SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Hello folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not.

[00:00:03] Conor Brown: And I’m Conor Brown, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the creator economy and so much more.

[00:00:09] Jeff Sieh: Have you ever wondered why your YouTube channel isn’t growing the way you hoped? Maybe you catch yourself questioning what truly makes a video stand out, or maybe how some creators seem to break through while others stay stuck. If any of that feels familiar, well you’re in the right place. ’cause today we’re excited to welcome someone who’s built a thriving YouTube presence while helping countless entrepreneurs do the same.

[00:00:32] Jeff Sieh: Jerry Potter has grown multiple successful channels and teaches creators how to run their business in half the time without burning out. He’s gonna be sharing the strategies, his clarity, and the practical steps that actually move the needle. So sit back, clear your schedule, clear your mind to get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live.

[00:00:50] Jeff Sieh: Jerry, how you doing today, my friend?

[00:00:52] Jerry Potter: Good. I’m excited to be here. And yeah, YouTube has given me a business and a life that I never could have imagined. And so I’m kind of on a [00:01:00] mission now to make YouTube accessible for all business owners and marketers, no matter how busy they are. ’cause it sounds like a bigger project than I think that it needs to be.

[00:01:08] Jerry Potter: So I’m excited to, to dive into that today.

[00:01:11] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, so his channel is amazing and we’ll give you all that information. If you’re listening, it’ll be in the show notes, wherever you’re listening from. But before we get started, I want, you know, we’ve been doing this thing for all our guests where we have created an AI intro that we’re using. So without further ado, here is Jerry Potters theme song.

[00:01:26] Jerry Potter: That’s amazing.

[00:01:28] Jerry Potter: That guy’s better looking than me. He is got a stronger forehead and jaw than I do, but

[00:01:32] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, it’s, it’s so much fun. So, once again, thank you for being here, Jerry. I wanna do a, a really quick shout out to our friends who are sponsoring a show that is Ecamm. You can find out more about them at Ecamm dot com slash jeff.

[00:01:43] Jeff Sieh: And by the way, they’ve also got an amazing thing coming up in the uk.

[00:01:47] Jeff Sieh: They have Creator Camp coming up April 23rd through the 24th in the beautiful uk. You can find out more about that by going to Tube fest.co.uk/creator-camp. They made it so easy for [00:02:00] me to say. just go there, with that link that you see in the show notes are on the screen. And you can find out more about that, their creator camp coming up in the United Kingdom.

[00:02:09] Jeff Sieh: Alright, so let’s get going. Uh, we’ve got so many questions coming on and as we go today, I, I wanna ask the audience this before we kind of jump in with Jerry. I wanna know if you’re just starting a YouTube channel or you have one for a while, what’s the kind of your avatar, the one specific person that you would make this for, for your next eight videos?

[00:02:26] Jeff Sieh: I want you guys to be thinking about that today as we jump in, because we’re gonna be talking about how to grow a YouTube channel or maybe if you’re stuck. So I just wanted to jump in right away, Jerry, and say, you’ve shown that, you know, YouTube now recommends small channels. You said this I think on a couple of your, your videos I just watched.

[00:02:45] Jeff Sieh: they’re, they’re showing these small channels more than ever, largely because AI helps YouTube understand those videos. For a frustrated creator with a stalled channel, what’s the first signal they should be sending YouTube to start getting recommended again?

[00:02:59] Jerry Potter: [00:03:00] Yeah. Well, and I don’t just say that to give people hope, although I think hope is important as well. you know, if you don’t believe something’s gonna work, it’s probably not gonna work. But yeah, the biggest change over the last couple of years is, you know, we have always thought of YouTube as a search engine.

[00:03:14] Jerry Potter: And when I worked at an agency and when I first started teaching marketing to other people, I’d say, oh, YouTube’s not a social media network. It is a search engine. People go on there, they search for their problems. But as the years have gone on, a couple of things have happened. One, fewer views are coming from search.

[00:03:28] Jerry Potter: So the, you know, at first it was like, oh, 40% of views come from search. Then I heard 30, and you know, earlier this year I heard somebody say, only 20% of views are coming from search. So if you use YouTube as a search engine, you’re probably going where, where are the views coming from? Right. But as you mentioned, the algorithm has gotten really, really smart.

[00:03:44] Jerry Potter: So YouTube’s goal from day one has always been to show the right video to the right person at the right time. So when Conor signs in, they want literally for him to have a screen full of videos that are, you know, all Disney or they’re all something where Conor goes, [00:04:00] oh my gosh, which one do I wanna watch first?

[00:04:02] Jerry Potter: That’s the goal. And it didn’t used to be as good at matching those up. So they relied on titles, keywords, tags, you know, what was in your description, all of these other things. As it got smarter over the years, it started to be able to hear what we said in the videos. Even if you didn’t upload a transcript, it generated its own transcript.

[00:04:20] Jerry Potter: But now, and if you use like, you know, Google’s Notebook LM you can see what it’ll tell you about a video without even watching it. It knows what you say in the video, what you’re wearing, what’s in the background, how many people they are there, what cultures are mentioned, the nuance, emotion, you know, all of these other things.

[00:04:38] Jerry Potter: So. You could keyword stuff all you want, it’s not gonna be good enough because the algorithm is smarter than us at knowing exactly what our video is and who it’s for. And so if you’re feeling stuck, the first step is you essentially want to retrain the YouTube algorithm who your videos are for. And I sort of discovered this by accident a couple years ago.

[00:04:59] Jerry Potter: My [00:05:00] channel was originally called Five Minute Social Media, and I was teaching Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok when it came along. I had some Snapchat marketing tutorials back in the day when we thought that was gonna be a really relevant, you know, platform for a local business. And, you know, in that time, you know, it was more search based.

[00:05:16] Jerry Potter: 95% of my views were coming from search from new viewers, which was great, but. All of a sudden I wanted to help people with podcasting, as well as podcasting, got bigger on YouTube, and we could do this video podcast and then turn it into shorts and reels and all this stuff. I used my background in radio and TV to come up with this system on how to design a show that you could turn into all your social media content.

[00:05:36] Jerry Potter: So it was still for small business owners, still related to social media. I had no online presence for it. I was helping private clients, so I decided to publish. At the time, I think I did 10 videos in a row on YouTube, all about how to start a podcast, how to start a podcast, the essential first step, how to pick your gear, how to pick a background, if you know that looks okay on camera.

[00:05:57] Jerry Potter: Just all, you know, all of the different things. [00:06:00] I launched a podcast program and within 30 days somebody signed up for the program and I said, Hey, how’d you hear about me? And he said, oh, I googled how to start a podcast, or I searched on YouTube for how to start a podcast. I forget which. But both of those were happening.

[00:06:14] Jerry Potter: And within 60 days, almost every person who joined the program had searched for how to start a podcast within the last 10 days and then come in and bought this a thousand dollars program. So basically I went, you know, like what happened here? And the algorithm relearned who I was trying to target, and all of a sudden whether people were searching or they just had showed interest in podcasting, I was showing up for them.

[00:06:36] Jerry Potter: And so that was that first like instinct. So the short version of this is to train the algorithm. I suggest making like eight to 10 videos in a row. I call it your magnetic eight, but eight videos in a row helping the same person solve the same problem once upon a time. These variety channels did well, they still can, but I think they’re harder to establish.

[00:06:57] Jerry Potter: But if you are. Basically niching down so [00:07:00] far that you’re helping one person with one thing. Then YouTube understands it faster, and that’s how you can start getting your videos in front of people faster.

[00:07:07] Conor Brown: So Jerry. That dovetails perfectly into this next sort of thing. And even in the comments, Quila is, is interested in watching because they were thinking of tossing everything out and starting a new channel just this morning because her page feels so stuck, uh, faceless page with almost 800 subs in less than two weeks.

[00:07:26] Conor Brown: And the question that I have kind of related to that, and a little bit, what you already talked about, Jerry, is, you know, you talk about how creators can confuse the algorithm, right? By posting too many different topics, right? You just said it yourself, you know, eight videos in a row on one topic that’s really, really specific.

[00:07:45] Conor Brown: People are just kind of posting stuff all over that they think are related, but in reality aren’t. So how can a business owner really identify, you know, whether their channel is starting to send those mixed signals, like too many different [00:08:00] types of content, too many different topics that they’re talking about, and what steps can they take to just fix their channel without having to go back and just start deleting old videos?

[00:08:09] Jerry Potter: It is, it starts with research, just like anything. And I will say like this magnetic eight, you know, if somebody comes to me and they have an existing channel and it’s stalled out, it’s not working, this is the first thing we do. And if somebody comes to me and say, I wanna launch a new channel, this is the first thing we do.

[00:08:23] Jerry Potter: So it’s one of those things where I know, you know, once you’ve invested time in something, you’ve got that sunk cost bias. And you’re like, well, I don’t want, I don’t want the new channel strategy, I want the existing channel strategy. But it really is the same. We’re almost kind of starting over. And so.

[00:08:37] Jerry Potter: The first step is to do research. The great news is now with AI is not hard to do at all. And so basically go into ChatGPT or Gemini or any of the platforms that have a deep research function. And if you’re not familiar, this is where it’ll go out and it’ll scour the internet in whatever way you want for five to 30 minutes.

[00:08:56] Jerry Potter: Or I’ve heard some people have it go hours and [00:09:00] essentially find out what is being said. And so you would go in there and you would tell ChatGPT about your business and you would wanna find out what are the most asked questions around this, where are people getting stuck? And it’ll come back and give you this incredible report, depending on exactly the prompt you put in, but this incredible report based on exactly, you know, what you’ve told it to be.

[00:09:23] Jerry Potter: And you’ll see what the most asked questions are. That’s where you want to start. The second part of the magnetic eight though, is to literally choose the questions that are keeping people up at. and, and that’s, you know, theoretically keeping them up at night. Some people are heavy sleepers, but the goal on YouTube is to show up on the homepage, to show up in the feed, to show up in suggested in the sidebar, different places like that where somebody sees it, catches their eye and they go, oh yeah, I’ve gotta look at that right now.

[00:09:51] Jerry Potter: And so. To give you an example with, YouTube, you know, when I did my Magnetic eight to again, you know, retrain the channel, it wasn’t like how to set up [00:10:00] a YouTube channel because somebody might be thinking, oh, I, I might, I might be thinking about that, right? So maybe they’ll click on that. But if you’re magnetic eight, you want it to be things that are along the lines of, of, you know, why am I not getting more views?

[00:10:11] Jerry Potter: For example, with YouTube, that’s a question that comes up a lot. or, if you were teaching, starting on YouTube, it might be a slightly different path, but it’s like, do I need expensive equipment or can I just film with my phone? So you’re gonna identify those questions that The ones that people are sort of obsessing over and they’re always going in the back of their minds, not the ones that they’re like, oh, I wanna look that up eventually, so that you get that click when they first show up.

[00:10:35] Jerry Potter: And so again, with ai, we can do the deep research. And by the way, you ask the AI where to go, Reddit is incredible because they’re all these public forums. You can search Quora, public Facebook groups. And another tip, when you’re crafting your prompt, depending on your industry, if stuff changes a lot, ask it to only get things from the last six months.

[00:10:52] Jerry Potter: If you’re in, you know, a space where nothing’s changed in 10 years, then you can go back further and more. Data is better.

[00:10:58] Conor Brown: I do something like that [00:11:00] for generating new content. I love deep research. I love asking the models. Find me questions people are asking, and just like you’re saying, Jerry, I say search Reddit, search, you know, video comments, search public forums, all those things.

[00:11:13] Conor Brown: I also ask it and then find the questions that are being asked, but aren’t being answered by my competitors. Is, is that something where you want to do this competitor analysis, like right up front, or is it more just about finding the questions that are being asked and, and go from there? Because I know there’s a lot of videos on YouTube, right?

[00:11:35] Conor Brown: So how do you set yourself apart from those questions if everyone’s asking them already?

[00:11:39] Jerry Potter: Yeah. Well, how do you set yourself apart as a separate question? And we can certainly talk about that. But for a long time, the strategy on YouTube was to do your keyword research, find the questions that people were asking, and in those questions, find the ones that your competitors were not covering or ask them in a different way, right?

[00:11:55] Jerry Potter: That’s when it was keywords. But YouTube learns synonyms. So now [00:12:00] it doesn’t matter if it’s how to start a podcast, how to create a podcast, how to make a podcast. Like, you know, that part is of YouTube is, is dying or, or maybe gone at this point. And so, You can certainly take that extra step and find out what’s not being answered.

[00:12:14] Jerry Potter: But with your Magnetic eight, you aren’t looking to find the like random questions that are only a few people are asking. You really want to try and be answering the biggest questions. The goal of your Magnetic eight is that if somebody finds your channel, they land on your homepage and they, or your channel page, and they literally go, oh gosh, which one should I, which one should I watch first?

[00:12:38] Jerry Potter: Because I’ve been wondering about all these, right? It’s not a series, it’s not part one through eight. Every video stand on its own, but that’s the feeling you want from them. And so if you start doing something really obscure, and don’t get me wrong, there’s power in obscure. I have a few videos that are the biggest in the history of my channel because nobody else has answered those questions.

[00:12:56] Jerry Potter: But I think for the magnetic eight, you just want it to feel very pure for [00:13:00] what that person is thinking about, or the majority of the people in that niche are thinking about.

[00:13:04] Jeff Sieh: So if, if I’m hearing you right, Jerry, you, you don’t need to be so concerned about finding that question that nobody’s ever asked. It’s you want to make sure your video is answering a question that a lot of people have. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

[00:13:16] Jerry Potter: Yes. And, and this, this is, this is new and this is recent. The, the, the downside of YouTube’s algorithm getting smart is I used to be able to go out and find a way to title my video that nobody else had titled, but still matched up with what people are searching for. And I pretty much knew it was gonna work, right?

[00:13:33] Jerry Potter: Like once my channel was established, not in the first six months. And it was really fun, but that’s just not the case anymore. But at the same time, when I was doing podcasts, I had a company say, Hey, we want you to make an in-depth podcast tutorial. We wanna sponsor you. And it was this 25 minute video.

[00:13:48] Jerry Potter: This was after this, this, the individual videos I did about how to start a podcast. How to start a podcast was crazy high search, crazy high competition. But. Because I made a good [00:14:00] video, but also because it appealed to what people were looking for. YouTube was able to match it up and it’s done really well.

[00:14:05] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. That’s really fascinating. And this is what’s so cool about having amazing guests like Jerry on, is like the new stuff that’s happened, not just the things that all the gurus have always said, but you get people in the trenches. Like, Jerry, I, I love this stuff. So, we got some great, questions, comments from our studio audience.

[00:14:20] Jeff Sieh: Oh, Jerry, are you gonna say something? Go ahead.

[00:14:21] Jerry Potter: Lemme just add one more thing too to to to what Conor was saying. If you have the time and for other videos, if you can find the questions that people are asking and not being answered, then that’s still a valid strategy. But, you know, my main thing is helping entrepreneurs do this in 90 minutes a week.

[00:14:36] Jerry Potter: So we look a lot at ROE return on effort, and so you know, some of those things that could be helpful. We, you know, we kind of go, well, yeah, if you wanna go back and spend 20 hours a week on your channel, you can do that, but it doesn’t fit into the 90 minute or the two hour container.

[00:14:50] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool. a couple, um, comments real quick. this is, Dustin’s talking about Conor’s question. He says,

[00:14:56] Jeff Sieh: you can ask that question, but it’s unlikely to produce real results. The degree of [00:15:00] nuance needed to find questions my competitors aren’t answered is too deep for most models. That is great to know. and he goes Also, when doing deep research with ai, you have to think about how many layers of research is needed and whether or not that is possible.

[00:15:14] Jeff Sieh: Most deep reach search can perform two to three queries max. So once again, hang out with Dustin, go to his Facebook group. He’s got a ton of great stuff there. I do wanna bring up, Ralph’s question. He goes, for my weekly sermon show, I will hit a hundred K subs in the next day or so. I have been spending some money.

[00:15:33] Jeff Sieh: That’s amazing. Ralph, by the

[00:15:34] Jeff Sieh: way. Yeah. Spending some money to boost this and it’s grown this in 30 days. I also use Vid iq. Any other ideas? ’cause I think if you’re boosting it, that doesn’t count towards your watch hours for getting monetized or, I’m, I’m trying, I can’t remember exactly what it is, but I’m sure Jerry knows.

[00:15:53] Jeff Sieh: But what other things would you tell Ralph to do?

[00:15:56] Jerry Potter: Well, he, it sounds like he’s already monetized if he’s

[00:15:58] Jerry Potter: approaching a hundred thousand. [00:16:00] But as far as, the boosting goes that, and, and people haven’t seen, kind of like Facebook has always had this boost button. YouTube now has a promote button and you can essentially, without learning the Google Ads interface, promote your videos.

[00:16:11] Jerry Potter: I’ve been looking for more people to talk about this because the unspoken truth of YouTube for years has been if you run ads on your channel, it’ll kill your organic reach. YouTube actually just came out about two weeks ago and said, Hey. That’s not true. They each run separately. But anecdotally, a lot of people have experienced that over the years.

[00:16:30] Jerry Potter: At the same time, I’m, sometimes I’m like, man, if I could, you know, I would be happy to throw a hundred dollars behind this video because I know I get 5% of the views turn into leads for me, you know, good warm leads. So that’s interesting to hear. I think there’s, you know, definitely possibilities for more experimentation, with the promote button.

[00:16:45] Jerry Potter: But I’ve been, because I’ve got this organic thing going, I’ve been hesitant. about starting a new channel before the end of the year. And, and maybe I’ll play with it there regarding, uh, vid iq, I mean, of all the tools out there, I, I was a longtime tube buddy user and Tube buddy does a lot of great [00:17:00] stuff, but I signed up for Vid IQ a few months ago and they have advanced so far with, AI and different things like that.

[00:17:06] Jerry Potter: So it is, it really has become a powerful tool. They’ve even got the opus clip thing built in now where it’ll take your long form video and chop it into like shorts and reels. And I ran one the other day just to see, and the first one I clicked on, I was like, this is not too bad. So

[00:17:21] Jeff Sieh: Yeah,

[00:17:22] Jerry Potter: it’s become a great tool.

[00:17:22] Jerry Potter: Yeah,

[00:17:23] Jeff Sieh: that’s interesting. ’cause a lot of times there was still a lot of work that I found with all those AI clippers kind of thing. And so it wasn’t worth it in the long run for me ’cause it didn’t really save me time. But they keep getting better and that’s not gonna last for, for long. I have a feeling.

[00:17:36] Jeff Sieh: So I,

[00:17:37] Jerry Potter: exactly.

[00:17:38] Jeff Sieh: and then, Ralph has a follow up. I just wanted to pull up. He has, he’s not monetized yet, which stinks. and he’s, he says, to be honest, I’ve been spending about $200 a week to get his

[00:17:46] Jerry Potter: Oh wow. Okay.

[00:17:47] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So, he’s, he’s an accountant. Like he’ll write it off I’m sure. So there he. So, no, Ralph’s, Ralph’s a great guy and I appreciate Ralph, you asking the questions and being transparent on there.

[00:17:58] Jeff Sieh: So, I wanted to ask this [00:18:00] question. It kind of ties into all this stuff that we’ve been asking questions about, but you, you’ve said in your videos that relevancy is the, is the real driver behind getting clicks, and that’s what we want. We want clicks. So how can a local business or maybe somebody like Ralph or a small brand add relevancy without jumping on the trends or constantly rerecording tutorials every time something changes?

[00:18:22] Jeff Sieh: Listen, I’ve done Descript tutorials. They change like every

[00:18:26] Jerry Potter: Oh my God.

[00:18:26] Jeff Sieh: It’s just, it’s so hard. So how can, uh, we, we be relevant without, you know, jumping on every trend and having to redo stuff all the time?

[00:18:36] Jerry Potter: Yeah, so relevancy, the way that I talk about it, and there’s a, a video on my channel about this. originally when I, I started my channel in 2017, and then at the beginning of 2018 I was like. People looking for social media tutorials are looking for the latest version. So I just started putting 2018 at the end of everything and that’s when my channel took off.

[00:18:52] Jerry Potter: But it doesn’t always have to be dates, relevancy is anything that’s just gonna help you win the click. And so it can just be little [00:19:00] psychological triggers, like latest update, newest version. Even if it’s not, if all of the results when somebody searches or it’s in their feed, don’t say that and yours does.

[00:19:09] Jerry Potter: It’s more relevant. it can be for solopreneurs, it can be for busy professionals, you know, so sometimes just calling out. The niche or the, the audience of who it’s for all of a sudden that is more relevant to them. So relevancy isn’t always topical, so I don’t want to think of, I don’t want you to think about relevancy as topical.

[00:19:27] Jerry Potter: It can just simply be anything that makes that video look more relevant to whoever the viewer is. So there’s just, there’s a lot of little things you can do about that. It definitely doesn’t have to be, you know, December, 2025 update, um, all the time. But I do have tutorials that I’ve just changed the year on every year, and they just keep getting more views.

[00:19:47] Jerry Potter: I never say the year in my video, I’ll just change the title and sometimes the thumbnail, I have a reminder that pops up in January. It’s like, switch everything over.

[00:19:55] Jeff Sieh: So just real quick follow up Conor, before your question is, the, [00:20:00] is change does changing titles. If you have one that’s ’cause we’re talking about being stagnant or your YouTube’s not growing. If you put a video out there and it’s just not working, or you’re getting, you think you need more clicks than, you know, compared to your other videos.

[00:20:12] Jeff Sieh: Does the title changing actually make that big a difference,

[00:20:15] Conor Brown: And also the flip side of that too, if it’s performing well and you, you change it like from 2024 to 2025 or whatever, can that impact it?

[00:20:23] Jerry Potter: Yeah, so changing titles can impact both ways as long as the video is still getting impressions. So the basic cycle of YouTube analytics. So when I work with people on analytics and they’re like, what do I do with all these numbers? And it’s like, there’s just four. We just need to look at four of them. first, a video gets an impression that means that it shows up on a search page in the sidebar, in recommended on the homepage, something like that.

[00:20:45] Jerry Potter: So that means it shows up for somebody. Then if somebody clicks, that’s your CTR or your click-through rate. And then if they watch a certain amount, that’s your average view. Duration or watch time. And as long as those things keep happening, YouTube will [00:21:00] keep giving it more impressions. So it’s just this loop that keeps happening over and over again.

[00:21:05] Jerry Potter: So if your video’s still getting impressions, but it’s not performing well, then updating your thumbnail. Or title can absolutely help change it. I’ve seen, people talk about this where maybe they release a video, and this is where maybe you have an established audience, you release a video with a certain title and thumbnail that appeals to your established audience, does really well, you know, maybe it’s a little bit more personal, like, here’s my thoughts on, or something like that.

[00:21:29] Jerry Potter: And then it starts to taper off, and then they reoptimize it by changing the title and or the thumbnail. For a mass appeal audience, as long as it’s still getting impressions, it’ll, it can take off. So, again, YouTube shows, it gives it an impression. If as long as people are clicking on it, you know, and watching it, then they’ll keep giving it more impression.

[00:21:46] Jerry Potter: So the, the main thing is, you know, your thumbnails. What gets people to usually click along with the title. it’s very good practice again, if you make the time for it to go back and change out thumbnails that are underperforming compared to the rest of your [00:22:00] channel.

[00:22:00] Jeff Sieh: Awesome.

[00:22:00] Jerry Potter: So,

[00:22:01] Conor Brown: I love that. Just creating a reminder for yourself too, like make it easy, you know, just set that and, and have it be future used problem. You mentioned retention and we were talking about boosting posts. And Tate, AKA Sean, he says, so he stopped paying to promote his videos on YouTube because his retention percentage was so low, he stopped it.

[00:22:22] Conor Brown: Retention went from 2% to 15%. So I think that kind of promotion thing, I think there’s, there’s a lot still going on with that. Maurice asks a question, which we kind of touched on a little bit. they say what, which is better between two Buddy and Vid iq. I know, Jerry, you were talking about how you love using Vid IQ now, but for someone who’s just starting out, I’ll kinda reframe the question.

[00:22:48] Conor Brown: Which one do you think they should go with?

[00:22:50] Jerry Potter: You know, I recommended TubeBuddy for years. It’s what I started out with. I have and pay for both of them right now. I can promise you that they’re all, they’re both running their cheapest rates of the year [00:23:00] right now too, for Black Friday, cyber Monday. But I think, TubeBuddy got bought by another company a couple of years ago and they’ve been announcing more stuff coming.

[00:23:09] Jerry Potter: But Vid IQ has taken advantage of the AI revolution and they’ve really evolved it quite a bit. So anyone who came to me now and said, Hey, where do I start? I would point ’em to, to Vid iq.

[00:23:19] Conor Brown: Love it. That’s awesome. when it comes to, you know. What a creator wants to create content for. I think a lot of creators often say, you know, what’s a need based topic versus a want based topic title, right? Like, how can and can a creator kind of come up with, appealing right to the person that they’re, they’re talking to, or they want to talk to their ideal client, How, how do people go about just coming up with good titles, good hooks, those sorts of things that can increase what you were talking about, Jerry, the click through and then the retention.

[00:23:51] Jerry Potter: This is that area where our expertise hurts us a lot. You know, because sometimes we’re stubborn and, and we’re like, no, this is what they need. I’m gonna [00:24:00] put out what they need. But if you put out what somebody needs, then nobody is going to click on it because they don’t know that they need that yet. And so that’s why we have to flip that around and figure out what they want.

[00:24:12] Jerry Potter: And so whether you’re doing research, whether it’s, you know, using AI or you know, doing basic searches on YouTube or talking to your clients and customers, that’s where we really wanna find out what are those things they’re already thinking about and worrying about. That’s what you have to build your titles and thumbnails around.

[00:24:26] Jerry Potter: And then within that video you can tell them. You know more about what you actually need. So for example, you know, we brought up this video about adding relevancy to your titles. That video when I was working on it was called, how to make, your Videos Seem More Relevant or something like that.

[00:24:45] Jerry Potter: But that’s not somebody that the average person is sitting around going, oh, I, I need to make my videos more relevant, right? So the, the, I forget exactly, but I think the title I ended up with was this Easy Title Trick Blew Up My Channel or something like that, because that’s what they want. They want to blow up [00:25:00] their channel.

[00:25:00] Jerry Potter: A lot of people don’t even want better titles, right? Like, that’s still not what they want, might be what they need to blow up their channel. So, so always start with the want and then see how you can tie it back to whatever it is that you teach or you help people with on the backend. But if it’s not the thing they’re already thinking about and looking for, you’re not gonna get any traction anywhere, no matter how good the video is.

[00:25:22] Jeff Sieh: Wow, there’s so many great, already so many in the first section, you know, was so many great, moments from Jerry, by the way. I want you guys to know, and I usually save this till the end, but I wanna make sure that we get plenty of time. If you wanna find out more about Jerry Potter, make sure you go to done by lunch.co.

[00:25:37] Jeff Sieh: That’s done by lunch.co. And he’s got this great,resource that you guys can. get, it’s YT 90 roadmap.com, so YT 90 roadmap.com. Jerry, can you tell people what exactly that is and why somebody should sign up for that?

[00:25:53] Jerry Potter: Yeah, so YT 90 is, is my system for growing a channel in 90 minutes a week. And for years I would talk to [00:26:00] friends and other smart business owners and they’re like, I don’t have time for YouTube yet. I’m, you know, next year, you know, 20 26, 20 27. you know, I got a message yesterday, Hey, I’m planning to start a channel in May.

[00:26:10] Jerry Potter: and so people are always putting YouTube in the future and not starting. And so this year, well, first of all, when I started my channel, I had a full-time job at an agency that was not a just 40 hours a week kind of job. I had two kids under eight. My wife worked evenings, so I was single dad in the evenings.

[00:26:26] Jerry Potter: Like, it was not like, it wasn’t like I have all this time and I wasn’t willing to give up time with my family to, you know, do this YouTube thing. Now we have AI and as well, and smaller channels are growing faster. So this year I started saying to people like, what if you could do it in three hours a week?

[00:26:42] Jerry Potter: Well, no, I don’t have time. What if you could do it two hours a week? Ah, what if you could do it 90 minutes a week? And that was the moment that people sort of like leaned in and they were like. Tell me more, you know? And so now I’ve kind of made it my mission to make YouTube accessible for business owners no matter how busy they are now.

[00:26:57] Jerry Potter: And so what I’ve spent months developing [00:27:00] this year is the YT 90 system. And so if you go to yt 90 roadmap.com, you will basically get the overview of here’s how to grow a channel in 90 minutes a week. And I’ll tell you that, some of the stuff that’s in there, we talked about today, like the magnetic eight.

[00:27:15] Jerry Potter: but then there’s also more about, you know, making editing easier, what to focus on, what not to focus on, because that’s a big thing. As I mentioned earlier, if you’ve got 10 hours a week, it’s a different strategy than if you’ve got 90 minutes to two hours a week.

[00:27:27] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So I wanted to give you guys, I mean, you know, usually we wait till the end for this, but I wanna give it to you now because I like, this is such a good resource that I wanna make sure you guys check it out. So, yt 90 roadmap.com. Make sure you check it out. As you can tell, Jerry knows his stuff. So we’re gonna, continue on to, editing videos.

[00:27:45] Jeff Sieh: ’cause this is something a lot of people struggle with. So I wanna ask you the audience, if you could only automate or simplify one step. In your editing process, what would that be? So if you could snap your finger fingers and make something super [00:28:00] easy in your editing process, I wanna know what that is.

[00:28:02] Jeff Sieh: Drop it down below, wherever you’re watching from, because I think that would be really good to share with the group. So, talking about editing, you have a really cool framework that I think it was like two or three videos ago, you talked about decisions versus actions kind of framework. And I really, really like this because it reminded me of the thing they call the Hemingway Bridge, which if you’re a writer, you never just stop writing, you kind of leave yourself for the next day, or when you’re gonna jump into it, you’re gonna write half a chapter or a half a paragraph so you don’t start cold the next time.

[00:28:32] Jeff Sieh: And it really reminded me of that, the decisions versus actions framework you talk about. So how can creators apply this process that you’ve come up with, even if they feel overwhelmed or disorganized before they start the editing process?

[00:28:46] Jerry Potter: So I learned this this year and I’d heard it before, but didn’t really know how to apply it. I was, I had a, a YouTube program before the one I had now, and it was your traditional course. Come watch all these videos, launch your channel. people finished it, like the [00:29:00] retention or the, the, the, you know, the completion rate was really good.

[00:29:02] Jerry Potter: the reviews were great. People wanted to recommend it to people. And then I would say, well, did you, how many videos have you published? And they’d go, oh, I haven’t done that yet. I haven’t published any videos yet. And so I, another thing I spent some time focusing on this year was figuring out why.

[00:29:14] Jerry Potter: So I went back and I interviewed some of the students. I studied the psychology of learning and different things like that. And something actually one of my students mentioned was that when we make decisions, we use one part of our brain and we make, take action. We use a different part of our brain.

[00:29:30] Jerry Potter: So everything we do is a decision or an action. And so. Once she said that, I looked at my program and it was happening over and over again where I would ask somebody to make a decision and take an action at the same time. So for example, we would decide on what’s your channel messaging and have you create the banner and update the description and all of that, like in one setting, right?

[00:29:49] Jerry Potter: It was the same module and it was overwhelming and people got stuck. So now I encourage people to separate decisions and action. So in my program, we have decision weeks and we have action weeks. So we don’t do those [00:30:00] things at the same time. And I started applying it to my video editing when we edit videos.

[00:30:04] Jerry Potter: The reason it takes so long is because we’re constantly making all of these decisions as we go through, should I keep this, should I cut it out? Should I have B roll here or not? Which B roll should I use? Different things like that. So what I encourage people to do now, and I describe this as the, the real key to editing faster, and it’s not AI is basically write yourself.

[00:30:24] Jerry Potter: Instructions for how you’re gonna edit your videos ahead of time, once almost like you’re writing instructions for someone else to follow and make all the decisions. So I’m gonna remove all my screw ups, obviously. I’m gonna take out the big gaps where I lost my thought and I looked at the ceiling while I tried to figure out what I was gonna say next.

[00:30:41] Jerry Potter: I’m going to add a title slide at the beginning, and then I’m gonna add a banner at the bottom for each key point I make. For example, kind of like you’re doing live here, you know, for this, Jeff, for people watching on the video. But decide that ahead of time. And then when you actually go and edit your video, all the decisions are been made, have been made, and you’re just [00:31:00] following the list.

[00:31:01] Jerry Potter: And it can be, you know, even if it is B roll, it can be add one B roll clip every 30 seconds. Do not spend more than 20 seconds choosing the clip. you know, like if you choose more, you spend more than 20 seconds choosing the clip, you know, go with whatever you got and move on. So when you remove the decisions from editing, it goes so much faster.

[00:31:20] Jeff Sieh: That is so genius, so genius.

[00:31:22] Conor Brown: And I think our friend Tater Sean can really take that to heart. ’cause he says, I am a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to video. Wish I had someone on my shoulder telling me what to get rid of. And of course I think that that also eats into the time, right? So, Sean, if you do this, if you lay out what exactly you wanna be, you don’t have to listen to anyone on your shoulder, you just focus right there on your, uh, uh, perfect.

[00:31:47] Conor Brown: SOP. It’s almost like an individual personal SOP for you. Jerry, you talked a lot about, documenting dozens of these editing tips that weren’t just about using ai, right? That [00:32:00] still had like the human touch for, for people, for creators who I think, feel pressured to maybe adopt every new AI tool.

[00:32:08] Conor Brown: We probably are enablers, Jeff, if, if we’re thinking about it,

[00:32:12] Conor Brown: we clearly. Bring up every new AI tool and tell people they gotta use that, but you don’t, right? You, you need to be a little bit choosy with the tools that, that you use. How would you suggest creators, using AI tools and, and then also deciding when to just go the old school human method that, might be a little bit faster even.

[00:32:33] Jerry Potter: I went to Vid Summit at the YouTube conference, last month, and I walked around asking people, Hey, what’s your tip for editing videos faster? And nobody brought up AI stuff, which kind of surprised me. but I think, you know, the key here is this is the way I look at it with all the AI stuff. ’cause nobody’s not overwhelmed, right?

[00:32:49] Jerry Potter: We’re all overwhelmed. So know that that’s normal, but as you’re looking at the stuff, don’t look at things unless they solve a problem that you are currently having. So that’s one thing. [00:33:00] I think we spend too much time trying to fix things that aren’t broken in our video editing or in our business or whatever.

[00:33:05] Jerry Potter: And it’s, it’s, and I’m just as guilty as anybody, right? It’s like shiny object. Oh my gosh, this is, you know, so if you are literally struggling to. Figure out what to cut outta your videos as Tater said, right? Like what do I, what do I cut outta my videos? And then somebody advertises an AI tool to do that.

[00:33:22] Jerry Potter: Then maybe you take a second to look at that because you know, if you didn’t spend two hours trying to decide what to cut, because obviously everything you make and everything comes outta your mouth is gold, then you know you would, would be a massive time saver by the way you can. What I do is I ask ChatGPT to, I’ll paste my transcript in and I’ll say, Hey, what’s gonna hurt my retention?

[00:33:40] Jerry Potter: What’s not necessary for the overall vision of this video? and it’s. Brutally awesome. You know, again, when it’s your baby, you’re like, you should take this out. You don’t need it. I’m like, oh, but that part was so good. I like that part, you know, and you can agree or disagree with it, but, but that’s how I look at these AI tools.

[00:33:56] Jerry Potter: If it’s not solving a problem that I have, then it’s not worth [00:34:00] looking at right now. It’ll be there later. Because when you try and fix things that aren’t real problems, maybe it gets five to 10% better. But if you try and fix things that are problems, then you can have a huge jump in improvement of quality or time spent or different things like that.

[00:34:15] Conor Brown: Jeff, I’m gonna be selfish again and ask another follow up. Here we go. That it is, it is editing adjacent, but I think probably even more important than editing, and that’s thumbnail creation. I feel like I’ve seen a million AI tools saying, we will give you the perfect thumbnail, or here’s our thumbnail pack of 75 thumbnails that, that you can use.

[00:34:38] Conor Brown: And it’s just a way to kind of make that process easier and quicker. Right. But sometimes like, does that work, does, does the template version of these viral thumbnails work or an AI tool to create thumbnails work? Like how do you go about thumbnail generation?

[00:34:55] Jerry Potter: Well, let me say first, I think we’re about 60 days away from, [00:35:00] if you have the right prompt, you’re gonna be able to go into Google’s nano banana and tell it what you want and it’s gonna be able to make it. they just released an update. Announce an update, I think earlier today about how keeping characters consistent.

[00:35:14] Jerry Potter: Through revisions and keeping the text consistent through revisions is now been fixed. So like the way they’re advertising is you literally go in and you’d be like, make me an infographic with this spreadsheet, and it’ll just, and it’ll just make it. So I think that’s where we’re going. But you know, anything that saves you time, like a template pack can be worth it.

[00:35:32] Jerry Potter: I think the best thing to do is try and come up with your own, you know, and I think it may be worth investing in a graphic designer if you don’t have even the canvas skills to do this. But come up with your own way that you want your thumbnails to look. I think putting faces on them and if it, and if it’s your, if you’re the presenter, putting your face on them is still really, really good.

[00:35:51] Jerry Potter: And then I, you know, it’s, it’s not even so much about the design so much, I think as putting, choosing what words you’re gonna put on there, what one to [00:36:00] four words will you put on there that will make somebody want to read the title. And then the last element that I think is really important, so we have face, we have teaser words, is something that makes them go.

[00:36:11] Jerry Potter: Like attracts the person so they know what that’s about. So almost all my thumbnails have a YouTube logo on them so that somebody goes, oh, this is about YouTube. when I was doing podcasting stuff, there was like a, a picture of a microphone on them so somebody would know that. So if your thumbnail is clever and curiosity inducing, but they don’t know that, even the general idea of what it’s about, that’s when I don’t think they work very well.

[00:36:31] Jerry Potter: I worked with one client where I was writing scripts and, and writing her thumbnails and she, lemme make sure I get this right. She teaches French to Swedish women. And so I wrote everything in English and then she used, and she used translation apps and to, to translate everything. ’cause she speaks all three languages.

[00:36:46] Jerry Potter: It was really fun. But for thumbnails, I’m like, all right, we can’t put any words on there in French because they don’t speak French yet. So how do we, like, how do we do this? So we ended up adding like an Eiffel Tower or a French flag or [00:37:00] something like that to each of the thumbnails to, again, this kind of comes back to relevancy, but when you’re trying to win the click, you want the person’s brain to go, oh, that’s my thing.

[00:37:08] Jerry Potter: You know? So if you’re an accountant, it might be a a dollar sign or a picture of a spreadsheet or you know, for the, you know, for the content creator’s, accountant, for example, that kind of thing.

[00:37:17] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. I showed you the animated version of the

[00:37:19] Jerry Potter: Yes.

[00:37:20] Jeff Sieh: it says, fix your channels, got the YouTube logo. Good, bad not, and it’s in my style for my channel. Is that

[00:37:26] Jerry Potter: Yeah. I think the first thing I would say, I think the, the general layout is good, right? You’ve got three words. You’ve got, you know, high contrast between the words and the background. You’ve got an expressive face. The main thing that I would say is wrong with this one is that it’s not specific enough.

[00:37:43] Jerry Potter: So fix your channel is kind of like, that, like that could be anybody and it could be nobody.

[00:37:50] Jerry Potter: So for the words for that, like if, let’s say it is the one for this, I might, have it be something like, These eight videos will give you more views or something like that. Like if you were gonna tease the [00:38:00] magnetic eight or, you know, if you had the YouTube logo on there, you might have something like your confusing YouTube’s algorithm.

[00:38:06] Jerry Potter: I know I’m going over my three to four word limit there, but, you know, if, if I had more time, I’d probably come up with something else. But you want them to, you know, you have the YouTube logo there, so they know it’s for them. You got the face. I actually like the wrench, the wrench and the, uh, the, even though I don’t have a cool flannel like that, the wrench and the flannel are kind of a fun, combination.

[00:38:23] Jerry Potter: But the words is the main thing. I think that could be improved where it would help somebody think, I haven’t seen this before. Yeah.

[00:38:28] Jeff Sieh: cause what I usually do is I tell like the, what the show’s about and then I say, I want what you should put on the, the thumbnail. Like gimme four words and that’s what AI helps a lot. But I really liked your idea of being more specific than what even ChatGPT gives you.

[00:38:42] Jerry Potter: And you could probably even ask it, which I will be doing now after this is saying like, how can I be more specific? Or I need to make it for 2025 or whatever. like you were saying, I think that’s really, really, interesting. Yeah. One, one of my favorite things real quick about thumbnails is if you can, and, and AI’s great at this, like if you can scan your [00:39:00] outline or if you write full scripts, I, I only do outlines, but scan your outline and look for something that could be visually represented, that would be weird. You know? So for example, if I was in the video, I was talking about, well, I, I could be the magnetic eight.

[00:39:16] Jerry Potter: And so on the cover I’m saying, here’s why you’re not getting more views on the, on the thumbnail, and I’m holding a gigantic magnet. Then the brain goes, what’s the magnet for? You know, or if I told a story that involved a lemon and I’m holding a lemon, you know, somebody’s like, wait, what does a lemon have to do with YouTube views?

[00:39:32] Jerry Potter: So that kind of stuff can work really well if you have it in your outlines.

[00:39:36] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. That’s a great, that’s a great advice. I do wanna pull up, this is a great question by, um, Ralph. really quick, he says, I have been told. that with YouTube, I should start with the title and the thumbnail and then build the episode around it. What are your thoughts about that, Jerry?

[00:39:51] Jerry Potter: I love this question. That is literally what almost everybody says, and I don’t know that it’s wrong. It’s probably smart because again, [00:40:00] nobody’s going to click on your video if your thumbnail and your title don’t make them want to click on your video. My brain just doesn’t work that way, and so I do it the opposite.

[00:40:10] Jerry Potter: I come up with the topic, I outline my video, then I decide on my title and my thumbnail. again. What everybody says is probably the best advice, unless your brain just doesn’t work that way. I’ve, I’m, I, sometimes I’ll try it, like sometimes I’ll try and come up with it that way, but I just find it slower and I’m trying to do things as efficiently as possible.

[00:40:29] Jerry Potter: So, I think whatever works for you. But I do think, I do think that’s strong advice if your brain works in that way. Of course now you can test up to three thumbnails and test up to three titles. So in that sense it is, you know, even harder then. ’cause it’s like, okay, I’m gonna come up with three titles and three thumbnails before I start.

[00:40:48] Jerry Potter: That’s just more friction. And so a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with are having trouble just getting the frigging videos out the door. And so we gotta remove our own roadblocks. So again, yeah, Ralph, do, do what works [00:41:00] best for you.

[00:41:00] Jeff Sieh: Very cool.

[00:41:01] Conor Brown: That’s awesome. I think, you know, another thing about getting stuff out the door as quickly as possible is we are also our own worst enemies. Like we were talking about with, with Tater, with Sean, especially when it comes to like over editing, right? We see these videos that are doing really, really, really well and they’re edited to the nines, right?

[00:41:22] Conor Brown: And we don’t realize, oh, it’s because. That creator has a team behind them because they’ve been doing it for years and years and years, and they’re a pro at it at this point, and they have a team of pros that are doing it. We don’t have time as entrepreneurs, as solopreneurs. We don’t have that time yet.

[00:41:37] Conor Brown: We still waste it over editing, trying to look perfect. So Jerry, how can creators and, and people who wanna post more on YouTube balance that balance being polished with editing less, like you’re talking about, and maybe it’s something like, you know, pausing more while while you’re filming or, uh, uh, letting some imperfections [00:42:00] on screen, right?

[00:42:00] Conor Brown: Like where is that balance of looking good, but then also editing less?

[00:42:05] Jerry Potter: So last year YouTube did this big study to find out what made people. satisfied watching videos and they didn’t ask people if you’ve ever done anything with market research and, you know, focus groups and things like that. It’s really hard to learn what people actually want. So they actually connected sensors to people’s brains and measured basically the pleasure centers of their brains while they were watching videos to figure out exactly what made them enjoy it.

[00:42:31] Jerry Potter: And the number one thing above everything else was some sort of emotional connection with the person on the screen or what was being said in the video. And so. When it comes to editing, the only time they found that fancier editing actually made a bigger impact on viewer satisfaction is when it increased the emotional connection with the person on the screen.

[00:42:54] Jerry Potter: So does music make a video more satisfying? Maybe if it adds more emotion. If it doesn’t, it’s [00:43:00] potentially a waste of time. Does B roll make the video on the screen more emotionally compelling? Maybe if it’s really showing something, but if it’s just filling time, like here’s somebody typing on their keyboard, so you’re not looking at my face the whole time, then no, it’s probably not worth it.

[00:43:16] Jerry Potter: So it was a really fascinating study, the way that I look at it and the way we talk about it with YT 90. Like if you’ve got YouTube 90 minutes a week, One, focus on what you’re saying in the video more than the way that you’re editing it, what you’re saying, adding the emotion to how you’re saying it.

[00:43:30] Jerry Potter: Like if you are teaching something, explaining, or at least insinuating the stakes there, if you get this right, here’s how great it is. If you get it wrong, here’s how terrible this is. That’s emotional connection. So focus on that. And then when you are editing, you know, if you can just get out the, the mistakes and the pauses, add a few visuals that help the viewer follow what you’re saying.

[00:43:55] Jerry Potter: Because a lot of people listen to YouTube, right? They have it open in another tab. So that’s why I think, you know, [00:44:00] banners and titles can help them kind of follow along. Then I think that’s a great minimum and I would rather produce more videos at that level than. Fewer that had, you know, sound effects and flashing graphics and you know, things like that.

[00:44:14] Jerry Potter: the other thing we’re seeing a lot, and this is a huge like conflict right now. I was exchanging messages with a potential client yesterday and she was like, I’m so confused. Half the people are saying I have to have fancy editing to hold everyone’s attention. And then half people are saying, let it breathe.

[00:44:27] Jerry Potter: No editing is necessary. And what’s happening right now is TV viewing of YouTube videos is skyrocketing. I’m in a community where some people are getting 95% of their views from tv. I’m at 5%. Like people are watching my tutorials or watching on their phone or their computer. So it’s not for everybody.

[00:44:44] Jerry Potter: You can see this in your analytics, so right now we’re going through this shift, but people are. Looking sometimes to slow down, really enjoy something. I think we’re seeing the tick TikTok backlash of just this, you know, when somebody is just swiping [00:45:00] and they’re, all the sound effects and the, you know, all those different things, they’re just ready for something that breathes a little bit.

[00:45:05] Jerry Potter: And so I want to give anyone who is listening to this permission to let go of perfectionism ’cause it doesn’t exist. And I say that as a recovering perfectionist and let your stuff breathe a little bit and see what happens because it’s not worth the extra two hours to try and make it extra fancy at that point.

[00:45:22] Jerry Potter: If the words you’re saying are helpful to somebody, then the rest is so much less relevant.

[00:45:27] Jeff Sieh: so my parents of all people now watch more YouTube than anything else. I’ve like shared stuff with them. I’ve given ’em access to things. They watch YouTube, they love to watch YouTube. I don’t know if it’s ’cause it’s small, it’s shorter bite-sized stuff or what, but, or it’s very specific that my dad likes to watch, like, you know, these certain shows.

[00:45:46] Jeff Sieh: I don’t know. But it’s, it’s amazing how much YouTube they watch more than anything else.

[00:45:49] Jerry Potter: It’s not just shorter stuff. Some stuff, I mean, I, you know, I’m in a community with people that are putting up 45 minute videos and people are watching them like crazy. I met a woman at Vid Summit who literally videotapes [00:46:00] herself cleaning her house and sometimes it’s an hour and 20 minutes and her retention is really high.

[00:46:05] Jerry Potter: So

[00:46:06] Jerry Potter: it’s bizarre.

[00:46:07] Jeff Sieh: clean, um, better than a Roomba. Um, Abby, my daughter has this great question. She goes, do you have a formal system for testing titles or thumbnails, et cetera, or do you just sort of notice and adjust as you go?

[00:46:21] Jerry Potter: I am implementing one right now, and I’ll tell you what I’ve got. So for years, I didn’t look at my analytics. I was just like, eh, it’s growing, whatever. But I realized. When I was really gonna double down on teaching this to other people a couple years ago, that I really needed to learn how to do this better.

[00:46:36] Jerry Potter: So I make sure to sit down and look at my analytics. I’m not an analytics person, like when I worked at an agency, somebody else looked at that stuff and then told me what we needed to fix, and then I would change the creative. So I look at the analytics and I do it once a month and I look at those key categories and I essentially look at the videos that have a lower click-through rate than my channel average.

[00:46:57] Jerry Potter: So I forget what my channel average [00:47:00] is. It’s, I wanna say five or six or something like that. Five or 6% click-through rate. And if something’s doing less than five, then I might go back and say, oh, maybe I can change out the thumbnail that I have an idea I didn’t use. I mean, now with. You know, the AI tools are soon, we’re gonna literally just be able to go, Hey, change this out, and I’ll go back and change that.

[00:47:19] Jerry Potter: or if a video is not performing well, again with the click through rate, then I might look at the title and think about how I could change it. If a video that I think should be doing better, like getting more views from search isn’t doing well, then maybe sometimes I’ll look at, at, at changing the title.

[00:47:34] Jerry Potter: But it’s once a month. you really can’t do anything with a video unless you have a lot of data to work with. ’cause you have a huge channel. You can’t do anything with the data until a video’s been out for a couple of months anyway. So it’s kind of a, that’s why there’s, I just don’t bother except going in once a month and looking at some of the recent ones, because videos take time.

[00:47:52] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, that’s, that’s great advice. last question before we move really quickly to our last section, I, I wanted to ask you about. how you time block this decision [00:48:00] day from action day? Just looking at our comments, I think people were like, oh, that’s a great idea. Separating that so you don’t have that friction in your head.

[00:48:07] Jeff Sieh: So how would you adapt that specifically for like a solopreneur who only has like an hour, a day or even just weekends?

[00:48:16] Jerry Potter: So, I mean, if you’re limited on time, you could certainly do a decision half hour and a decision half hour. You know, if you’ve only got an hour a week, but. Decision time can really apply to so many different places in our business. I used to be one of those people that it was just like, if I had free time, I was consuming something, right?

[00:48:34] Jerry Potter: So if I go on a walk, if I go on a hike, I’m driving, I’ve gotta listen to a podcast, I’ve gotta listen to an audio book. I love looking for ways to do, you know, self-improvement. And several years ago, when I was still single dad at night, my wife came home and I had a really challenging night with the kids, and she just, she’s like, just, I’d gotten cranky.

[00:48:50] Jerry Potter: She’s like, just, just go for a walk. Go for a walk. And I’m like, fine. It was raining. I put my coat on. We were still in Seattle at the time, and I just went for a walk and I didn’t, I think I forgot my [00:49:00] headphones that night. So I wasn’t listening to anything and I just let my mind wander and amazing things happened.

[00:49:04] Jerry Potter: Now I hike four to five times a week and if I don’t have anything like. Planned. I’ll still let my mind wander for the first 10 to 15 minutes of my hike because it’s amazing what your brain will do when you give it space. So decision time can happen while you’re driving, while you are, you know, I don’t recommend doing it while you’re lying in bed at night trying to fall asleep.

[00:49:26] Jerry Potter: But driving, exercising, walking, try and remove the distractions, but give your body something to do. so you’re slightly distracted. You know, sometimes people talk about their best ideas coming in the shower. It’s the same type of thing. So that’s how I would do the decision time if you were limited on time.

[00:49:39] Jerry Potter: and as you’re looking at your overall tasks, this is where I’ve kind of been still figuring this part out, but I look at all of my main goals or, you know, I call them my high leverage tasks and it’s like, what decisions do I need to make about this before I can start taking action? And then I’ll list those out.

[00:49:52] Jerry Potter: And then sometimes I’ll pull the list out before I go for a hike. And that works really, really.

[00:49:56] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool. That’s all great stuff for people who are strapped for time, like [00:50:00] all of us are.

[00:50:00] Conor Brown: All of us are, we’re strap of time now because we’ve been cranking through these. We probably have one question in our final section. Before we get to that, I wanted to ask the audience, when you all are editing videos and posting videos, do you leave small mistakes in your videos or do you try to remove every slip, every pause, every stumble?

[00:50:20] Conor Brown: and when you watch creators, do you like that? Do you like seeing those kind of human mess ups, things like that? do you think it makes it more relatable to you? We wanna know what, what you prefer. And then flipping it over to you Jerry as well. Jay Bear talks about this planned imperfection in you often show that, you know, leaving these kind of mistakes, quote unquote mistakes in your videos can make you more.

[00:50:45] Conor Brown: Relatable. So how can a small business solopreneur, entrepreneur, intentionally use these little imperfect moments in their videos without looking sloppy or, or unprofessional?

[00:50:57] Jerry Potter: Well, if anyone is recording [00:51:00] perfectly every time, like, you know, good for you, you know, if that’s the case, then maybe you just need to like, loosen up a little bit before you record so that it comes across more natural. But I think we all make mistakes and it is literally just leaving them in. If you slightly mispronounce a word, leave it.

[00:51:13] Jerry Potter: If you mess up a word and then you pick it up without starting over, you know, leave it. I think that’s the most basic thing. When I, a quick story. When I worked in radio, I was doing, part-time radio in Seattle and we would do what we would call air check sessions. And that was when the boss would listen to a recording of your show and, you know, leave you feeling great or feeling terrible.

[00:51:34] Jerry Potter: And I had this air check session with this guy and he listened to it and he goes. Really great. Here are all the things. You did great. Keep it up. And I said, nothing to work on. And he is like, no, it sounds great. And I said, okay, well if I’m so great, why am I working Saturday afternoons in Seattle instead of morning drive in New York City, the number one market in the country?

[00:51:52] Jerry Potter: And he said. Lemme think about that. And he came back a few days later and he goes, I listened to it again. I thought about that. Your tape is too perfect. [00:52:00] You literally, I never hear you mess up your voice never even squeaks. And so I started intentionally going, you know, all right, coming up, you know, and I would literally let my voice squeak just until it became natural, just be to move from being that polished DJ to an actual human.

[00:52:17] Jerry Potter: And so I think part of it is just letting your guard down. You know, I like to pretend I’m speaking to one person on the other side who already knows, loves, and trusts me, because then I let my guard down a little bit. When we look at the camera as though it’s the worst person in the audience, the troll, that’s when we feel like we have to be perfect.

[00:52:34] Jerry Potter: So it’s a great mindset shift you can make. Speak to the person who already loves you.

[00:52:38] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. Great advice. In fact, we have, uh, tater as we wrap up saying, this is why I love that the podcast is live. The mistakes are submitted in. I do edit the audio version a little bit. Yeah, we do too. And like even last week, I actually cut cursed on the air, which I really didn’t mean to do, but that stuff happens.

[00:52:56] Jeff Sieh: AI. Robot’s not gonna do that. Jerry, this has been, it’s, it’s been [00:53:00] so much. I mean, we need to do a part two sometime, soon in the future. ’cause you have such good stuff. Uh, but as we wrap up the floor is yours, where can people find out more about all things? Jerry Potter.

[00:53:10] Jerry Potter: If you are looking to, you know, get going on YouTube and do it in less time, I would go to the YT 90 roadmap.com. That is the best ENT entry point. If you wanna just learn more about how I run my business, you know, as what I call a done by Lunch entrepreneur, I have a podcast called Done by Lunch Entrepreneurs, and I take you behind the scenes in my business, every single week.

[00:53:30] Jerry Potter: And so that would be another great opportunity to hang out.

[00:53:33] Jeff Sieh: awesome. Awesome. This is amazing. Uh, so much fun today. before we go, where can people find out about the unsinkable Conor Brown?

[00:53:40] Conor Brown: You can find out more about me@vacationkingdoms.com and at Vacation Kingdoms across the social media is still recapping my preview crews on the new Disney Destiny on there. So check it out. let me just say it was appropriate that Jerry wore that Superman shirt today ’cause he really is, he had some knowledge shared with everyone.

[00:53:59] Conor Brown: [00:54:00] It was awesome.

[00:54:00] Jeff Sieh: It was, he, it was a super show. And by the way, if you’d like to find out more about shows and keep up to date with everything that Conor and I do over here, uh, live, you can sign up at Jeff Sieh.com/news. We’d love to have you be a part of the email community. And with that, thank you guys. Thank you, tater.

[00:54:16] Jeff Sieh: Thank you Kira. Thank you Ralph, everybody who watched the show. And, and, and Maurice, everybody who left questions, we appreciate you. We’ll be able to do the show without you. And thank you to our, wonderful sponsors. Ecamm m you find out more about them at Ecamm dot com slash jeff.

[00:54:29] Jeff Sieh: So make sure you guys go check that out. And with that, we’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.