like that. I mean uh something that's a deep.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

I don't have a middle name.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Yeah, that's pretty big. Uh yeah, just uh just something that might be of interest that people maybe don't know about you.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

I mean, I don't talk about skiing very often. I'm a pretty avid skier. I haven't been in the last year because we had the worst winter we've had in um literally ever since the pioneers came to Utah where I live to settle the land 150 years ago. Uh but yeah, I love skiing. And so I spent a lot of my time doing that. And that was one of the reasons why I loved the flexibility of YouTube, is uh because it's not a typical nine to five. I work a nine to five, I have a team, but sometimes when you're, you know, when you're the boss and you don't have to work a nine to five, you come in at 11 or you leave at two one day and go, okay, I'm gonna work a little bit later because I want to go skiing right now. And that's one of the awesome things about kind of making it as it were on YouTube is for as much effort as you still need to continue to give it. And I probably work more than I would in a regular desk job. Boy, that flexibility is pretty fun. And I can go on vacation and I can, you know, travel and and I can ski whatever I want. So yeah, I love skiing.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Love that. Quinn from Snazzy Labs, thank you so much for joining us. If you're listening to the audio only podcast, there will be links in the show notes. Take it to the YouTube channel where you'll find everything in the description that you need to know. Of course, you can go over and check out Snazzy Labs and get your uh bit of information about any tech that you want. And I'll tell you right now, as someone who's been in the tech space for a couple years myself, uh, I go to to watch Snazzy Labs on things that I don't know about, which is ironically a lot. I'm I'm very I'm very dumb. Uh, I thank you for I don't know about that. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And if you want to see more, like I said, there'll be links in the description. And guess what? If you're listening to this audio podcast or on the video and you're on YouTube and you love this, hit that like button. I would love that if you did that. And there's a video right here you can watch with another interview. See y'all in the next one.