SHOW TRANSCRIPT

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

[00:00:00] Jerry Potter: YouTube is, really, I think, the most AI or ChatGPT-proof platform. You know, sometimes if you’re in circles like we run in, we’re like, ” Well, you know, you can just go to NotebookLM and ask what a video’s about,” and all that. But it’s like, you know, the average person is, is not doing that. So no, I’m just very much still a proponent of YouTube.

[00:00:18] Jerry Potter: but I think it’s really deciding what the most important part is going to be for your business and focusing on that. the thing I caution away from is you know, all of these updates and things like that, like, we can panic. We can, go, “Okay, I’ve gotta change this. I’ve gotta change that.”

[00:00:33] Jerry Potter: But we have to remember, YouTube is over 20 years old, and it is by far the most consistent content platform out there.

[00:00:46] Jeff Sieh: Hello, folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not

[00:00:49] Paul Gowder: And I’m Paul Gowder, and this is the show that keeps you up to date with what’s happening in the world of the creator economy and so much more

[00:00:56] Jeff Sieh: What happens to all the YouTube videos you’ve already made when search [00:01:00] bar starts answering questions instead of just listing results? What does it mean when your Shorts start paying you based on whether people finished watching and not if they just swipe past? And what do you do when brand deals start getting matched by AI with or without you?

[00:01:16] Jeff Sieh: If that sounds interesting to you, you are in the right place because that’s what we’re talking about today

[00:01:21] Paul Gowder: I’m so excited to get these, answers. Today we’re sitting down with Jerry Potter, a 20-year broadcast veteran and host of the Done By Lunch Entrepreneur podcast. He’s also the creator behind a 150,000 subscriber YouTube channel that teaches entrepreneurs how to run their businesses in half the time.

[00:01:37] Paul Gowder: Jerry’s gonna walk us through some of the big changes happening in YouTube over the last few weeks and tell us what we need to do with each one.

[00:01:44] Jeff Sieh: So sit back, clear your schedule, clear your mind, and get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live [00:02:00] That’s right, folks. Jerry Potter is here with us to talk about all these crazy new things happening on YouTube. But I do want give a big shout-out to my friends over at Ecamm. You can find out more about them at ecamm.com/jeff. You can save 15% by using your code JEFF15 for your first purchase.

[00:02:27] Jeff Sieh: We’re actually getting ready next month to go to a camp that they’re putting on. It’s a, it’s actually on top of Macstock. It’s, like, right after or right before Macstock. We’re gonna be staying for Macstock, and so it’s July 9th, at Crystal Lake, Illinois, outside of Chicago. We got some great people there.

[00:02:44] Jeff Sieh: I’m gonna be speaking. So if you’re gonna be there, let me know, because I would love to go and hang out and have some coffee with you, sit down and, and nerd out about all the stuff that we talk about today and in past weeks. So check it out, July 9th at, uh, Crystal Lake, Illinois. All right, Mr. [00:03:00] Potter, there’s so much stuff to, to talk about.

[00:03:02] Jeff Sieh: I know Paul is chomping at the bit, too, ’cause he’s a, he’s a creator. But, I wanted to ask the audience, have you tried this new Ask YouTube yet, the new AI search on YouTube? So drop yes, no, or what is that in the chat. Like, if you don’t know, just say, “What is… What are you talking about?” Right? So, I wanna know where you guys have…

[00:03:20] Jeff Sieh: I had to go check after I was, I contacted Jerry, and we were gonna talk about this show. I have it on mobile, so I can go in there, and I have that little Gemini gem where I can tap and ask YouTube in that way. I don’t have it on my desktop yet, but it is on mobile. So we’re gonna be talking all about that today.

[00:03:36] Jeff Sieh: but Jerry, I really wanted to know from you is, like, you know, it just launched, this Ask YouTube, this conversational AI search that pulls these clips from long form videos and shorts to answer a question that you might have, right? So for a creator who’s spent years, and we mentioned you have a over 150,000, subscriber YouTube channel, you, you spent years building this library.

[00:03:58] Jeff Sieh: What is your reaction to this? [00:04:00] Like, is it an opportunity, or is it a threat?

[00:04:02] Jerry Potter: Well, I think like everything, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit of both, but I ha- I am a YouTube Premium user, and I think it’s only available for Premium right now, but I couldn’t find it. I did try on mobile, ’cause I know YouTube releases some stuff that’s only on mobile sometimes. But I do think when I see things like this and my, you know, my threat response goes up like, “Oh, man,” you know, “What’s this gonna mean?”

[00:04:24] Jerry Potter: And while I haven’t seen the Ask YouTube part, I know when I’ve just been browsing YouTube, I’ve seen these little things where it’s like, “Hey, want us to just tell you what this video’s about?” And my consumer response has been interesting because, rather than clicking that, my consumer response has been Oh, I don’t know if I want you to tell me or not,” and then I keep scrolling.

[00:04:43] Jerry Potter: Like, it puts me in indecision mode, so that’s making me not watch the video almost in a different way. But, you know, when I see this kind of thing that, that, like feels like a threat, I just use it as a reminder of, okay, we just need to do better perhaps in many, many different ways. Now that being said, we have to keep in [00:05:00] mind that YouTube has been taking clips of our videos and serving them up in search results for years.

[00:05:07] Jerry Potter: I remember when I first started adding chapters to some of my videos, and probably at least four years ago now, if not more, and all of a sudden, I was showing up in Google Search because that chapter answered that question. So part of this, I don’t think we need to panic because I don’t think it’s new in the same way.

[00:05:25] Jerry Potter: It’s just AI is obviously making the whole thing smarter. But I’m curious, Jeff, like when you tried it, did it give you like a bunch of thumbnails saying, “Watch this first and then this?” Or what, what did you see when you briefly tried it?

[00:05:36] Jeff Sieh: So, this is v- very nerdy, but I’m actually, I was researching how to use an airbrush. So I got an airbrush to paint some of my models and, like, the carvings that I do, and so I used it for that, and it just surfaced those, like… I was like, “How to clean an airbrush,” right? ‘Cause that’s a big thing, and it did that.

[00:05:51] Jeff Sieh: It, it give- got me a list of thumbnails, and I would click on them, and I could see the answer to that question. The thing that I’m wondering is, is, like, how… I don’t understand how it works with, [00:06:00] you know, monetization. Like, you know, you, when you hit a certain level and you have enough subscribers, you’re monetized on YouTube, and they pay you for ads that are, are played there, and I know this is only for Premium, which you don’t see ads, and, like, how is that gonna affect, like, the money you make as a YouTube creator?

[00:06:15] Jeff Sieh: Do you have any idea on that?

[00:06:17] Jerry Potter: That’s where I think it’s absolutely gonna be a threat if you’re earning a lot of your income from AdSense, because I think it’s gonna be the same thing that we saw happen with people who were making their money from blog traffic over the last, you know, several years since ChatGPT came out, right?

[00:06:31] Jerry Potter: All of a sudden, first, you know, blog traffic started going down because Google started giving answers right at the top of the search results, and you no longer needed to click through. And then, of course, beyond that, ChatGPT and Claude and, you know, other platforms are giving answers. So I think when you get to that point, nobody lands on your blog, nobody sees your ad, nobody clicks your ad, you don’t get paid anymore.

[00:06:50] Jerry Potter: And I think this is gonna be the same thing. If somebody can get an answer without having to watch the video, then yeah, you’re not gonna get paid. Now, if they do [00:07:00] have to watch the video, I think even just part of it, as long as there’s an ad at the front, then I think there’s still potential there for you to get paid.

[00:07:06] Jerry Potter: But this really comes down to, you know, I, I, I’ve been thinking about how podcasting has blown up on YouTube, right, the last couple of years. But podcasting generally, if you’re doing a podcast like this, we are doing, it with an audio-first mentality. Like right before we went live, I said, “Remind me, this goes out as audio as well.”

[00:07:27] Jerry Potter: Okay, if anything visual comes up, like if I refer to something in my background, then I will make sure to describe it for the audio audience. But when you are doing that, now we’ve removed the reason that somebody has to actually watch the video. So where my mind goes, and I kind of already do this ’cause I do a lot of tutorials, but where my mind goes is making sure there are visual reasons to watch the video that can’t just be grabbed from, you know, watching the transcript.

[00:07:53] Jerry Potter: And as somebody who creates content on YouTube, I can tell you, sometimes I’ll grab the transcript, especially on a long video, and I’ll drop it [00:08:00] into ChatGPT or Claude and just say, “Hey, tell me what the key points are, in this video, anything new and innovative,” because I can’t watch all the content.

[00:08:08] Jerry Potter: You know? There’s, there’s, there’s a lot of content.

[00:08:10] Jeff Sieh: Right. Yeah. It’s, it’s overwhelming

[00:08:12] Paul Gowder: A- and as somebody who fell victim of the whole SEO and blog traffic change, I mean, it, it still hurts, right? To look… I, I don’t even like to look at my ad

[00:08:20] Paul Gowder: revenue someday. It’s, it’s tough. And so that was my first thought as, as a YouTube creator. What is this gonna do to my back catalog of videos? are they still valuable?

[00:08:29] Paul Gowder: And so for somebody, you know, that is a creator sitting on lots of old videos, what should we be doing with that? How do we leverage that? Is there, you know, recommendations for what we can do with all of our videos now?

[00:08:40] Jerry Potter: Well, I think, I think the first thing, you know, if we just, like, step back, big picture, and I don’t know that there are many people that are only earning a full-time living from AdSense revenue, these days. But, you know, I remember long time ago where there were all these news articles and it’s like, “This woman opens toys and makes a million [00:09:00] dollars a month from AdSense,” you know?

[00:09:01] Jerry Potter: Do you remember those stories? And it was just like, “What? That’s so cool. I wanna open toys.” And so, I, I think the first thing, for all creators is we just need to step back and go, “Okay, well, how else can I diversify my income?” And of course, you know, AdSense is only one of many ways that creators can make money now.

[00:09:19] Jerry Potter: you know, the most obvious ones are, of course, going to be, you know, affiliate promotions, sponsorships, different things like that. And then from the entrepreneur side where I am, it’s like, make stuff to sell to your audience. One of the things that I talk about a lot is when you have, you know…

[00:09:33] Jerry Potter: There’s two paths on YouTube. There is that influencer creator path, and then there is that entrepreneur path, and the best thing about being an entrepreneur on YouTube is you can make money from your first video because you already have something to sell, so it’s like one viewer is profitable, and I don’t have to wait it to even be monetized by YouTube.

[00:09:50] Jerry Potter: I think, especially over the last couple of years, the entrepreneur path and the creator path kind of merge, right,over time. It’s ’cause now, you know, It depends on the circle I’m [00:10:00] in, but I usually refer to myself as an entrepreneur first. if I’m around kids, then I call myself a YouTuber ’cause that, you know, gets me credibility there.

[00:10:07] Jerry Potter: But overall with this, you know, there’s lots of ways to make money from a YouTube channel, so I think that’s the first step, is just make sure that AdSense is not the only way you’re thinking about making money. beyond that, though, to answer your question, Paul, I don’t know that there’s a whole lot we can do with the back catalog at this point, but going forward, I would start thinking about, “Okay, how can I make videos that can answer questions in a visual way?”

[00:10:33] Jerry Potter: Because I also think this is the thing that prevents ChatGPT from just answering the question and not sending anybody to your video. you know, I watch my traffic sources in my analytics to see, okay, what types of videos, you know, what types of videos are getting traffic from different sources, and OpenAI or ChatGPT comes up a lot.

[00:10:49] Jerry Potter: I’m getting thousands of views from them sending me traffic. But I also look at what are the types of videos that that’s actually happening on, and it’s the stuff where you’re showing something, you’re [00:11:00] demonstrating something. And so I think, you know, for people that are in a thought leader space, it doesn’t necessarily have to be, “Okay, now I have to teach a screen recording,” but we can all do things, whether it’s an interesting sketch or framework or something.

[00:11:13] Jerry Potter: But I just, I think, “Okay, how can I be more visual in my videos beyond just having a motion graphic that’s showing the words that I’m talking about?”

[00:11:20] Jeff Sieh: S- so one of the things I’m thinking about, so I’m thinking about, like, small business owners, and I, and I, of course, you know, he’s amazing anyway, but Roger Wakefield, you know, he has the… He, he started as a plumber, he went to Social Media Marketing World, and, you know, he, he started doing YouTube videos.

[00:11:33] Jeff Sieh: For stuff like those demo things you’re talking about, like if I need to replace the flapper on my toilet, I’m gonna look at it on YouTube, and it’s gonna show, show me a video. Well, now it’s gonna show me, like if I just need to replace the flapper and a guy’s doing a whole, like, rebuild on his toilet, I’m only gonna see the flapper part, right?

[00:11:48] Jeff Sieh: So should creators put something or be very, very, like, specific in their calls to action in their, in, in their, like, description and comments? I mean, I guess that will… That’s kind of best practices [00:12:00] now. But is there anything else that you can think of about, you know, really directing people, “Hey, I have more than just this little video on how to fl- fix a flapper on a toilet,” kind of thing?

[00:12:09] Jerry Potter: So are you asking if somebody only watches part of the video, how do

[00:12:13] Jeff Sieh: How do we get them? Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m kind of trying to figure, get my mind around. Because I know a lot of people, especially small businesses who are like a florist or a plumber or a carpet cleaner or something like that, they’re trying to do these videos to get noticed. And if they’re doing these little things, like how can they optimize that short amount of time that they’ll have?

[00:12:30] Jerry Potter: Yeah. So if you’re watching 50 seconds out of a 20-minute plumbing tutorial, there’s only so much you can do just realistically, like, you know? It’s not like every 12 sec- So I, you know, I used to work as, as a radio personality, and we had this rule in radio, and one of the things with radio is kind of like livestreams, people are coming and going all the time.

[00:12:52] Jerry Potter: So you could never assume that somebody in that moment knew what was happening. So if we were interviewing, like let’s say Taylor Swift, at [00:13:00] least every 60 seconds we would say, “We’re talking to Taylor Swift,” and, you know, and then go into the next question. So you sort of reset it. But I don’t think you can do that in a plumbing video, you know, where it’s like, “By the way, I’m a professional and you can book down below,” every 30 seconds just to make sure you capture somebody.

[00:13:15] Jerry Potter: So, so, my, my main answer is, like, don’t necessarily get too discouraged by that because if your bit becomes the one that people watch, the rest of your video views are gonna go up from that. I truly believe that. But from that, one of the things that I, I work with my clients on a lot is how can we just seed our authority, our professionalism, you know, all of those things in the video as much as possible without selling?

[00:13:42] Jerry Potter: And so sometimes it’s just the verbiage that you use. And so if I was f- fixing a toilet, I might say, you know, more than once in the video, “Yeah, when we do this in our clients’ homes or in our customers’ homes,” or, you know, something that builds the authority, or, you know, “Here in Orlando where I live,” you know, as an example, “it’s [00:14:00] really humid, so this part actually is, you know, it’s a little slippery today.

[00:14:02] Jerry Potter: You know, the bulb’s slippery,” or I don’t know, whatever it might be. But there, there are little things that you can do like that. And then the last thing I think is, you know, I think on- onscreen graphics are underestimated in some places, and not that you would just have a book now throughout a 20-minute toilet repair tutorial, but you could have something like that, your website, your phone number pop up every 45 seconds or so without taking away from what you’re doing.

[00:14:26] Jeff Sieh: great, great ideas. Great ideas

[00:14:28] Paul Gowder: Maybe even tagging the, the recommended flappers to, to, you know, yeah. Now that we have

[00:14:33] Paul Gowder: U- shopping on, on, uh, YouTube, yeah. Well, in the past you- you’ve talked a lot about, you know, high leverage a- assets. If you’re a small business owner out there and you haven’t pulled the trigger yet with a YouTube video, are you still recommending that for small businesses?

[00:14:46] Paul Gowder: Is it more urgent now and, or should they just approach this completely differently?

[00:14:50] Jerry Potter: You mean because we may see views go down because of this?

[00:14:53] Paul Gowder: And all the AI changes, yeah

[00:14:55] Jerry Potter: yeah. I, I mean, I am absolutely still recommending it. You know, when I talk about YouTube [00:15:00] being a high leverage asset, first, the way I design a high leverage asset, I call them HLAs when I work with, like, our, our, our coaching clients.

[00:15:06] Jerry Potter: And, you know, a high leverage asset is something that you create once, and then it serves you for a really long time. And sometimes it is something you create once, you optimize, and you don’t have to touch it again. And sometimes it’s, you know, a growing YouTube channel where you’re still publishing every week.

[00:15:21] Jerry Potter: But the whole point is something that you create that’s gonna serve you for a long time, and I don’t think any of this is going to change YouTube in the sense that the videos that I published last year are no longer gonna get views as long as they’re helpful videos. So we’re still building this evergreen library of content.

[00:15:39] Jerry Potter: But, you know, YouTube is, really, I think, the most AI or ChatGPT-proof platform. You know, sometimes if you’re in circles like we run in, we’re like, “Well, you know, you can just go to NotebookLM and ask what a video’s about,” and all that. But it’s like, you know, the average person is, is not doing that. So no, I’m just very much still a proponent of YouTube.

[00:15:59] Jerry Potter: but I [00:16:00] think it’s really deciding what the most important part is going to be for your business and focusing on that. the thing I caution away from is you know, all of these updates and things like that, like, we can panic. We can, go, “Okay, I’ve gotta change this. I’ve gotta change that.”

[00:16:14] Jerry Potter: But we have to remember, YouTube is over 20 years old, and it is by far has been the most consistent content platform out there. I mean, if anyone follows like Meta, you know, Facebook and Instagram, the stuff they’ve been talking about the last two years has been insane. I remember they dropped this, I think it was the, not Christmas last year, but the year before, but it was like between Christmas and the New, and New Year’s when companies announce things they don’t want people to hear about.

[00:16:40] Jerry Potter: You know, they announced, “We’re gonna make all these fake AI profiles, and we’re gonna have them comment on your stuff, and it’ll be good for mental health so people feel like they’re getting more comments and things like that.” And, and people were, of course, like, “What? So I don’t know if I’m talking to a human anymore?”

[00:16:54] Jerry Potter: So I just, I, I use that as an example just to say, YouTube is, is so reliable. [00:17:00] And so even with these changes, I think it’s still, just still an incredible place to put your energy, and it’s just a matter of deciding what’s the thing that’s gonna give me the biggest return on effort, ROE. I talk about that a lot.

[00:17:11] Jerry Potter: And for me, it’s absolutely gonna be, you know, long-form videos once a week

[00:17:15] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. It’s funny, you… I think about, Y- my parents just, like, discovered YouTube, right? And they watch it from their TV. So I think we discount some of the, If you have good content that people will watch, they will put it up on a big TV and watch it. Like, my g- my parents like it ’cause it’s short, so they can, they can go and watch, you know, a whole series or, or whatever of somebody, you know, gardening for, you know, 45 minutes.

[00:17:36] Jeff Sieh: so I think there’s still discovery that’s happening with the, the older generation as, and putting stuff up on the big TV screen I think is kind of interesting, too. I want to take this question from, Disney Hotel Lady, ’cause I thought it was a great one.

[00:17:47] Jeff Sieh: She goes, “Are there requirements for AI to use your video as an answer, or is it just pulling everything, it sees?” So do you know that answer, Jerry?

[00:17:56] Jerry Potter: not officially, except to say that I’m sure it’s [00:18:00] part of the terms and conditions. There are certain things that YouTube absolutely gives you control over. you know, for example, whether someone can remix your video or different things like that. But, you know, once you’ve shared on the platform, you know, there’s no…

[00:18:15] Jerry Potter: I, I can’t imagine a world where they would even give the biggest creators in the world, the ability to turn off certain features like don’t give summaries, don’t give, you know, don’t, don’t let peop- don’t give my answer unless they watch the whole video. And, you know, I think when this news first started coming out a couple years ago, like, you know, YouTube’s just gonna give people summaries and they don’t have to watch your video, that was sort of the scary version of the story.

[00:18:39] Jerry Potter: My concern then was the AI’s gonna get something wrong and then somebody’s gonna misquote me because of whatever the summary was. But AI has gotten so good and it makes so many fewer mistakes than a couple of years ago, so I don’t even know if that’s a real concern. But yeah, I don’t think you can opt out of this.

[00:18:54] Jeff Sieh: So, one of the things like, you know, Google has called this the biggest change to YouTube, right? Like they’re [00:19:00] saying they al- whatever they release, they always say it’s the biggest thing ever. But,

[00:19:03] Jerry Potter: no.

[00:19:04] Jeff Sieh: but from you as a creator and educator and entrepreneur, do you have a, like, have you had to do a mind shift?

[00:19:10] Jeff Sieh: Are, like, are, are we writing for the human? Are you writing your scripts for the human or AI or both? Like, how do you, how can we as creators wrap our mind around what we’re supposed to do? Is it gonna change or does it, does it even matter?

[00:19:21] Jerry Potter: I think it’s all human. I think it’s gotta be human, and I think it’s actually been evolving toward human even before, you know, ChatGPT came out. Simply because back in the day, you know, one of the reasons that YouTube recommends new and small channels more now is simply because they are able to see what the video’s about, judge the quality of the video, and match it to the right person.

[00:19:45] Jerry Potter: Where back in the day, they were just using that metadata like, okay, what’s it say in the, the title? What’s it say in the description? Eventually, what you said in the video. But now you know, AI can actually see what’s in the video and all these things, and so, I think that as AI gets smarter, we need to write [00:20:00] for humans more than ever.

[00:20:01] Jerry Potter: you know, back in the day, yeah, you wrote for robots. You researched keywords, and you tried to match all of this stuff up. It was, you know, keywords that humans were searching for. So no, I think it’s absolutely all human. if you’re going to have a YouTube channel that YouTube actually promotes your videos as opposed to you being the only one, you know, begging people to go watch, then, even if YouTube surfaces you in recommended, on the homepage, anywhere like that, you still have to earn that click.

[00:20:28] Jerry Potter: And so that’s why I think it’s gotta be all human, and the more human you can be, the better

[00:20:32] Jeff Sieh: Awesome

[00:20:33] Paul Gowder: okay, so if we’re building for human, human, what’s the role of timestamps and chapters? Do we need to be building that still for humans? Are we looking at keyword stuffing there? yeah, so what do we think about those changes?

[00:20:46] Jerry Potter: I don’t think, I don’t think keyword stuffing is even a thing anymore. you know, we have– I have this thing that I teach that I call the low row list, and it’s low ROE list, the low return on effort list. And it’s all these things on YouTube that you can do that are [00:21:00] really just distractions because the return on effort is not high enough.

[00:21:03] Jerry Potter: You know, because I mean, YouTube now, we have, long-form, there’s shorts, there’s live streams, there’s memberships, there’s, super chats, there’s, you know, there’s so many things to worry about. And so there are many things that we just don’t have to pay attention to. And so I think tags definitely falls into that.

[00:21:18] Jerry Potter: I think the chapters are important. I think this is where AI is going to pull stuff. what I’m not sure of, and what I wanna start testing is I’ve generally done chapters for the most part that tease what’s coming up in the video rather than saying what’s in the chapter, so that somebody, if they’re looking at the chapters, whether they actually scroll into the description or they’re just, you know, looking along the search bar to see what else is gonna be covered, you know, I don’t want it to be…

[00:21:45] Jerry Potter: I want, you know, I, I do things like, Tip number one, tip number two,” or, “This tip will help you increase your watch time,” rather than listing out what the actual tip is. But, you know, this kinda makes me start wondering is if the [00:22:00] tips, you know, or if the chapters should be named more around human language and what they would actually click.

[00:22:05] Jerry Potter: So that’s, yeah, that we’ll

[00:22:07] Jeff Sieh: Wow. So that’s, that’s really interesting. Yeah, ’cause I’d never thought about that, ’cause to be honest, I hated doing ch- it’s, chapters to me are like doing, you know, show notes for podcasts. I don’t think anybody likes doing them at all, and so that was the f- one of the first things that I had AI start doing.

[00:22:22] Jeff Sieh: And so that’s what I’ve been doing too, is I have the transcript and, and drop it into AI and have me make the, the chapter marks for myself and clients. But I never thought about making it in a way that is almost like a call to action and enticing them to click on it in the ways that you were saying.

[00:22:35] Jeff Sieh: That would be an interesting test. Like, is the payoff for being very specific in those chapter titles gonna get you surface more in AI, or do you want the more clicks, organ- You know, so it’s that, that balance that I think is gonna be interesting. So you have to come back on and tell us the, the results of your test ’cause now I’m, I’m,

[00:22:50] Jeff Sieh: really interest-

[00:22:51] Jerry Potter: I mean, I mentioned earlier, you know, these videos that where I’ve had chunks of them coming up in search in Google for years, and I can tell you those chapter titles were [00:23:00] usually answering a specific question. It wasn’t like, “This hidden feature will change everything,” you know? it was, how to find the share button when it’s missing or, you know, different things like that.

[00:23:11] Jerry Potter: That’s the kind of stuff that, you know, would come up, and I would think that the AI would be the same way. and now that I say that out th- out loud, that’s actually still a great tease too, right? ‘Cause you have to watch to find the share button when it’s missing.

[00:23:24] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Okay, that’s a, that’s a great, experiment we’ll have to follow up on. I wanna… So we’re gonna be talking now about, YouTube, Shorts. So I wanna know if you guys are posting to YouTube Shorts right now. So type daily if you post every day, weekly if you post a few times a week, or rarely if it’s hit or m- miss, or not yet, like, I am not doing Shorts at all.

[00:23:44] Jeff Sieh: So let us know. It was really interesting with the question I asked, uh, the first segment, most people have not seen the Ask YouTube yet. I don’t know if it’s not because they’re not o- on mobile, or they’re not pl- I think you said it was only for Premium users, which I

[00:23:56] Jerry Potter: I think it’s only premium right now, yeah

[00:23:58] Jeff Sieh: if you are Premium, I would really like to know if [00:24:00] you have that on your mobile device, but also if you’re posting Shorts.

[00:24:03] Jeff Sieh: So I have found the most traction on Shorts right now. I think a lot of people have found that as well. but Jerry, I really am interested in, on your thoughts on some of the, kind of this new things that are going on. Like the, the RPM on Shorts now supposedly is now weighted by completion rate, not just views.

[00:24:20] Jeff Sieh: ‘Cause it’s really easy now to chop up a long-form video with the AI tools and have all these Shorts that you can put out there.

[00:24:27] Jeff Sieh: So what are your thoughts on this change?

[00:24:28] Jerry Potter: Well, first, I think low effort Shorts can still have a high completion rate, but we just have to think about it differently. It’s not just taking, an interview like this or your long form video and then just having a tool, you know, take everything out of it and, and throwing it up and calling it good.

[00:24:45] Jerry Potter: So honestly, I think this is a good thing. I think anything that measures what is truly satisfying to the viewer is a good thing for us as creators. Because as people are able to create more content [00:25:00] with AI, that’s more competition. And so the people that are gonna make higher quality stuff are going to be rewarded.

[00:25:07] Jerry Potter: That’s a good thing. It’s almost crazy, as I was studying up on this, ’cause I don’t really do Shorts much, and we can talk about that, but as I was studying up on this, like I, I didn’t even realize that if somebody watched one second of your Short, like you got the same share of revenue as if somebody watched a really high quality you know, 60 second Short twice, you know, all the way through, like they watched it again.

[00:25:30] Jerry Potter: So, you know, from the, from the creator AdSense side, like this, this just feels fair. I’m glad that they’re doing this now. but, I think we can think about completion rate and really think about what’s the simple way that I can get people there. And the hard part is going to be, as you called it, is pulling stuff out of existing content, simply because even though the AI sometimes is so good at doing that, it’s not as good at necessarily starting with an incredible hook, and it definitely doesn’t most of the time billboard what’s going to happen [00:26:00] in the next 45 seconds, right?

[00:26:02] Jerry Potter: So a perfect short, I, I did happen to release one the other day ’cause I’m starting to dabble a little bit with them again, but it obviously gets somebody’s attention. They immediately are like, “Oh, this is me. This is for me. This will be helpful for me.” I think listicles will continue to be good in shorts, where it’s like, “Here’s three ways,” and especially for completion rate.

[00:26:22] Jerry Potter: And then as soon as you give that third way, like you’re done, or maybe you say two seconds to say, “Follow for more.” but that’s, you know… Those are the changes that I would be thinking about is how can I still make something really, really quick? So I released one that was about, you know, a YouTube change and, basically how they are, you know, measuring a lot of what happens after the video instead of during the video, you know, with viewers now.

[00:26:47] Jerry Potter: And I just said, you know, “Here are the four…” I think there’s, there were four ways that they’re, they’re measuring now. And once I gave the fourth way, I just, I shut up. Now, that was a low effort short for me. I did it sitting in my car, waiting [00:27:00] for, my son to come out of the store. I just ad-libbed it.

[00:27:03] Jerry Potter: I mean, I, I, I thought of a strong hook, but I just ad-libbed it. And right now I’m importing into Descript, and I’ve got some layouts in there so I can edit them pretty quickly. But I think, you know, in the next 30 days, I’m gonna probably have figured out a way to use like Claude and Descript together or something to where I just give it to it, and then it spits it out, and it’s done

[00:27:23] Jeff Sieh: That’s what I do. And then, in fact, I actually use, ’cause it’s a fine- it’s called Find Clips in Descript, and I actually use it a lot of times for myself and clients to actually get, you know that kind of a cold open that’s in, like, a lot of podcasts? They’ll take a really great thing at the beginning and slap it on there.

[00:27:37] Jeff Sieh: Then the theme music comes in, and then the show starts. So that’s how we do it, like, for Guy Kawasaki’s show, ’cause we have a lot of, you know, really great guests with, really great soundbites. But that helps me get those, ’cause it’ll do five at a time, that I can go and, like, pick the best one. And so that’s really sped up things for me, finding

[00:27:53] Jerry Potter: Yeah, smart

[00:27:54] Jeff Sieh: One of the questions, ’cause I know if you want to see that Short I think you’re talking about, it’s actually on LinkedIn right now, is where you posted, I think. I didn’t see it [00:28:00] on your Shorts channel yet, but it was on LinkedIn. That’s where I saw it. but one of the questions I had, because I, I did notice that it was in kind of a organic kind of place.

[00:28:08] Jeff Sieh: It wasn’t the YouTuber cool background and things like that. Do you think those… ‘ Cause I see polished Shorts from, like, Diary of CEO and, you know, the Silicon Valley girl. They’re very polished from their podcast, and it looks great, and they have those little Shorts. But I also see the organic stuff working really, really well, where it’s just somebody, like, walking and talking and, like, you were in, in your car giving the thing.

[00:28:28] Jeff Sieh: Do you have a, a opinion or idea what you think works best?

[00:28:32] Jerry Potter: There’s actually a ton of psychology around this, and, and I’m a big psychology geek. But I will say the reason I filmed in my car is because that’s when I had time to film in my car. And so if people are trying to do daily shorts uploads, like, that’s, that’s the way to do it. And so I mentioned how I- I’m starting to dabble a little bit again with short-form video.

[00:28:50] Jerry Potter: I just really didn’t publish any for a while, except occasionally if I was running a promotion. And one of the things that I’m doing is, uh, you know, I’ve built this system, using Claude Code [00:29:00] where I just, all week I just ramble my ideas. You know, I hike almost every day, and I just ramble my ideas while I’m hiking, and then Thursday nights it runs this thing and it presents it as packaged ideas, and then I either, you know, make, tweaks or I ad lib off the notes, for example, with a short-form video.

[00:29:16] Jerry Potter: But at the same time, if I’m gonna publish even two short-form videos a week, I’m not going to take the time to sit down here in my set with my lights necessarily to do it because, I can be doing something better with this time. I could be making my long-form video better. I can be, you know, talking to you guys.

[00:29:31] Jerry Potter: And so, so that’s what– that’s one thing is just do it whenever you can. But I– there is psychology about, something looking more casual, more authentic, and I heard somebody say, a while ago, they said, “I film as many places as I can because I think that makes me more believable as a human as AI avatars are coming out.”

[00:29:49] Jeff Sieh: Oh, that’s a good point

[00:29:50] Paul Gowder: Oh, interesting.

[00:29:52] Jerry Potter: I can say that some of these platforms like, TikTok just announced, you know, AI avatars where you can literally… You’re like, yeah, [00:30:00] you describe… You know, y- you choose your, your avatar, and then you’re like, you know, where do you want them to be? In the bedroom, in the bathroom? Like, you can choose locations.

[00:30:06] Jerry Potter: It’s really getting unreal. But I thought that was an interesting insight of, you know, the more places I am, then the more likely someone is to trust that I’m human. But here’s the thing that I like about the car is I think for that video it gave a feeling of, “Hey, this is so important, I had to stop and tell you about it,” as opposed to, “All right, breaking news.

[00:30:28] Jerry Potter: I’m here in the studio and it’s…” You know, “Here’s this prepared thing.” And so that’s where I think those walk and talks can be really, really powerful. And so, so after Social Media Marketing World this year, I actually saw a talk on LinkedIn and, and it was this guy who’s just crushing it with LinkedIn video that they were profiling.

[00:30:43] Jerry Potter: And it all– he basically films all his shorts running. And he happens to travel the world, so sometimes he’s, like, running in front of the Taj Mahal and, you know, like, things like that. So it’s pretty spectacular. It’s, it’s much better looking than just my mountains. But my thought was I just record all my shorts while I’m hiking [00:31:00] every day.

[00:31:00] Jerry Potter: Let’s… You know, I can do that. I can keep up with that.

[00:31:02] Jeff Sieh: That’s really cool. Yeah. Mine would be at Buc-ee’s probably in Texas.

[00:31:07] Paul Gowder: Yeah. so I’ve been doing a lot with the Facebook content monetization, and you sh- I’m starting to see some things over on YouTube where they’re trying to do, they’re pl- they’re playing with the daily upload bonus and things like that. Do you think it’s worth creators going after these kinds of bonuses?

[00:31:23] Paul Gowder: And, and Meta’s also trying to counteract some of that with their, offer to take YouTubers over to Reels, and they’re paying them $3,000 a month if you switch over. For the YouTube creator, d- do you start playing in these little bonuses and, and playing the, the platforms against each other or going for the shorts bonus?

[00:31:39] Paul Gowder: Or, it, it, like you said, is, are these distractions?

[00:31:42] Jerry Potter: I, I mean, as someone who is trying to, you know, focus on my business and, you know, be done by lunch every day and make sure I have time for other things, even tracking that stuff sounds exhausting. Like, all right, if I do this, if I do that. Like, some people that are, like, the most successful affiliate marketers in the world, they’re [00:32:00] constantly thinking about, “Oh, I- how do I optimize this?

[00:32:02] Jerry Potter: Where do I do this?” And if your brain works that way, I think that’s great, but that’s my initial reaction to that. I do think, though, sometimes there is something to be said for trying something, and I think it’s important, though, that you give it a decent amount of time to try it. And so when I started my YouTube channel, I was…

[00:32:18] Jerry Potter: I, I basically… I, I got a, a text message last week from my friend, Neil, and he was saying, you know, “I, I, I see, you know, your channel and, you know, it looks great. Just watched this video.” He goes, “I remember when you said, ‘I’m gonna throw up 52 videos and see what happens.'” And that was how I started my YouTube channel.

[00:32:32] Jerry Potter: I said, “I’m gonna publish one long form video a week for a year and see what happens.” And I almost quit a bunch of times, but i- had I not made that commitment, I definitely would’ve quit. But, so if you were gonna try this, I would probably say, you know, “Okay, yes, let me try this for 30 full days.” I think too often what we do is we go, “Let me try this,” and then three days in we get tired and we quit.

[00:32:50] Jerry Potter: And one of my things that I’ve just started trying lately is posting more content on other platforms, which includes these short form videos. And at first, I just did more written [00:33:00] content ’cause YouTube is my primary, and probably will be unless it goes away someday. And so now I’m posting back on Instagram and LinkedIn and, and Facebook, and I’m, like, literally two weeks in, I can see the results already.

[00:33:13] Jerry Potter: And I told myself I’m gonna do this for six months before I quit just to see. So sometimes that’s all you need is, like, you know, try it for… I, I think with this, I would try it for 30 days probably at least. but I, personally, I wouldn’t worry about the, the changes between platforms. I would just keep putting my stuff everywhere.

[00:33:29] Jeff Sieh: Very cool. That’s kind of my thoughts. I, I like to put… I say everything’s a broadcast platform. I wanna be as many platforms as I can, if that makes sense, and technology helps a lot with that. We mentioned Descript earlier. Repurpose.io is another one that I use a lot of, to go everywhere at once, and use that for my clients as well.

[00:33:44] Jeff Sieh: One of the things, though, I’ve, I’m still wrapping my mind around it as a creator, and even, like, helping other people run their, their stuff. So, like, this Gemini Omni is now inside of the Shorts remix in the YouTube creator app, and you can prompt your way into a r- a remix [00:34:00] of somebody else’s Shorts. So I’ve always wondered about, like, is it a smart idea?

[00:34:04] Jeff Sieh: I mean, I know you can turn that off so people can’t remix your, your stuff. But for a small business owner who’s not a video editor, is this a, a, a unlock that people can use to create more content, or is it, does it kinda dilute, you know, what you’re doing? ‘Cause I know remixes are popular, or doing reaction videos to other Shorts are, are popular.

[00:34:22] Jeff Sieh: I just don’t, I get n- like, I get made fun of with the beard enough, right? Like, so people take that and re- And I’m like, I mean, I’ve had all sorts of people call me things on YouTube. So I’m like, “Is it a smart idea? Should I turn off it?” I mostly just ignore it, but I’d love to know your thoughts on the whole remix thing

[00:34:37] Jerry Potter: Well, my, my initial thing is if a new feature comes out and it’s like, you know, “Oh, turn, turn it off,” you know, vidIQ sort of sent out this email like, you know, “Have you turned this off?” You know, which is a fair warning for some people. But when those things happen, I’m a big believer in leave everything on until there’s an actual issue.

[00:34:54] Jerry Potter: you know, sometimes when I work with somebody that’s new to YouTube and they’re like, “But I don’t want any comments turned on on my videos. I want commenting [00:35:00] off on all my videos. Can I have commenting off?” And they have obviously some sort of trauma, in their life that’s making them feel that way.

[00:35:06] Jerry Potter: And, you know, we’ll, we’ll talk through that if it’s a, if it’s a client. But, you know, obviously we know the benefit of YouTube comments and, and getting more views and all that kind of thing. So I’m a big fan of like leave it on until there’s a problem, and just know in the back of your mind you can turn it off.

[00:35:18] Jerry Potter: But when it comes to this, I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but it is, you know, it’s absolutely something that, you know, if, if we’re, if we’re going to the dark side could be very dangerous, right? You know?it could be dangerous and fun, or it could be dangerous and dangerous because, you know, reading about it, it’s like, yeah, you can take somebody else’s and then put yourself in the video with them.

[00:35:39] Jerry Potter: And if it’s positive, like, you know, “Hey, look, I’m here with Jeff Sieh and my beard’s longer than his,” you know, or whatever. Like, that’s fun,

[00:35:47] Jerry Potter: or, you know, or Paul, you know, for people listening to the podcast, Paul’s got an R2-D2 shirt on today, so it’s like, you know…

[00:35:53] Jerry Potter: And, and, “Look, I’ve got a C-3PO shirt on,” and, you know, “Here’s Paul with his R2-D2 shirt on.” You know, like that’s fun. So [00:36:00] but as far as us worrying about it, I, I’m a big fan of leaving things on until they become a problem. Now, is this a big unlock? You know, again, this all comes down to how much time do you have?

[00:36:09] Jerry Potter: What’s the return on effort? So, you know, when I’m encouraging people to start a YouTube channel, I have a, a system where it’s, we set it up so you can do it in 90 minutes, about 90 minutes a week. Part of that is letting go of perfectionism. Part of that is you know, doing none of the things on the distraction list or that low return on effort list that I have.

[00:36:25] Jerry Potter: and This is absolutely a distraction at this point, at least as of today, because you have to go in, you have to figure out how to use it. you have to, you have to work on your phone, which is my worst nightmare.

[00:36:37] Jeff Sieh: exactly. I feel you. Yeah

[00:36:39] Jerry Potter: yeah, I, I think it’s a distraction at this point, unless somebody had a very specific use case.

[00:36:46] Jerry Potter: So if you were a, I don’t know why this popped into my head ’cause they barely exist anymore. I was gonna say, if you were like a, a music store, and all of a sudden you could remix artist videos and put yourself in them and say the album’s on sale. That’s dating myself. But, you [00:37:00] know, if you had a very specific use case, I think, I think it might be fun to play with.

[00:37:04] Jerry Potter: But for when this stuff comes out, unless your brain immediately goes, “I know what I could do with that,” if you’re time-strapped, I think you just let it go. I don’t think there’s enough of an early adopter bonus for most people for it to be worth that.

[00:37:18] Jeff Sieh: I think of it as a liability thing. Like, if you’re at Disney and you, and you’re doing a live stream and you whistle Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, they’ll ban your stream. So I’m like, and now we’re using AI to, to rip people, you know, and pu- put them in the video. I just like, I don’t know, that just seems like a big liability thing for me, that would, it’s gonna bite them in the rear end later, so.

[00:37:35] Jerry Potter: So have you turned yours off?

[00:37:36] Jeff Sieh: I haven’t yet, but now I’m going to probably, ’cause I just don’t, I don’t know. I haven’t decided what… I, I, I’m kinda like you. A lot of times I’ll, I’ll leave it on until I get in trouble or something bad happens, but, who knows. We’ll, we’ll see.

[00:37:48] Jerry Potter: Okay. Well, wait 24 hours so I can make my, uh,

[00:37:51] Jeff Sieh: Your beard video? Okay, I’ll wait.

[00:37:52] Jeff Sieh: I’ll wait. Yeah. There we go

[00:37:53] Paul Gowder: Well, and you’re talking about music. There’s the new, reimagined tool where you can, you know, generate some AI [00:38:00] music or replace copyright violations. What are these, you know, how do you think about these as far as adding that to your workload or workflow? Is that another distraction or do we need to be looking at using these kind of AI tools to help us generate music?

[00:38:13] Jerry Potter: Well, o- on the marketing side, I love the way that it’ll… Like, if you have a copyright violation, like it’ll actually go in and replace your music. I mean, that’s massive. Rather than having your content just die, you know, you can actually preserve your views and things like that. you know, like I love…

[00:38:27] Jerry Potter: This week I used the, the built-in YouTube editing tool to take a chunk out of my video, and I get to preserve all the views, right? So, so I love that kind of stuff. Music is an interesting thing. YouTube did a big study a couple of years ago, and they connected sensors to people’s brains to find out what leads to viewer satisfaction.

[00:38:45] Jerry Potter: Sorry if anybody is squeamish about that. But what they found was that an emotional connection with the video or the person in the video has 10 times the effect on viewer satisfaction than any sort of production [00:39:00] value. So from that, one of the things that I love to tell people is like, you don’t need fancy editing in order to be successful on YouTube.

[00:39:07] Jerry Potter: It’s really more about what, you know, it, it’s your script or what you say and the order you say it in, of course, your titles and your thumbnails. Like we know those are the, those are the big three. But when it comes to production value, what I do say is if the music, for example, in, in, in this discussion, enhances the emotional feeling of the video, then it’s probably worth it.

[00:39:27] Jerry Potter: If you’re just filling pauses with it, then it’s not worth taking the time to do anything with music.

[00:39:31] Jeff Sieh: Very cool. Speaking of music, we, we have a really quick, word from our sponsors That’s right. Thank you to Ecamm for sponsoring the [00:40:00] show. Uh, we appreciate them and all they do. But, Jerry, I wanted to ask really quick, and I mean, I know, I knew we had too many questions, but I, I’m trying to, I wanna, ask this one specifically, because you teach people to build a business in half the time.

[00:40:12] Jeff Sieh: So if a creator only has, like, 60 minutes, h- only has 60 minutes a week for, like, short form, where would you tell them to go spend their time right now giving some of these new changes that we’re seeing?

[00:40:22] Jerry Potter: Well, with, you know, with some of these updates, you know, like YouTube actually said if you upload a Short every day, you know, you’ll potentially get a bonus boost, make more money, things like that. I would strongly suggest… Well, to be clear upfront, you know, like generally what I teach is don’t pay attention to Shorts, that re- the return on effort is not as high.

[00:40:42] Jerry Potter: and like I would take the 60 minutes to make a long-form personally. But that being said, if you’re gonna focus on Shorts, I would think about high-value, low-effort Shorts. you know, lean into your expertise. one thing I think that you could do really well if you were trying to publish frequently on Shorts is if you’re in an industry that has a lot of news, then [00:41:00] I would, you know, set up something in AI where it aggregates the news for you every day and then gives you f- like five Shorts ideas.

[00:41:07] Jerry Potter: And then while you’re sitting in the car waiting to pick up your kids or on a hike or, or you can go into your office, you know, just crank them out like that. So that’s that first part I think is on the front end is, is streamline the ideation so you’re never having to like think of things over and over again.

[00:41:21] Jerry Potter: When somebody starts a new channel they’re, they’re like, “I got all the ideas.” And then 11 videos in they’re like, “There are no more ideas.” and then the second thing is I would say find out how to stream the backend. So basically you’re staying the human in the middle. You are in charge of…

[00:41:35] Jerry Potter: You’re being human. You are speaking the way that you actually speak. you’re not saying things that hopefully that AI wrote like, “Not this, not that, it’s this,” or, “And honestly,” and, you know, all of these, cringeworthy phrases that we see from all the AI content. Um, and then on the backend, find a real easy way to edit them.

[00:41:52] Jerry Potter: You know, two years ago I would’ve said, “Just do it in real time and hit upload. Don’t worry about it.” as though it’s a live stream. But now there’s just so many tools where you can [00:42:00] drop something in and have a polished Short with the pauses taken out and really nice looking captions in, you know, five minutes

[00:42:07] Jeff Sieh: Very cool

[00:42:08] Paul Gowder: Nice. So I have a question. because I’m, I have YouTube, but I’m definitely more in the Facebook world. And Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, they have all become interest-based platforms, not necessarily you, you have to have a big following. Now they’re surfacing just based on the, the viewer’s interest.

[00:42:24] Paul Gowder: Where is YouTube on that? Is, is, if I’m starting a channel, do I need to have my channel as a very niche subject, or can I be more broad now and post lots of different topics on my channel?

[00:42:35] Jerry Potter: Oh, YouTube’s the OG. Everybody else is copying YouTube. you know, and even LinkedIn, you know? That was one of the big things at, at, at Social Media Marketing World, and I think, you know, as I said, as I’m posting more now in the last couple of weeks, the reason I’m starting to see increased reach is because I’m no longer posting things from my network.

[00:42:52] Jerry Potter: I’m literally only talking about YouTube. And so, but YouTube was the original, and I really think the more narrow… Like, if you’re gonna start a new channel, the more [00:43:00] narrow you can be, the better, because it’s all about how quickly can YouTube find the audience for your videos? So just to give you, you know, an idea, one thing that I talk about is I talk about setting up a channel filter, and there’s three parts.

[00:43:14] Jerry Potter: One is who are you talking to? The more specific you can be, the better. So, you know, once Jeff starts his beard grooming channel, you know, if he’s just, if it’s just for anybody, you know, all, anyone who has beards, like, that could be a lot of people, but that also could be a lot of people, right? So if we could get more narrow from that, he’s going to do better.

[00:43:33] Jerry Potter: So for example, if I was gonna start… Like, my channel right now is for online entrepreneurs. It’s way too broad. If I was starting over, it would probably be just for coaches, or it might be more specific than that. It might be just health coaches, or it might be just,whole food plant-based nutrition health coaches.

[00:43:49] Jerry Potter: Because the more you can nail who you’re talking to, then the easier it is for you to be able to go, “Oh, we know who this person is.” I have a client, and I was like, “So who, what’s your who?” And she goes, “I work with badass female [00:44:00] coaches.” And I said, “Okay. YouTube doesn’t know who’s badass and who’s not, but they do know female coaches, so we can start with that.”

[00:44:06] Jerry Potter: So it’s, first it’s your who, what are they chasing, and then what are they escaping? So my channel is online entrepreneurs, too broad, grow a lead-generating YouTube channel without it taking over their whole life. Like, the ultimate promise is, you know, you can get started in 90 minutes a week. But, but they’re escaping, you know, becoming a full-time creator, and they’re chasing this lead-generating YouTube channel.

[00:44:25] Jerry Potter: So, so I think, you know, if you’re starting something new, yeah, it needs to be narrow, and it needs to be interest-based just like on the other platforms, because that’s… It’s not a, it’s not a platform decision, you know? The reason that Facebook and Instagram, are doing this is because that’s where the consumer behavior is now.

[00:44:41] Jerry Potter: When they see things they’re interested in, they s- keep the app open longer, and Meta makes more money

[00:44:47] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, exactly. It’s all about the dollars. so you just covered this on your channel and, it’s on the long form side. YouTube has actually shifted from rewarding watch time during the video to rewarding what happens [00:45:00] after, which I thought was really fascinating. I thought it was a great hook, by the way.

[00:45:03] Jeff Sieh: and your four big signals were shares, re-watches, and the viewer continuing to watch more YouTube and post-video satisfaction surveys, which you mentioned before. So for a creator who’s been optimizing for watch time for years, Is there anything they need to unlearn? Is watch time still the thing that you need to, that’s your, your optimal goal that you’re trying to get them, you know, to watch the entire sh- thing all the way to the end?

[00:45:24] Jeff Sieh: Is that still the, the biggest goal that you want as a creator?

[00:45:26] Jerry Potter: yeah. I mean, yeah, I, it, it’s never gonna hurt to focus on watch time and retention, so that’s not going away. But these additional signals are the type of thing that if you have high watch time, are probably going to happen anyway, so… But it’s just something to, I think, keep in mind as you are creating your content, you know?

[00:45:46] Jerry Potter: if somebody watches all the way through, they generally are more satisfied, and they’re more likely to tell YouTube that in a survey, right? if somebody is satisfied, they’re more likely to share your video. if somebody is satisfied or they wanna go deeper, they might [00:46:00] re-watch your video. So I don’t think it’s, you know, it’s definitely not either/or.

[00:46:04] Jerry Potter: they both still matter. in fact, I think, you know, when we, when we’re thinking about, the years of people padding their YouTube videos for watch time, like, “Oh yeah, just make longer videos. You can make more money from AdSense,” that’s the thing that I think a lot of this is cracking down on right now, is we’ve gotta tighten up our videos.

[00:46:22] Jerry Potter: We’ve gotta make our content better, and this plays back to everything we’ve talked about today, the AI answers, you know, all of it. There is no filling with fluff, anymore because, you know, if you’ve got… Y- like you can still have one hook, right? It’s important to have that one good hook. But if it’s a 22-minute video and revealing the hook, you know, the answer literally takes 10 seconds, those are the videos that I think are gonna be hurt by, you know, summaries and, and, you know, Ask YouTube and things like that.

[00:46:49] Jeff Sieh: Got it

[00:46:50] Paul Gowder: So let’s, let’s talk about how we get those other signals. you know, call to actions, hit the subscribe button. But if we’re looking for shares, that’s, to me, that’s a little more difficult. So what’s some tactical ways [00:47:00] we can get people to hit the share button?

[00:47:01] Jerry Potter: So asking for shares, a lot of people are uncomfortable with it, right? It feels desperate. sometimes it comes across as desperate too If you’re gonna ask for anything, you always wanna do it with the benefit of the viewer in mind. So if this was helpful and you know somebody else it would help, then share it with them.

[00:47:18] Jerry Potter: Like, if I’m going to ask for a share, I’m gonna do it s- with something like that, because then they’re going, “Oh my gosh, yes, I know somebody else is going through this right now. I’m going to share it with them.” That makes them look good. But I like to do more subtle ways of getting people, to share.

[00:47:31] Jerry Potter: Um, sharing across social platforms, The New York Times did this big study a few years, years ago, and almost every reason comes down to identity. Like, I’m sharing this because it makes me look good. I’m sharing this because it reflects who I am. So, you know, for example, I share, Seattle Seahawks content.

[00:47:47] Jerry Potter: I share Claude stuff right now with a couple of friends because we’re just all about Claude and living, in that world with Claude. And so those are kind of, you know… Th- those types of things are the reasons people share. But what I like to do is do a little bit more subtle, [00:48:00] you know, hints at why you should share something.

[00:48:02] Jerry Potter: So, for example, thank people for sharing generically. You’d be amazed that if you said, “Hey, thanks to everyone who shared my videos lately,” that subtle suggestion makes somebody goes, “Oh, maybe I should share this video.” It’s social proof, too. you can thank specific people for sharing if you really wanna track it.

[00:48:18] Jerry Potter: that can go really well. And then, you know, another one that I, I think is, is, is really easy is to say, “Hey, if someone shared this video with you, tell them that I said thank you.” you know, again, you’re just kind of putting that out there, and it’s got a little social proof built into it too

[00:48:31] Jeff Sieh: So we– I only have a couple minutes left, so I wanna have plenty of time f-for you to, to talk about Done By Lunch. But, one of the things that really stopped me on your channel was that the viewer who shares, rewatches, or stays on YouTube after your video is going to be, it’s gonna be your warmest lead.

[00:48:45] Jeff Sieh: Like, that’s one of the things you said. It’s like that’s the person who’s gonna be, you know, stays there, watches your whole thing, they’re the warmest lead for your next offer. So I really want you to try to explain that to maybe people or small business owners or solopreneurs who haven’t really thought that [00:49:00] way in the past.

[00:49:00] Jeff Sieh: Like, how does this new kind of algorithm, some of these changes we talked about today, actually feed your sa-sales funnel if you set it up right?

[00:49:08] Jerry Potter: Yeah. Well, so part of that was just, you know, I, I said that just so that people didn’t panic thinking, “Okay, now I can’t get leads ’cause I have to ask for shares,” or anything like that. fortunately, on the human side, it’s the same thing. Like, if your video is so good that they shared it, especially if they shared it with a specific person, then at that point, now not only did they share your content, introduced somebody else to your content, but now they’re talking to their friend about your content, hopefully you, and your business.

[00:49:36] Jerry Potter: So I mean, what’s better than that? Imagine the other friend says, “Oh yeah, you know, I know Paul. Paul’s great. I know Jeff. Jeff’s great.” And it’s like, “Oh, really? Okay, let me look deeper into their stuff.” So that’s one way. another one is, you know, if videos are getting re-watched, that person… You know, I almost look at it as sometimes they’re just trying to see something up close, right, that you had on the screen.

[00:49:55] Jerry Potter: But I look at it as, if we’re having a conversation with our viewer, we’re trying to build that [00:50:00] know, like, and trust, that rewatch is almost like if you’re telling a story and somebody pulls their chair a little closer, right? They lean in. And so these are all signals that absolutely make your person much more likely to become somebody who is going to pay you for something.

[00:50:16] Jerry Potter: so I think when we are going for those same signals, it helps our business. As far as actually getting people into the business, I, I like to talk about seeding constantly, you know, where I mentioned earlier, you just mentioned A client asked me this question, you know, those types of things.

[00:50:30] Jerry Potter: Some people are uncomfortable talking about the, the paid part of their business, but look at your paid stuff and then create your free stuff based around that so it’s easy to mention. Like, “Actually, you have a deep dive this, on this in my membership,” or, “I have a course or a workshop,” or, “I help private clients with this all the time, but let me give you the high-level overview.”

[00:50:45] Jerry Potter: And then the last thing, you know, as far as leads on YouTube, I like to talk about how people on YouTube are busy. You do– You cannot spend 30 seconds going, “Hey, go get this Of course, it’s free.” and so instead of lead magnets, I like to call them need magnets. We need to take [00:51:00] every reason we’re giving somebody to move forward in our world, and it’s gotta be something you can pitch in five seconds that they really need.

[00:51:07] Jerry Potter: They need to hear it and go, ” Oh, gosh, yeah, I, I don’t know that. I need that right now.” Because once you’ve done that, you can not only, you know, convert way more views into leads, but you can also mention them more than one time. You know, in a 10-minute video, you could plug three different things or plug it three different times because again, it’s five seconds.

[00:51:24] Jerry Potter: It’s not killing your watch time.

[00:51:25] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. So, gosh, I have so many questions, but the last question, Jerry, and this is kind of where your work really lives. With all these changes, the pressure to do more is real. Like we’re saving all this time with AI, but we’re using, we’re filling it up with more stuff to do, right? So how does your Done by Lunch framework apply like right now?

[00:51:43] Jeff Sieh: What’s the one thing that, creators should add to their week, and what’s one thing they should drop?

[00:51:48] Jerry Potter: So Done By Lunch is all about doing things that give you a high return on effort, and more than that, things that are going to serve you into the future and not just right now. And so that’s why I try and [00:52:00] do everything in my business. And so, you know, the main thing is give yourself permission to focus on what’s actually important.

[00:52:05] Jerry Potter: But if you are going to stop doing something, stop doing things that only have an impact today, and then start doing only things as much as you can. I know we all have to answer emails, but as much as you can, only do things, go, “Hey, is this still gonna be benefiting? Is this video I’m making right now is still gonna help me in six months?

[00:52:23] Jerry Potter: Great, then I’m gonna work on this.” And if it’s not, then consider something else.

[00:52:27] Jeff Sieh: That is great. Make sure you guys go check out, @mrjerrypotter over on YouTube. That’s where you can find his channel. great stuff. Done By Lunch is amazing. He’s, uh, always a wealth of information. I always like hanging out with him at conferences and watching his, his YouTube channel, all that stuff.

[00:52:41] Jeff Sieh: So Jerry, thank you so much for being here today. This was wonderful as always. thank you so much

[00:52:46] Jeff Sieh: for being on the show.

[00:52:47] Jeff Sieh: And Mr. Paul Gowder, where can people find out more about the amazing Mr. Paul Gowder?

[00:52:52] Paul Gowder: Uh, yeah, come on, check us out, paulgowder.com, and we have a challenge to help you create content on Facebook if you want to, get better at that [00:53:00] and, uh, get more consistent. Check it out, paulgowder.com/facebookchallenge

[00:53:04] Jeff Sieh: And thank you guys so much for watching. You guys are awesome. Thank you Disney Hotel Lady, Johnny Bean, But Mostly Disney, Dustin, Stout as always. Thank you guys for showing up because we have Have a great week everybody. Have a great weekend. we will see you next time. Bye now