June 9, 2025 • 48 mins
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Hafu Go shares his eight-year journey from making lip-sync videos as a kid to becoming a successful YouTube creator with videos that garner millions of views. His unique perspective on the step-ladder nature of YouTube growth provides valuable insight for creators at all levels.
• Began YouTube career making videos in his mom's house, spending 50+ hours editing videos that initially received just 200 views
• Committed to pushing through for at least one year, which helped him overcome the temptation to quit when growth was slow
• Documented his experience studying at "the Harvard of China" (Tsinghua University) which helped transition his content
• Describes pivoting from college vlogs to Shaolin monk training as a "life crisis moment" that ultimately doubled his subscribers
• Emphasizes the importance of "wedging" when transitioning content types rather than making abrupt changes
• Embraced YouTube Shorts early, with his first dedicated Short reaching 50 million views in a week
• Creates thumbnails and titles before filming videos, with multiple versions tested for performance
• Focuses heavily on pre-production planning to make editing more efficient
• Believes your "rate of progress is going to be equal to your rate of learning"
• Hiring editors and ideation people to support his growing channel
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's more
awesome than even you are.
I'm Travis, and today I have avery special guest.
It's Hafu Go.
What's going on?
What's up, man?
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well.
We are just a podcast thattries to help you grow your
YouTube channel, as well asevery once in a while, we talk a
little bit about candy.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We probably won't be doing that today, but Hafu Go is
giving us a little bit of histime.
I'm really appreciative of that.
So first of all, thank you forthat.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I know you're super busy producing them videos.
No, no, no, always got to maketime for the number one podcast.
You're exactly right about that.
It's more awesome than you are.
You have no idea.
But anyway, if you're new here,make sure you hit that
subscribe button.
We're here to help you growyour YouTube channel.
We talk to different creatorsall around the world, as well as
give you tips and tricks to getyour channel where it should be
.
So let's start with you.
First of all, I'm going to askthe question that I'm sure a lot
(00:54):
of people who are listening topodcasts a long time ago.
We have people that have beenlistening for years who might be
thinking Hafu Go, what doesthat mean?
What does that mean?
What is that?
That's just my name, that'sjust your name.
Hafu Go, that's just my name,that's just your name.
Hafu go yeah, that's just myname.
So, just like go and that's you.
You're hafu go, I am him.
That is I'm him.
Bro, we need to thank yourparents because that's like
amazing.
That's like the best youtubename.
(01:15):
I thought, literally you, youcame up with that.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
That's amazing no, that that's just my name.
That's my given name at least.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
At least your last name isn't like thort swap or
something where you have tochange it Because Go is like
easy.
Yeah, it's easy, that's amazing.
All right, well, look, let'stalk a little bit about YouTube
content creation, how youstarted on YouTube and
everything.
How did you start and what madeyou want to start on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, it's been a long journey.
You know, I've been on YouTubefor over eight years now and
even before that like, I madeYouTube videos as a like
elementary school kid just forfun, because I used to watch a
lot of Smosh and Nigahiga andthey used to make skits and me
and my friends would try to likerecreate some of the skits and
those were my first videos and Ialso did some lip syncing to
(02:03):
Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, love story All.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Story, the lost arc of Half U Go.
Yeah, that's how it started.
I mean it just like started,because I always watched YouTube
as a kid.
But then, when I took itseriously was in first year of
university.
That's when I was like lookingfor a passion, looking for
something to do, and I bought a300 used camera off of
(02:29):
craigslist and made my firstyoutube video and I didn't even
know how to edit, so I waswatching a youtube tutorial on
how to edit the video and toedit the video.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
That's amazing yeah, I actually have a question about
that.
So, um, not, this isn't truefor all youtube creators.
I ask this pretty much on everycreator uh, is the first video
that's on your channel youractual first video?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
because a lot of times the answer that is no I
mean there's, there's some stuffbefore then, but uh, nothing
that you guys need to see ah see, that's what it always comes
down.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's like well, yeah, but no, but yeah but no because
the reason I say this?
Because your first video islike a kale video or cooking
kale or something, and it's yeah, I mean yeah, like my first
official video on this channelis the kale video.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Okay, but um, there's like, like I said, like the lip
syncing videos.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I don't even know where they are you don't know
like I can't find them like Iwant to find them, but I can't
find them fair.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay, that's fair.
But I mean, even in that videothe editing and stuff was kind
of at a level that a first-timeYouTuber wouldn't normally have.
I'm not saying it's like whereit is now, but I'm saying as
someone who's watched tons ofvideos and helped content
creators of all sizes the firstvideo never looks quite like the
way you had it, did youpractice it, did you have it set
(03:43):
up and eventually did you thinkabout it.
What was going on there?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I made some videos for Facebook and stuff Just for
my Facebook friends, so I had alittle bit of practice editing
before that video, but it justtook a lot of time.
My first video took me like 50hours to edit just because I was
trying to learn Adobe and thepremiere is really hard to get
started, so it was like learninga whole new language that's
(04:10):
incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So, um, even back then, obviously the editing part
was taking a long time.
Were you storyboarding orscripting, or were you doing any
of that for your first coupleones, or is that something that
came much later?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
No, I was not that sophisticated.
No, that's good.
You think too highly of theyounger me.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, I watched a lot of the older stuff just to kind
of get a vibe for what wasgoing on so long ago.
Again, it was like seven, eightyears ago, which is first of
all.
I have a lot of respect forthat because, quite frankly,
we'll see some creators pop upout of nowhere and have tons of
subscribers and views andthey've only been around for two
or three years, but you'veactually been on the grind for a
very long time, so I respectthat fact that you really went
for it.
Um, what was it like for thisfirst couple uploads?
(04:50):
Were you getting did?
Did you get a couple thatpopped off, or were they all
kind of slow growers?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
no, it was uh actually very demoralizing let's
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I think we really need so I want just so you know,
our audience are a lot ofsmaller creators.
There are some larger creatorsto listen to, but a lot of
smaller creators who are puttingout videos they think are
really great and then they'rejust not getting views.
Talk us through what that waslike for you and how that, what
that made you feel.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I mean, that's exactly how it felt, like I was
putting like 50 hours into avideo and it would get like 200
views.
Or I was like, okay, next timeI'll do better.
And I was like trying to copyBuzzFeed.
At the time I did like a coffeereview video where I actually
went to like like sevendifferent coffee shops in my
city, vancouver, and that tooklike a whole day to film, and
(05:37):
then I was trying to do allthese effects and stuff and that
one took me like almost ahundred hours to make and it
ended up getting like 500 views.
So, um, it was very depressing.
It was, uh, like you put in somuch effort.
You would expect a little bitof something in return, or like
(05:59):
be rewarded for your efforts.
But I think that pushingthrough that down and pushing
through that hardship is whatdifferentiates the good creators
from the ones that never madeit, because it's going to be a
lot of times where you put a lotof effort into something and it
(06:19):
just doesn't pay off, but youjust got to learn what your
mistakes were and just keeppushing forward?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
what pushed you, what made you not give up?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
you know, I was, uh, I was tempted, you know, like I
was in school at the time.
Um, I was studying in college,so, uh, I, I had like all this
other stuff I could have done,like I could have just focused
on my academics, I could havejust went out partied, but I
think there was something.
There's two reasons.
(06:50):
One is when I was young, I hada habit of quitting things when
they got really hard.
Like I would like try all theseskills or whatever, like I
would try to learn something andtry like social media
management, like I would justlike quit when it got a little
too hard.
And I had enough self-awarenessto recognize that about myself.
(07:11):
So when I started YouTube, Imade a promise to myself that I
will stick through it, no matterwhat happened, for at least a
year.
And I think that's what droveme, because I didn't want to be
a failure in my own eyes.
I wanted to prove to myselfthat I could actually stick
through this.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
That's funny.
I did a similar thing.
I guess I'm doing this for ayear at least, because we're
kind of similar in that way.
I don't know if you're familiarwith how Google will come up
with these companies and stuffand then immediately like
terminate them and like there's,there's a website of like
Google companies that they'vethey've closed down and canceled
.
I felt like that was kind ofsomething that was going with me
and I was like I'm doing thisfor a year and I had a goal and
(07:54):
everything.
That's really cool that youwent through that same process.
So, yeah, what happened at theend of that year that made you
go?
Okay?
No, I'm actually going to keepgoing.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean nothing major, nothing major, but it wasn't
like a video really took off orsomething.
I think it was just a couplehundred views, maybe one will
get a couple thousand.
It wasn't like any majorbreakthroughs.
But I was heading into a newyear of college and I was going
(08:25):
on exchange to China, yeah, andthe school that I was going to
exchange to.
It was called TsinghuaUniversity and this is kind of
like the Harvard of China or theMIT of China, wow.
And they have, like, actually alower acceptance rate than
Harvard itself.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Wow, Because there's so many people in China, right,
yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Of course, yeah, of course of course.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So as a kid, this was a dreamand it's such a prestigious
school.
I wanted to document theprocess of studying there and
what that was like and what theenvironment was like, talking to
the people, talking to thestudents, and try to learn from
them.
So that new journey was mydriving factor for keep making
(09:08):
videos.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I love that.
What was it like?
Culturally?
It's different there in Chinaright now.
I actually just watched alittle documentary yesterday
about like these street streams,these streamers that are like
on the street and everything.
It's a big popular thing.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Like there's a.
When I went to New York, by theway, like a couple months ago,
I saw the real life npc on newyork streets.
Yeah, he was live streamingjust doing emotes and stuff
that's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
That must be wild to see that in person.
Like, wait a minute, I've seenthat guy.
I mean, you know, yeah, um, butback then, culturally, what was
it like to be a YouTuber on acollege campus in China?
Was that widely accepted, orwas it kind of looked at weird
or what was that like?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So funny thing about China is like they're actually
like very advanced in terms oftheir technology, so like social
media was already a huge thingin China as well, just not the
Western social media.
They were using like Weibomostly.
It's kind of like Facebook,right, right, facebook and
(10:12):
Twitter mixed together, so likethey were using mostly Weibo and
I would actually sometimes seepeople filming content on campus
.
Oh yeah, so it was prettywidely accepted.
People were like into it.
You know I could like get otherpeople students and stuff to
like come be my video.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It wasn't too hard of a push so then did you, uh, do
any of your content on thechinese social media um websites
as well?
I did, I did.
Did I do well or better orworse?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I did really well because they like that, like
cross-cultural references.
Right, I can talk as aforeigner about Chinese culture
and then I can talk about theWestern culture to the Chinese
people as well.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So were you more popular on those platforms than
YouTube at that time?
Or about the same.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You know, at the time when I went there, I had 200
subscribers on YouTube.
Okay, it took me a year to getthere, so I was very proud and
it was my goal.
It was after six months, sothat was my study period.
It was my goal to reach 1,000.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Okay, I like that, I love that.
That's cool, yeah.
What do you think about goals?
We're going to talk a littlebit more about where you are now
, but I still want to do thisearly journey thing.
Do you think setting goalsearly in your YouTube career, in
your content creation career,helped, hindered, hurt or was
neutral in your journey Settinggoals?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Honestly, I think it depends on the person, but for
me, I think setting goals wasreally important.
It was like, I think, one thingI realized is that I always end
up reaching my goals, but justnot the exact timeline that I
set for myself.
That's fair.
I think having goals isimportant because it gives you a
(11:57):
place to aim for, it gives you,like, a vision for the future.
And when you create, you canlike look forward to that.
I think less so about goals.
It's more about trying toproject forward and visualize
your life what it would be likein a year, what would be like in
two years, five years, tenyears, like you don't have to
(12:17):
set concrete goals, but if youhave a concrete vision, you can
like work towards that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I love that kind of visualizing what you want things
to look like in a certain timeperiod.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, so for example, at the time, really popular
creators was.
One of them was Jake Paul.
Of course, jake Paul wasactually you can argue that
still today.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, he's no longer creating on YouTube, but at the
time he's creating, though, buthe is creating in his own is
yeah he was vlogging on youtubeand he was like at the top of
the game, sure, and also caseyneistat and all those people.
But I can remember like um, Ithink jake paul said in a video
or a podcast I don't know whereexactly, but I think he was
saying like he spends twothousand dollars on a video.
(13:00):
When I I heard that, I was like, damn, I wish someday I could
spend $2,000 on a video, becauseat the time I was in school and
like spending $30 on a videoeven felt expensive to me, like
buying all those copies in everycoffee shop was super expensive
, it cost me like a hundredbucks and I was like, whoa, this
(13:22):
is such a high investment video, but now our videos cost
thousands of dollars to make.
So I think I had a vision inthe back of my head, even if
that wasn't a goal per se.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, no, I love that .
That's really cool.
So when would you say, beforewe get to the kind of when
things started picking up?
I saw that you also did a TEDTalk.
That's kind of unusual for alot of people.
How did that happen?
What?
I saw that you also did a TEDTalk.
That's kind of unusual for alot of people.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
How did that happen?
What is that all about?
Yeah, the TED Talk is like.
It was an interestingexperience because I was through
my university.
They had like a program formentoring high school students
and I was like mentoring thesehigh school students and then
(14:07):
they hosted a TEDx event andinvited me to speak there.
Wow, what was that like for you?
That was really fulfilling.
I think I really enjoy thepublic speaking element and I
enjoy giving back what I'velearned.
It's same thing with thispodcast, like the fact that I
can share my lessons to a biggeraudience and maybe they can
(14:27):
take away something and starttheir journey or progress faster
.
That's really fulfilling to me.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Do you do any of that now?
Do you go to VidSummit orVidCon or anything like that
and… do anything, or are youstill kind of in your own thing?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, I'm doing a lot more speaking this year and
also a bit of last year.
So last year I spoke atVidSummit Very cool, if you know
that one.
I love VidSummit, yeah.
And then this year I spoke at afew marketing events and then I
was actually just at the Googleheadquarters speaking as well.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Very, cool, that's amazing.
So let's go back to a littlebit earlier in your career.
Things started picking up.
When was that, and what washappening?
What was going through yourmind during that time?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The way I view YouTube is I see it as step
ladders.
So basically, it's never like aconstant growth upwards.
It feels like it plateaus andthen it takes a huge step up and
then it plateaus again, andthen another huge step up and
then plateaus again.
Sure, yeah, yeah.
(15:29):
So that's how I feel like myjourney was.
So the first real breakthroughwas when I was on exchange.
I was making weekly videosabout my experience there and I
think I got to 1,500 subscribersby the end of my exchange.
And some videos got like 30,000,50,000 views, so that was
(15:52):
really impressive to me.
And then, after I came back toCanada where I was studying, I
started vlogging just tocontinue the school niche.
I started doing these day inthe life vlogs and they were
really popular.
So one blew up and got like50,000 views in a day and
(16:15):
eventually got like 100,000views.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
about?
What was that video about?
Do you remember?
It was a day in the life,that's it.
It was a day in the life of aUBC student.
Wow, ubc is where I wasstudying.
Okay, because at the time, dayin the life was really popping
off.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
You know, like Elliot Choi, Sean Rizwan Nicholas Jay,
so that was intentional.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
All these were my peers, so that was intentional
to try to do that type ofcontent because it was doing
well.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
A little bit, okay.
I mean a little bit of it wasintentional, a little bit of it
was just continuing the niche Iwas in.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Okay, Cool.
So, as that was taking off,what kind of things were going
through your head where youthink okay now, did you know
about doubling down?
Did you know what that meantaudience-wise?
What was going through yourmind?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I mean it wasn't that sophisticated, but I definitely
knew I needed to do more ofthis.
So I like kind of honed in onthe college niche okay.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So, as you said and this is common for a lot of
creators they'll have thismoment and then things will slow
down.
Actually, one of the firstthings I always say to a content
creator who's having one oftheir moments when things are
blowing up is okay, you need toprepare for the next thing,
because it's going to slow down.
It always does 100% of the time.
It slows down when things kindof slow down and it wasn't
continuing to go straight up,did that worry you at any point,
(17:31):
or were you just kind of likeno, I get it.
This is part of the journey.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, like you said, it always slows down after an
explosive period, but yourbaseline will be higher, right,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I wasn't worried because mybaselines were higher and I
could see growth overall.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, so you actually were able to kind of look at
the step back from it all and gono, this is still heading in
the right direction, Not that,oh my God, I've been canceled
Like all of a sudden.
Things don't work.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I think it's good to zoom out a little bit
once in a while, just because welook at a 28 day period,
especially on youtube studio,and that has a lot of
fluctuations, a lot of ups anddowns.
Right when you see a gray arrowin a month, that's the breath
yeah, that's terrible, but but Ilook at my year-long statistics
(18:22):
from time to time and I'll tellyou this, travis I've never had
a year where I didn't growfaster.
Let's go.
I love that.
I never had a gray arrow on ayear-long.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
On a year.
That's such a clutch thing tosay, because it is more because
we actually get people to emailin.
We do like these.
We have people email in um, wedo like these.
We have people email in.
We answer their questions onthe podcast and we hear a lot of
the oh, I did this great videoand it did well.
But now everything seems to bedead.
But it's only been like twoweeks and it's like no, it's,
it's more than this two weeks.
(18:55):
It's not this.
Don't let the youtube one often things make you think that
that's your entire career.
It's like you're you're going tohave a ton of 10 of 10s.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, like zoom out a little bit, Take perspective,
Like look on a yearly basis thetrajectory.
If it's upward then you don'tneed to worry, right, I love
that that's so clutch.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Now you were doing like you said, a year in the
life of a college student thing,but of course at some point,
hopefully, you graduate college.
So you know you can't do thatforever what was the pivot.
How did you pivot?
What did you like?
How did that process Take usthrough?
I'm doing the day in the lifeof college stuff, but I need to
do something else.
Take us through that wholething.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That was a life crisis moment for me.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Talk us through it.
I love that.
You just I'm hooked.
I need to hear this.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Tell me well, it was my whole identity college
vlogging, youtube, uh, studyinglike all that was my entire
identity.
And I could sense the end of itas I was like nearing the last
year because I'm like, okay,what do I do next?
Right, like I don't think myaudience will like anything.
Um, because, like, they onlylike, they care about you to a
(20:03):
certain extent, but they caremore about like you being in
that college environment, sothey want to like, project
themselves onto you.
So if you are no longer in thatcollege environment, they have
no reason to watch you.
And I've seen other people in myniche do different types of
transitions.
So some people they focus moreon street interviews.
(20:26):
They started interviewingcollege students and then they
focused more on streetinterviews.
Okay, that was the transition.
Some people focus on vlogging,just like vlogging your daily
life.
And I was thinking about my owntransition and I personally
didn't want to do the vloggingaspect of it.
So I did more productivityvideos right away because it was
(20:51):
kind of related to the niche.
But then COVID hit and Icouldn't travel anywhere because
the series that was doing thebest for me at the time was a
campus tour series.
So that was actually my nextstep.
Right, I was going to finishcollege and I was going to tour
(21:12):
all these like Ivy Leaguecampuses and interview the
students and get like study tipsand like maybe show some of the
student life on each of theseIvy League campuses.
I did four but COVID hitcouldn't travel.
I was stuck in my room and Iwas like what do I do?
(21:34):
So I transitioned toproductivity and then I did
productivity for 10 videos and Igot so bored I was like how
much productivity can you talkabout?
At a certain point, you justgot to do your work, man, right,
right, I love it.
You trying to optimize everysingle minute is wasting more
time than if you just go and didthe work.
(21:56):
Yeah, you're speaking truth, goahead.
So I was like really burnt outand I didn't make videos for
three, four months, wow yeah.
And then in that time I wasdoing a bit of soul searching,
you know, just trying to likefigure out, like, hey, what do I
want to do next?
Because, for YouTube, I feellike it's so connected with who
(22:21):
you are as a person, like thetype of content you make is so
connected with who you are as aperson, like the type of content
you make is so connected to whoyou are as a person.
So when you're brainstormingnew content, it's almost like
you're trying to reinventyourself and you're trying to go
through this journey ofself-discovery.
So that's why it took so long,because I wasn't just thinking
about content, I was thinkingabout me as a person.
And eventually I landed on thisthing that I've always wanted
(22:46):
to try, which is I, as a kid,loved watching kung fu movies.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I did too.
I met Jackie Chan, interviewedhim.
Oh, you did.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Wonderful.
I just did a collab with KarateKid, the new Karate Kid, yeah
the one that's coming out.
I'm gonna check it out, yeahyeah, out With Ben Wong, but
anyway.
So I loved kung fu movies as akid.
I wanted to train with aShaolin monk, because that's
like the stem of kung fu, right.
(23:17):
Yeah, that was something thatI've always wanted to do and I
was just like thinking about allthese type of content
directions, and the Shaolin monkdirection really stuck out to
me.
It was like a super ambitiousproject.
I didn't know how I would do itit's completely different than
college stuff but it just stuckout to me as like a good piece
of content and yeah.
(23:39):
So I was like working on that.
I was kind of just likearchitecting the storyline.
I was kind of just likearchitecting the storyline.
I was trying to make it likesuper viral and eventually
somehow one of my friendsintroduced me to a Shaolin monk.
What are the chances?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
of that.
Who has friends that knowShaolin monks?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Well, like I was, I said it in a Q&A video, Like
people were asking me like, oh,what's a video you've always
wanted to make but haven't?
And then one of my friends sawthe video and just reached out
to me it was amazing.
So, yeah, I found a Shaolinmonk and we made this six-part
documentary series of metraining to be a Shaolin monk.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, and and.
Then that's where things werelike.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
now this is cooking and that's where things really
took off Because at the timeafter I graduated, I think it
was about 200K subscribers, sure, and then I made this Shaolin
Monk series and it doubled to500K.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You were cooking, then huh.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, it didn't hit right away because my transition
from productivity to kung fuwas instant and the audience was
like what the heck?
What's going on?
Yeah, like this makes no senseto me.
Yeah, um, and it took it thevideo, the first video I
published on shaolin monks.
It's at nine million viewsright now.
(24:58):
Yeah, but when I first uploadedit was like a 7 out of 10.
Yeah, and it just sat there fora while.
It took three months for it tofind the right audience.
I love that.
It never gave up Because it wasgood content.
I love YouTube because if youmake a good piece of content, it
will find the right audienceeventually.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
This is a really interesting piece of information
you're sharing, because we'reactually going to do an episode
on pivoting in the coming weeksand what you're saying here is
so important because pivotingcan be very scary, especially if
you had any type of successprevious to pivoting and you're
just done with it.
Because I'm kind of in thatspace, jen's in a space, and we
(25:41):
talked a lot of creators in thatspace where it's like, okay,
I've done that thing, I'm notreally interested in it.
The next thing is slightlydifferent.
And then there's always thisquestion of creating another
channel or pivoting on your ownchannel.
Now, we're still going throughyour process of where you are
now, but let's skip ahead alittle bit.
Knowing what you know now,would you have told yourself,
(26:02):
generally speaking, to havepivoted on a new channel or to
have done what you did, which iskeep it on your main channel?
It seems like it's no brainerto keep it on your main channel,
but you see a lot of channelsnow that pop up with really good
videos the first three or fourand they get hundreds of
thousands of views right off thebat.
What are your thoughts now?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I probably wouldn't have done the exact strategy I
did back then.
Interesting, completely 180 onmy audience.
What would you do now?
I would pivot more slowly.
Yeah, interesting, I would tryto have transitional videos in
between I've literally I call itwedging.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I've been talking about this for years.
Talk to us, speak it.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, because it's confusing, both from an
algorithm perspective and anaudience perspective, when you
upload something that'scompletely unrelated.
I mean, it worked out for mebut like it was to the detriment
, like my strategy wasdetrimental to the success was
to the detriment, my strategywas detrimental to the success,
it wasn't complementing thesuccess.
So I would suggest to you hey,let's say I wanted to do the
(27:04):
Kung Fu thing, I wanted toupload that series and I was
currently in the productivityniche.
Then maybe I'm just thinking atthe top of my head, maybe I
would interview differentproductivity experts and then
that could be like a transitionand eventually I get into more
like personal development, andthen eventually I interview the
(27:26):
monk about personal development,and then that transitions me
into the monk sphere, right, andthen I can go into the training
kung fu, right?
yeah, yeah so like I.
There's definitely a smart,smarter ways I could have done
it.
I was a little barbaric.
I was just like you know what?
You know what, yolo, yolo baby,let's get it.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I love that and yeah, that's the thing I've been
explaining for a long time.
People have heard me use theterm wedging.
He just explained it probablybetter than I could have.
All.
All right, let's talk a littlebit more about, kind of more
currently, where you are.
What are your thoughts,generally speaking, on YouTube
Shorts?
We definitely have thoughtshere on the podcast, but I'd
love to hear what are yourthoughts on YouTube Shorts?
What do you use them for, whatare your expectations in making
a short and what's the strategybehind it?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
YouTube Shorts are undoubtedly the fastest way to
grow on the platform right now.
Right, and when YouTube Shortsfirst came out, everybody was
hating on Shorts.
They were like it's going tosplit your audience, you're
going to get no views, it'sgoing to basically destroy your
(28:31):
channel if you start uploadingShorts on your main channel and
I just kind of took a look atthat and I saw shorts as an
opportunity instead of like athing to avoid.
Okay, so I dove like head in.
When shorts first came out, Iwas like, all right, we're going
to try to figure out shorts andreally really like hone in on
(28:52):
that.
Okay, and in the beginning itwas complete white space because
nobody was focusing energy onshorts.
They were just transportingcontent from other platforms.
So, like we made contentdedicated to shorts and the
first video that I madespecifically for shorts, instead
of reformatting long-formvideos the first video that I
(29:14):
made specifically for shorts itgot 50 million views within a
week.
Wow, and that growth wassomething that I've never seen
before Throughout my years ofuploading on YouTube 50 million
views in a week, never seen thatbefore.
Insane.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
And what was the impact on your overall channel?
Did that change anything or wasit just kind of helped your
shorts, your future shorts, gettraction faster?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So in the beginning it was like a split right, like
it was like you had like ashorts traffic and then you had
a long form traffic.
They weren't really correlated,but I kind of viewed it as a
investment strategy.
It's kind of like a hedge,because if at some point YouTube
(30:01):
as a platform figures out howto bridge the gap between short
form and long form, then I havethis audience I can leverage to
push into long form.
And eventually they did.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, love it.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So it was like I was like there is no downside.
If I looked at the analytics,it did not reduce the amount of
views I got for my long formvideos.
A lot of people were saying itdid, but I think it was just
because their long form videoswere tanking anyway.
Yeah not doing well.
Anyway, don't blame theirshorts, bro.
(30:35):
That's fair.
No, that's fair I like that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I like that so like.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I just took an objective look at the data and
the best thing about YouTube isthey give you so much data and I
saw no negative correlationbetween shorts views and
long-form views.
They may not correlate like interms of they not have like more
shorts view didn't correlate tomore long-form views.
They may not correlate like interms of they not have like
short, more shorts view didn'tcorrelate to more long-form
(31:02):
views.
but I saw that like okay,there's no downside, so I might
as well, just focus on this,because it's the growth that you
haven't seen anywhere before.
Right, because when platformspush out a new feature, they're
really likely to promote thatfeature.
Youtube now made a dedicatedbutton on the home screen for
(31:24):
shorts, so you're definitelygoing to get a lot of benefit by
jumping on trends early.
So now shorts have evolved.
Right, it's been like almostthree years I don't know three,
four years since shorts came out.
Almost three years I don't knowthree, four years since Shorts
came out.
And now there's a lot morecreators putting in a lot of
(31:44):
effort, like MrBeast is doingShorts and he's spending like
thousands, hundreds, tens ofthousands of dollars on each
Shortform video.
So there's a lot morecompetition.
But I would still say there'sopportunity there.
There's still white space therefor people to come in.
Interesting Shorts is thenumber one way for discovery.
(32:05):
You seem pretty passionateabout it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I love that.
I love to hear that let's talkabout some other aspects of
creation you may or may not bepassionate about.
I'd love to hear this let'stalk about the thumbnail process
.
Obviously, you have some bangerthumbnails.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I mean you don't have a video until you have a
thumbnail, I would.
I'm glad you said that how doyou do?
Speaker 1 (32:26):
you do you already have the thumbnail and title
figured out before you shootyour video, or where is that?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
yes, yes, good, I I would say the biggest change I
made, that blew up.
My channel is really, reallybeing stringent on that rule
where we have to figure out thepackaging before we upload.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I totally agree on this.
I totally agree on this.
So how long does it take you todo like I assume you have a
team that does thumbnails andstuff how long does the process
go from, like, the idea to theend goal, to the end result of
the thumbnail now?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It varies, but maybe like a week or so, maybe two
weeks.
It depends on the thumbnail.
We usually create multipleversions of each thumbnail.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Are you using A-B testing or no?
Yes, okay, have you found thatuseful?
Yes, very useful.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I mean, I was doing it before just manually.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, just going back for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
And is this one of the partsyou liked?
You liked helping out with thethumbnail process.
Do you do the thumbnailsyourself, like, how does that
process work?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yes, I am very involved in the creative process
for thumbnails and the ideaitself.
Because as I level up as acreator, there's like people
that work for me.
Now I have to think about likewhat my role in the company is
right and where I can have themost leverage with my time.
(33:52):
And the thought I had is theearlier I can get involved in
the creative process, the moreleverage that time has.
Because if it's in the ideaphase, one little change to the
idea can drastically impact theviews and one little change to
the thumbnail concept can havereally outsized impact on the
(34:13):
performance of the video.
So I am very involved in thatprocess.
Really outsized impact on theperformance of the video.
So I am very involved in thatprocess.
But the later it gets into theprocess for example, like, let's
say, scripting or whatever it'slike yeah, scripting a scene
might be cool but like it's notgonna impact the views
dramatically- Editing does,though.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So how in depth are you on that and like, how
involved are you in that?
And is that something thattakes a long Because you were
talking about before you weredoing 100 hours and stuff?
Where are we at now?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, I have editors that work for me.
I still review the video, so Itry to review at the beginning.
I try to review at every stage,but it's most importantly for
me to review at the beginningwhere the ideas and the
thumbnails and important for meto review the final version of
the edit.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And how often at the end are you like, ah, we just
need to change so much of this.
Is it normally like you have ateam that is so in tune with
your vision now that you don'thave to do that, or is it still
a lot of push back and forth?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
We most of the time don't have to change the video
dramatically, because that'slike a lot of wasted effort.
Like I think in the beginning,when I first started, when I was
filming by myself, editing bymyself, I would kind of just
YOLO the shoot.
I would maybe think of the idealike in the, and then I would
(35:38):
go out and film and then I'll belike, okay, I'll figure it out
in the edit.
Okay, yeah, but that was somuch work.
Sometimes the edit just didn'tturn out how I wanted it to and
then I have to figure out okay,what is the storyline here?
It just took so many hours andover time I found the more time
(35:59):
I put into pre-production, theeasier my editing Interesting.
So now we try to plan the videoout completely scene by scene
before we even start filming.
So every piece of content thatwe film we'll make it into the
edit.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
All right, we're going to it into the edit.
That's awesome.
All right, we're gonna go intothe last section here.
I'm gonna do some shotgunquestions here in a minute, but
I just wanna tell you a coupleof videos that I watched that I
really like, and mainly becausethey are things that I
personally enjoy.
The RC cars one actually washeavy and still kind of am into
RC cars now, so I saw youactually one of the cars at the
(36:38):
end.
The black one is one of theones I wanted to buy last year,
but I'm like I think it's soexpensive, so so amazing.
Though it's fine, I think like70, 80 miles an hour, you're
burning out tires every threeminutes Like I wanted that car,
and to see you drive around havefun with it seemed like it was
just a lot of fun, and I was aformer magician, so the magic
episode I just watched recentlywas really fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(36:58):
So what was it like doing those?
Because those are just like,it's like you're just playing.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
It's like the most fun ever Like.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What kind of a job is this?
You're just playing.
You're watching magic tricks,learning magic and driving RC
cars.
What is that like now?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I mean, the one thing that we try to keep on the
channel is we have an element oflearning in every single video
and these like fun hobbies arelike really great way for people
to like kind of dip their toesinto what it takes to do the
hobby, the fun parts of thehobby, and maybe like learn some
life lessons as well.
So I really love doing thosetype of videos.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And you say learning a lot.
There's a lot of science stuffyou're doing now and kind of
teaching and stuff.
Is that kind of what you wouldelevator pitch to someone who's
never heard of you or never seenyou before you go?
This is what my channel isabout.
It's about teaching in a funway science or something.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, I would just say we showcase science, tech
and innovations in the world ina fun way.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
We got some questions here.
I think these are going to bekind of fun, mainly because most
people don't ask thesequestions.
When you do podcasts orinterviews, I like to try to do
things that are different.
Have you ever unlisted ordeleted a video on your channel?
On this channel.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, I mean some stuff that just didn't align
with the content right now.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Was it older stuff, or was it kind of even like in
the last two, three years?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Some mostly older stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
And it was mainly it was like algorithmic reasons,
because it's not who yourcurrent audience is.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
No, it's just kind of like.
I mean, those videos weren'tgetting that many views in real
time anyway, so I don't think itaffected the algorithm, but
it's just more of like abranding perspective.
When someone comes to yourchannel, if you have like videos
on 10 different topics, like,what can they expect?
Right?
So, I just privated some videoswhere it was no longer related
(38:55):
but, like you can still see adistinct transition between my
college days and what I'm doingnow.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
What is the favorite video you've ever done?
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I think the Shallon series was really fun.
It was something that I plannedout for months and I'm really
glad that it turned out the wayit did, because it's kind of
like the modern day Karate Kid.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, would you do an updated version of that now,
since you liked it so much, oris that something that you think
maybe you're probably past?
I think maybe Like a differenttwist on it, or something.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I'm not going to count it out.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
All right, that's fair.
Which video did you think whenyou made it was going to do
really well, but it didn't?
Was there one you could thinkof, like you're like, oh, this
is going to be a banger.
And you're like, eh, it didn'treally hit the way I wanted it
to Not, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Let me see.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
And everything is relative right.
So your non-banger could be abanger for someone else.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I mean I think in the beginning I had more of an
expectation.
Oh, do you not haveexpectations now?
Well, I mean I haveexpectations now, but they're
like more met on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Listen, that's great, that's awesome, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
That's great.
In the beginning I hadexpectations that weren't met.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
So, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's really important
to have because, like, if youhave these expectations aren't
met on a regular basis, then itdefinitely is a demoralizing
kind of thing to go through whatyou were talking about kind of
earlier in your career too.
Yeah, if you could do one ofyour videos over again, which
one would it be?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
I don't think I would do any videos over again.
Wow, no regrets.
I think they were the best Icould do at the time.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Okay, I respect that.
Is there any videos that youuploaded, done that you kind of
wish I wish I didn't do that?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
do that one like you kind of like feel ambivalent
about now again, I just don'tlike to dwell on the past and
I'm like okay, a video did well,didn't do well.
I liked it, didn't like it.
I I think I just like take whatI can from that and just focus
on the next one was that alwaysyour thought process?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
if you have, you all, because a lot of people can't
do that yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I mean, like, what's dwelling on the past video going
to do for you, right?
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Yeah, I think that's important and I think it's hard
for people, because what yousaid earlier and I think this
goes for a lot of creators is toput a lot of time and effort
into something, and your channeland your videos are a
reflection of who you are.
So sometimes it feels like arejection of who you are, but
you don't feel that way.
Is that what you're basicallysaying?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
No, I do feel that.
I do feel that I definitelyfeel rejected.
Okay, but you're able to Adwelling on the rejection and
the feeling of depression is notgoing to get me anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I just recognize that .
I love that.
Is that something that's alwaysbeen something with you, or did
you have to learn that kind ofskill?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I think that muscle and that strength and the
tenacity develops over time, youcan start somewhere right.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
You get more unfazed over time You're like a thicker
skin.
Yeah, so for a content creator,we'll just talk to our content
creators now that are watchingand listening, newer content
creators that are in the space.
I mean you're in a kind ofcompetitive space.
If you were new today, whatwould be the things that you
would tell the new Hafu Go who'sjust today starting a channel?
(42:31):
Maybe has 100 subscribers?
What are the things that thatperson needs to know now Good,
bad and different, like even thethings that that person needs
to know now good, bad anddifferent, like even the things.
Like things are going to suck,like that's a that's a perfectly
valid piece of information.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
What would you say to that person, that creator yeah,
I mean things are gonna suckfor sure, but uh, definitely
push through it.
I think just when I started onYouTube, everything was a
guessing game.
Click-through rate wasn't evena thing.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
And there was so little information out there
about how to succeed on YouTube,so I had to figure out
everything on my own.
But now it's pretty clearfigure out everything on my own,
but now it's pretty clear.
You can get a very clearroadmap on how to succeed on
YouTube for free by watchingyour videos or just whatever
(43:26):
videos on YouTube that's outthere.
So I think the most importantthing is just be a learning
machine.
That's all you got to do right.
Every source, every piece ofcontent that you can learn.
Take that in Every creator youcan talk to.
Take that in Every video thatyou upload.
(43:46):
Analyze it, see what kind offeedback you're getting, see the
data, take that information inand try to improve the next one.
So your rate of progress isgoing to be equal to your rate
of learning.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yo, that was fire.
So really focus on that.
That was fire.
Okay, we're gonna finish upwith something I like to do
every once in a while.
So one of the things that theMainFit IQ channel does a lot is
we audit a channel.
We'll take a look at a video,the first 30 seconds or
something, and kind of critiquethe hook or whatever.
We're going to do that here.
I'd love for you to take a lookat this video.
This is from I think I can'tremember what the channel is.
(44:24):
All right.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I ain't holding back.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
You ain't going to hold back.
It's going to be.
I think it's like a 30-secondclip.
We're just going to look at theintro.
This was a small creator.
See, this is an older video.
For them it's called my twoyear search for a perfect black
t-shirt, which I think is a-.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Oh, that's my video.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Hafu Go.
I think let's take a look andsee what the heck let's see
Bro's trolling me.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
He can like bait me.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you'd be
willing to risk everything justto get it?
For the past few years, I'velusted, fantasized and chased
after the perfect black t-shirt.
Today I finally found it.
I want to share with you mystory.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
All right, that's like 25 seconds in.
What do you, what do youthought of this young creator?
I think they, they got a, theygot a future ahead of them, but
what?
What are your thoughts on thisvideo?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
wow I haven't looked back on my older videos in a
long, long time, but uh prettycringe, very cringe but it's
ambitious, like I love.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
First of all, I thought it's kind of for people
who are listening to audiopodcast.
You got to go to the YouTubechannel to watch that.
It's very intense.
He's got a like it looks like aCGI thing of Kanye there, like
a whole bunch of stuff going onA red background with was this
like in your apartment orsomething.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
It was in my mom's house.
What was the idea?
Instead of like a long ropeacross and then just hung shirts
in the background.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Where did you think of the idea of the perfect
search for a black t-shirt?
That's crazy.
That's an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
I mean, that was like a genuine thing that I was
doing.
I really just love wearingblack t-shirts.
I now have like 20 of the sameblack t-shirts.
So I did find a perfect blackt-shirt.
Because black is so simple.
You just put it on 20 of thesame black t-shirts.
So I did find a perfect blackt-shirt.
Um, because it's like black isso simple, right, you just put
it on.
It looks good, you don't have toworry about stains so simple so
I was like okay, it may be kindof interesting to make a video
(46:26):
on the topic and I'll tell youthis now there have been fashion
creators that made a video on asimilar topic within the last
two years.
That got like a lot more viewsthan I did because they didn't
approach it in the cringe waythat I did.
They were like more likereviewing different black
t-shirts like one dollar versusa five hundred dollar black
t-shirt.
That would have been way moreviral as a format.
(46:48):
But I don't know.
I think when you're beginningit's good to get these like
creative ideas out there, justso you can exhaust all your bad
ideas and you can eventually getto the good ones get to the
good ones, uh, so no, hafo goblack t-shirts, uh, on merch.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Huh, we're not gonna get that are we gonna get that.
I mean because I can be kind offire, I can be kind of fire.
Anyway, we thank you so muchfor joining us.
Hafu, um, we're gonna havelinks for his channels and
everything in the descriptionand the show notes for the audio
podcast listeners.
Hafu, anything you want to tellthese content creators before
we go today.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, I want to say I think you just got to keep
making more videos.
Like I said, just keep makingmore videos, learn from each one
, and I am hiring.
Hey, am hiring, if you are forwait, if you want to work behind
the scenes on youtube.
If you don't want to be infront of the camera, please
(47:49):
reach out to me via the emailthat you'll leave in the
description.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I I 100 know you will .
You will get people, get people.
That goes without saying.
There we have some very hungrycreators out there right now
yeah, I'm hiring for editors andum ideation people amazing.
Well, listen, this might beyour opportunity.
You never know.
Listening to the podcast couldchange your life, and we're here
to do that for you every singleweek here on the podcast.
We'll see you, guys and gals,in the next one.
Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's more
awesome than even you are.
I'm Travis, and today I have avery special guest.
It's Hafu Go.
What's going on?
What's up, man?
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well.
We are just a podcast thattries to help you grow your
YouTube channel, as well asevery once in a while, we talk a
little bit about candy.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We probably won't be doing that today, but Hafu Go is
giving us a little bit of histime.
I'm really appreciative of that.
So first of all, thank you forthat.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I know you're super busy producing them videos.
No, no, no, always got to maketime for the number one podcast.
You're exactly right about that.
It's more awesome than you are.
You have no idea.
But anyway, if you're new here,make sure you hit that
subscribe button.
We're here to help you growyour YouTube channel.
We talk to different creatorsall around the world, as well as
give you tips and tricks to getyour channel where it should be
.
So let's start with you.
First of all, I'm going to askthe question that I'm sure a lot
(00:54):
of people who are listening topodcasts a long time ago.
We have people that have beenlistening for years who might be
thinking Hafu Go, what doesthat mean?
What does that mean?
What is that?
That's just my name, that'sjust your name.
Hafu Go, that's just my name,that's just your name.
Hafu go yeah, that's just myname.
So, just like go and that's you.
You're hafu go, I am him.
That is I'm him.
Bro, we need to thank yourparents because that's like
amazing.
That's like the best youtubename.
(01:15):
I thought, literally you, youcame up with that.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
That's amazing no, that that's just my name.
That's my given name at least.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
At least your last name isn't like thort swap or
something where you have tochange it Because Go is like
easy.
Yeah, it's easy, that's amazing.
All right, well, look, let'stalk a little bit about YouTube
content creation, how youstarted on YouTube and
everything.
How did you start and what madeyou want to start on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, it's been a long journey.
You know, I've been on YouTubefor over eight years now and
even before that like, I madeYouTube videos as a like
elementary school kid just forfun, because I used to watch a
lot of Smosh and Nigahiga andthey used to make skits and me
and my friends would try to likerecreate some of the skits and
those were my first videos and Ialso did some lip syncing to
(02:03):
Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, love story All.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Story, the lost arc of Half U Go.
Yeah, that's how it started.
I mean it just like started,because I always watched YouTube
as a kid.
But then, when I took itseriously was in first year of
university.
That's when I was like lookingfor a passion, looking for
something to do, and I bought a300 used camera off of
(02:29):
craigslist and made my firstyoutube video and I didn't even
know how to edit, so I waswatching a youtube tutorial on
how to edit the video and toedit the video.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
That's amazing yeah, I actually have a question about
that.
So, um, not, this isn't truefor all youtube creators.
I ask this pretty much on everycreator uh, is the first video
that's on your channel youractual first video?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
because a lot of times the answer that is no I
mean there's, there's some stuffbefore then, but uh, nothing
that you guys need to see ah see, that's what it always comes
down.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's like well, yeah, but no, but yeah but no because
the reason I say this?
Because your first video islike a kale video or cooking
kale or something, and it's yeah, I mean yeah, like my first
official video on this channelis the kale video.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Okay, but um, there's like, like I said, like the lip
syncing videos.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I don't even know where they are you don't know
like I can't find them like Iwant to find them, but I can't
find them fair.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay, that's fair.
But I mean, even in that videothe editing and stuff was kind
of at a level that a first-timeYouTuber wouldn't normally have.
I'm not saying it's like whereit is now, but I'm saying as
someone who's watched tons ofvideos and helped content
creators of all sizes the firstvideo never looks quite like the
way you had it, did youpractice it, did you have it set
(03:43):
up and eventually did you thinkabout it.
What was going on there?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I made some videos for Facebook and stuff Just for
my Facebook friends, so I had alittle bit of practice editing
before that video, but it justtook a lot of time.
My first video took me like 50hours to edit just because I was
trying to learn Adobe and thepremiere is really hard to get
started, so it was like learninga whole new language that's
(04:10):
incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So, um, even back then, obviously the editing part
was taking a long time.
Were you storyboarding orscripting, or were you doing any
of that for your first coupleones, or is that something that
came much later?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
No, I was not that sophisticated.
No, that's good.
You think too highly of theyounger me.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, I watched a lot of the older stuff just to kind
of get a vibe for what wasgoing on so long ago.
Again, it was like seven, eightyears ago, which is first of
all.
I have a lot of respect forthat because, quite frankly,
we'll see some creators pop upout of nowhere and have tons of
subscribers and views andthey've only been around for two
or three years, but you'veactually been on the grind for a
very long time, so I respectthat fact that you really went
for it.
Um, what was it like for thisfirst couple uploads?
(04:50):
Were you getting did?
Did you get a couple thatpopped off, or were they all
kind of slow growers?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
no, it was uh actually very demoralizing let's
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I think we really need so I want just so you know,
our audience are a lot ofsmaller creators.
There are some larger creatorsto listen to, but a lot of
smaller creators who are puttingout videos they think are
really great and then they'rejust not getting views.
Talk us through what that waslike for you and how that, what
that made you feel.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I mean, that's exactly how it felt, like I was
putting like 50 hours into avideo and it would get like 200
views.
Or I was like, okay, next timeI'll do better.
And I was like trying to copyBuzzFeed.
At the time I did like a coffeereview video where I actually
went to like like sevendifferent coffee shops in my
city, vancouver, and that tooklike a whole day to film, and
(05:37):
then I was trying to do allthese effects and stuff and that
one took me like almost ahundred hours to make and it
ended up getting like 500 views.
So, um, it was very depressing.
It was, uh, like you put in somuch effort.
You would expect a little bitof something in return, or like
(05:59):
be rewarded for your efforts.
But I think that pushingthrough that down and pushing
through that hardship is whatdifferentiates the good creators
from the ones that never madeit, because it's going to be a
lot of times where you put a lotof effort into something and it
(06:19):
just doesn't pay off, but youjust got to learn what your
mistakes were and just keeppushing forward?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
what pushed you, what made you not give up?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
you know, I was, uh, I was tempted, you know, like I
was in school at the time.
Um, I was studying in college,so, uh, I, I had like all this
other stuff I could have done,like I could have just focused
on my academics, I could havejust went out partied, but I
think there was something.
There's two reasons.
(06:50):
One is when I was young, I hada habit of quitting things when
they got really hard.
Like I would like try all theseskills or whatever, like I
would try to learn something andtry like social media
management, like I would justlike quit when it got a little
too hard.
And I had enough self-awarenessto recognize that about myself.
(07:11):
So when I started YouTube, Imade a promise to myself that I
will stick through it, no matterwhat happened, for at least a
year.
And I think that's what droveme, because I didn't want to be
a failure in my own eyes.
I wanted to prove to myselfthat I could actually stick
through this.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
That's funny.
I did a similar thing.
I guess I'm doing this for ayear at least, because we're
kind of similar in that way.
I don't know if you're familiarwith how Google will come up
with these companies and stuffand then immediately like
terminate them and like there's,there's a website of like
Google companies that they'vethey've closed down and canceled
.
I felt like that was kind ofsomething that was going with me
and I was like I'm doing thisfor a year and I had a goal and
(07:54):
everything.
That's really cool that youwent through that same process.
So, yeah, what happened at theend of that year that made you
go?
Okay?
No, I'm actually going to keepgoing.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean nothing major, nothing major, but it wasn't
like a video really took off orsomething.
I think it was just a couplehundred views, maybe one will
get a couple thousand.
It wasn't like any majorbreakthroughs.
But I was heading into a newyear of college and I was going
(08:25):
on exchange to China, yeah, andthe school that I was going to
exchange to.
It was called TsinghuaUniversity and this is kind of
like the Harvard of China or theMIT of China, wow.
And they have, like, actually alower acceptance rate than
Harvard itself.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Wow, Because there's so many people in China, right,
yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Of course, yeah, of course of course.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So as a kid, this was a dreamand it's such a prestigious
school.
I wanted to document theprocess of studying there and
what that was like and what theenvironment was like, talking to
the people, talking to thestudents, and try to learn from
them.
So that new journey was mydriving factor for keep making
(09:08):
videos.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I love that.
What was it like?
Culturally?
It's different there in Chinaright now.
I actually just watched alittle documentary yesterday
about like these street streams,these streamers that are like
on the street and everything.
It's a big popular thing.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Like there's a.
When I went to New York, by theway, like a couple months ago,
I saw the real life npc on newyork streets.
Yeah, he was live streamingjust doing emotes and stuff
that's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
That must be wild to see that in person.
Like, wait a minute, I've seenthat guy.
I mean, you know, yeah, um, butback then, culturally, what was
it like to be a YouTuber on acollege campus in China?
Was that widely accepted, orwas it kind of looked at weird
or what was that like?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So funny thing about China is like they're actually
like very advanced in terms oftheir technology, so like social
media was already a huge thingin China as well, just not the
Western social media.
They were using like Weibomostly.
It's kind of like Facebook,right, right, facebook and
(10:12):
Twitter mixed together, so likethey were using mostly Weibo and
I would actually sometimes seepeople filming content on campus
.
Oh yeah, so it was prettywidely accepted.
People were like into it.
You know I could like get otherpeople students and stuff to
like come be my video.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It wasn't too hard of a push so then did you, uh, do
any of your content on thechinese social media um websites
as well?
I did, I did.
Did I do well or better orworse?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I did really well because they like that, like
cross-cultural references.
Right, I can talk as aforeigner about Chinese culture
and then I can talk about theWestern culture to the Chinese
people as well.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So were you more popular on those platforms than
YouTube at that time?
Or about the same.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You know, at the time when I went there, I had 200
subscribers on YouTube.
Okay, it took me a year to getthere, so I was very proud and
it was my goal.
It was after six months, sothat was my study period.
It was my goal to reach 1,000.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Okay, I like that, I love that.
That's cool, yeah.
What do you think about goals?
We're going to talk a littlebit more about where you are now
, but I still want to do thisearly journey thing.
Do you think setting goalsearly in your YouTube career, in
your content creation career,helped, hindered, hurt or was
neutral in your journey Settinggoals?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Honestly, I think it depends on the person, but for
me, I think setting goals wasreally important.
It was like, I think, one thingI realized is that I always end
up reaching my goals, but justnot the exact timeline that I
set for myself.
That's fair.
I think having goals isimportant because it gives you a
(11:57):
place to aim for, it gives you,like, a vision for the future.
And when you create, you canlike look forward to that.
I think less so about goals.
It's more about trying toproject forward and visualize
your life what it would be likein a year, what would be like in
two years, five years, tenyears, like you don't have to
(12:17):
set concrete goals, but if youhave a concrete vision, you can
like work towards that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I love that kind of visualizing what you want things
to look like in a certain timeperiod.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, so for example, at the time, really popular
creators was.
One of them was Jake Paul.
Of course, jake Paul wasactually you can argue that
still today.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, he's no longer creating on YouTube, but at the
time he's creating, though, buthe is creating in his own is
yeah he was vlogging on youtubeand he was like at the top of
the game, sure, and also caseyneistat and all those people.
But I can remember like um, Ithink jake paul said in a video
or a podcast I don't know whereexactly, but I think he was
saying like he spends twothousand dollars on a video.
(13:00):
When I I heard that, I was like, damn, I wish someday I could
spend $2,000 on a video, becauseat the time I was in school and
like spending $30 on a videoeven felt expensive to me, like
buying all those copies in everycoffee shop was super expensive
, it cost me like a hundredbucks and I was like, whoa, this
(13:22):
is such a high investment video, but now our videos cost
thousands of dollars to make.
So I think I had a vision inthe back of my head, even if
that wasn't a goal per se.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, no, I love that .
That's really cool.
So when would you say, beforewe get to the kind of when
things started picking up?
I saw that you also did a TEDTalk.
That's kind of unusual for alot of people.
How did that happen?
What?
I saw that you also did a TEDTalk.
That's kind of unusual for alot of people.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
How did that happen?
What is that all about?
Yeah, the TED Talk is like.
It was an interestingexperience because I was through
my university.
They had like a program formentoring high school students
and I was like mentoring thesehigh school students and then
(14:07):
they hosted a TEDx event andinvited me to speak there.
Wow, what was that like for you?
That was really fulfilling.
I think I really enjoy thepublic speaking element and I
enjoy giving back what I'velearned.
It's same thing with thispodcast, like the fact that I
can share my lessons to a biggeraudience and maybe they can
(14:27):
take away something and starttheir journey or progress faster
.
That's really fulfilling to me.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Do you do any of that now?
Do you go to VidSummit orVidCon or anything like that
and… do anything, or are youstill kind of in your own thing?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, I'm doing a lot more speaking this year and
also a bit of last year.
So last year I spoke atVidSummit Very cool, if you know
that one.
I love VidSummit, yeah.
And then this year I spoke at afew marketing events and then I
was actually just at the Googleheadquarters speaking as well.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Very, cool, that's amazing.
So let's go back to a littlebit earlier in your career.
Things started picking up.
When was that, and what washappening?
What was going through yourmind during that time?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The way I view YouTube is I see it as step
ladders.
So basically, it's never like aconstant growth upwards.
It feels like it plateaus andthen it takes a huge step up and
then it plateaus again, andthen another huge step up and
then plateaus again.
Sure, yeah, yeah.
(15:29):
So that's how I feel like myjourney was.
So the first real breakthroughwas when I was on exchange.
I was making weekly videosabout my experience there and I
think I got to 1,500 subscribersby the end of my exchange.
And some videos got like 30,000,50,000 views, so that was
(15:52):
really impressive to me.
And then, after I came back toCanada where I was studying, I
started vlogging just tocontinue the school niche.
I started doing these day inthe life vlogs and they were
really popular.
So one blew up and got like50,000 views in a day and
(16:15):
eventually got like 100,000views.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
about?
What was that video about?
Do you remember?
It was a day in the life,that's it.
It was a day in the life of aUBC student.
Wow, ubc is where I wasstudying.
Okay, because at the time, dayin the life was really popping
off.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
You know, like Elliot Choi, Sean Rizwan Nicholas Jay,
so that was intentional.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
All these were my peers, so that was intentional
to try to do that type ofcontent because it was doing
well.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
A little bit, okay.
I mean a little bit of it wasintentional, a little bit of it
was just continuing the niche Iwas in.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Okay, Cool.
So, as that was taking off,what kind of things were going
through your head where youthink okay now, did you know
about doubling down?
Did you know what that meantaudience-wise?
What was going through yourmind?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I mean it wasn't that sophisticated, but I definitely
knew I needed to do more ofthis.
So I like kind of honed in onthe college niche okay.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So, as you said and this is common for a lot of
creators they'll have thismoment and then things will slow
down.
Actually, one of the firstthings I always say to a content
creator who's having one oftheir moments when things are
blowing up is okay, you need toprepare for the next thing,
because it's going to slow down.
It always does 100% of the time.
It slows down when things kindof slow down and it wasn't
continuing to go straight up,did that worry you at any point,
(17:31):
or were you just kind of likeno, I get it.
This is part of the journey.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, like you said, it always slows down after an
explosive period, but yourbaseline will be higher, right,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I wasn't worried because mybaselines were higher and I
could see growth overall.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, so you actually were able to kind of look at
the step back from it all and gono, this is still heading in
the right direction, Not that,oh my God, I've been canceled
Like all of a sudden.
Things don't work.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I think it's good to zoom out a little bit
once in a while, just because welook at a 28 day period,
especially on youtube studio,and that has a lot of
fluctuations, a lot of ups anddowns.
Right when you see a gray arrowin a month, that's the breath
yeah, that's terrible, but but Ilook at my year-long statistics
(18:22):
from time to time and I'll tellyou this, travis I've never had
a year where I didn't growfaster.
Let's go.
I love that.
I never had a gray arrow on ayear-long.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
On a year.
That's such a clutch thing tosay, because it is more because
we actually get people to emailin.
We do like these.
We have people email in um, wedo like these.
We have people email in.
We answer their questions onthe podcast and we hear a lot of
the oh, I did this great videoand it did well.
But now everything seems to bedead.
But it's only been like twoweeks and it's like no, it's,
it's more than this two weeks.
(18:55):
It's not this.
Don't let the youtube one often things make you think that
that's your entire career.
It's like you're you're going tohave a ton of 10 of 10s.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, like zoom out a little bit, Take perspective,
Like look on a yearly basis thetrajectory.
If it's upward then you don'tneed to worry, right, I love
that that's so clutch.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Now you were doing like you said, a year in the
life of a college student thing,but of course at some point,
hopefully, you graduate college.
So you know you can't do thatforever what was the pivot.
How did you pivot?
What did you like?
How did that process Take usthrough?
I'm doing the day in the lifeof college stuff, but I need to
do something else.
Take us through that wholething.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That was a life crisis moment for me.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Talk us through it.
I love that.
You just I'm hooked.
I need to hear this.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Tell me well, it was my whole identity college
vlogging, youtube, uh, studyinglike all that was my entire
identity.
And I could sense the end of itas I was like nearing the last
year because I'm like, okay,what do I do next?
Right, like I don't think myaudience will like anything.
Um, because, like, they onlylike, they care about you to a
(20:03):
certain extent, but they caremore about like you being in
that college environment, sothey want to like, project
themselves onto you.
So if you are no longer in thatcollege environment, they have
no reason to watch you.
And I've seen other people in myniche do different types of
transitions.
So some people they focus moreon street interviews.
(20:26):
They started interviewingcollege students and then they
focused more on streetinterviews.
Okay, that was the transition.
Some people focus on vlogging,just like vlogging your daily
life.
And I was thinking about my owntransition and I personally
didn't want to do the vloggingaspect of it.
So I did more productivityvideos right away because it was
(20:51):
kind of related to the niche.
But then COVID hit and Icouldn't travel anywhere because
the series that was doing thebest for me at the time was a
campus tour series.
So that was actually my nextstep.
Right, I was going to finishcollege and I was going to tour
(21:12):
all these like Ivy Leaguecampuses and interview the
students and get like study tipsand like maybe show some of the
student life on each of theseIvy League campuses.
I did four but COVID hitcouldn't travel.
I was stuck in my room and Iwas like what do I do?
(21:34):
So I transitioned toproductivity and then I did
productivity for 10 videos and Igot so bored I was like how
much productivity can you talkabout?
At a certain point, you justgot to do your work, man, right,
right, I love it.
You trying to optimize everysingle minute is wasting more
time than if you just go and didthe work.
(21:56):
Yeah, you're speaking truth, goahead.
So I was like really burnt outand I didn't make videos for
three, four months, wow yeah.
And then in that time I wasdoing a bit of soul searching,
you know, just trying to likefigure out, like, hey, what do I
want to do next?
Because, for YouTube, I feellike it's so connected with who
(22:21):
you are as a person, like thetype of content you make is so
connected with who you are as aperson, like the type of content
you make is so connected to whoyou are as a person.
So when you're brainstormingnew content, it's almost like
you're trying to reinventyourself and you're trying to go
through this journey ofself-discovery.
So that's why it took so long,because I wasn't just thinking
about content, I was thinkingabout me as a person.
And eventually I landed on thisthing that I've always wanted
(22:46):
to try, which is I, as a kid,loved watching kung fu movies.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I did too.
I met Jackie Chan, interviewedhim.
Oh, you did.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Wonderful.
I just did a collab with KarateKid, the new Karate Kid, yeah
the one that's coming out.
I'm gonna check it out, yeahyeah, out With Ben Wong, but
anyway.
So I loved kung fu movies as akid.
I wanted to train with aShaolin monk, because that's
like the stem of kung fu, right.
(23:17):
Yeah, that was something thatI've always wanted to do and I
was just like thinking about allthese type of content
directions, and the Shaolin monkdirection really stuck out to
me.
It was like a super ambitiousproject.
I didn't know how I would do itit's completely different than
college stuff but it just stuckout to me as like a good piece
of content and yeah.
(23:39):
So I was like working on that.
I was kind of just likearchitecting the storyline.
I was kind of just likearchitecting the storyline.
I was trying to make it likesuper viral and eventually
somehow one of my friendsintroduced me to a Shaolin monk.
What are the chances?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
of that.
Who has friends that knowShaolin monks?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Well, like I was, I said it in a Q&A video, Like
people were asking me like, oh,what's a video you've always
wanted to make but haven't?
And then one of my friends sawthe video and just reached out
to me it was amazing.
So, yeah, I found a Shaolinmonk and we made this six-part
documentary series of metraining to be a Shaolin monk.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, and and.
Then that's where things werelike.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
now this is cooking and that's where things really
took off Because at the timeafter I graduated, I think it
was about 200K subscribers, sure, and then I made this Shaolin
Monk series and it doubled to500K.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You were cooking, then huh.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, it didn't hit right away because my transition
from productivity to kung fuwas instant and the audience was
like what the heck?
What's going on?
Yeah, like this makes no senseto me.
Yeah, um, and it took it thevideo, the first video I
published on shaolin monks.
It's at nine million viewsright now.
(24:58):
Yeah, but when I first uploadedit was like a 7 out of 10.
Yeah, and it just sat there fora while.
It took three months for it tofind the right audience.
I love that.
It never gave up Because it wasgood content.
I love YouTube because if youmake a good piece of content, it
will find the right audienceeventually.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
This is a really interesting piece of information
you're sharing, because we'reactually going to do an episode
on pivoting in the coming weeksand what you're saying here is
so important because pivotingcan be very scary, especially if
you had any type of successprevious to pivoting and you're
just done with it.
Because I'm kind of in thatspace, jen's in a space, and we
(25:41):
talked a lot of creators in thatspace where it's like, okay,
I've done that thing, I'm notreally interested in it.
The next thing is slightlydifferent.
And then there's always thisquestion of creating another
channel or pivoting on your ownchannel.
Now, we're still going throughyour process of where you are
now, but let's skip ahead alittle bit.
Knowing what you know now,would you have told yourself,
(26:02):
generally speaking, to havepivoted on a new channel or to
have done what you did, which iskeep it on your main channel?
It seems like it's no brainerto keep it on your main channel,
but you see a lot of channelsnow that pop up with really good
videos the first three or fourand they get hundreds of
thousands of views right off thebat.
What are your thoughts now?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I probably wouldn't have done the exact strategy I
did back then.
Interesting, completely 180 onmy audience.
What would you do now?
I would pivot more slowly.
Yeah, interesting, I would tryto have transitional videos in
between I've literally I call itwedging.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I've been talking about this for years.
Talk to us, speak it.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, because it's confusing, both from an
algorithm perspective and anaudience perspective, when you
upload something that'scompletely unrelated.
I mean, it worked out for mebut like it was to the detriment
, like my strategy wasdetrimental to the success was
to the detriment, my strategywas detrimental to the success,
it wasn't complementing thesuccess.
So I would suggest to you hey,let's say I wanted to do the
(27:04):
Kung Fu thing, I wanted toupload that series and I was
currently in the productivityniche.
Then maybe I'm just thinking atthe top of my head, maybe I
would interview differentproductivity experts and then
that could be like a transitionand eventually I get into more
like personal development, andthen eventually I interview the
(27:26):
monk about personal development,and then that transitions me
into the monk sphere, right, andthen I can go into the training
kung fu, right?
yeah, yeah so like I.
There's definitely a smart,smarter ways I could have done
it.
I was a little barbaric.
I was just like you know what?
You know what, yolo, yolo baby,let's get it.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I love that and yeah, that's the thing I've been
explaining for a long time.
People have heard me use theterm wedging.
He just explained it probablybetter than I could have.
All.
All right, let's talk a littlebit more about, kind of more
currently, where you are.
What are your thoughts,generally speaking, on YouTube
Shorts?
We definitely have thoughtshere on the podcast, but I'd
love to hear what are yourthoughts on YouTube Shorts?
What do you use them for, whatare your expectations in making
a short and what's the strategybehind it?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
YouTube Shorts are undoubtedly the fastest way to
grow on the platform right now.
Right, and when YouTube Shortsfirst came out, everybody was
hating on Shorts.
They were like it's going tosplit your audience, you're
going to get no views, it'sgoing to basically destroy your
(28:31):
channel if you start uploadingShorts on your main channel and
I just kind of took a look atthat and I saw shorts as an
opportunity instead of like athing to avoid.
Okay, so I dove like head in.
When shorts first came out, Iwas like, all right, we're going
to try to figure out shorts andreally really like hone in on
(28:52):
that.
Okay, and in the beginning itwas complete white space because
nobody was focusing energy onshorts.
They were just transportingcontent from other platforms.
So, like we made contentdedicated to shorts and the
first video that I madespecifically for shorts, instead
of reformatting long-formvideos the first video that I
(29:14):
made specifically for shorts itgot 50 million views within a
week.
Wow, and that growth wassomething that I've never seen
before Throughout my years ofuploading on YouTube 50 million
views in a week, never seen thatbefore.
Insane.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
And what was the impact on your overall channel?
Did that change anything or wasit just kind of helped your
shorts, your future shorts, gettraction faster?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So in the beginning it was like a split right, like
it was like you had like ashorts traffic and then you had
a long form traffic.
They weren't really correlated,but I kind of viewed it as a
investment strategy.
It's kind of like a hedge,because if at some point YouTube
(30:01):
as a platform figures out howto bridge the gap between short
form and long form, then I havethis audience I can leverage to
push into long form.
And eventually they did.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, love it.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So it was like I was like there is no downside.
If I looked at the analytics,it did not reduce the amount of
views I got for my long formvideos.
A lot of people were saying itdid, but I think it was just
because their long form videoswere tanking anyway.
Yeah not doing well.
Anyway, don't blame theirshorts, bro.
(30:35):
That's fair.
No, that's fair I like that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I like that so like.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I just took an objective look at the data and
the best thing about YouTube isthey give you so much data and I
saw no negative correlationbetween shorts views and
long-form views.
They may not correlate like interms of they not have like more
shorts view didn't correlate tomore long-form views.
They may not correlate like interms of they not have like
short, more shorts view didn'tcorrelate to more long-form
(31:02):
views.
but I saw that like okay,there's no downside, so I might
as well, just focus on this,because it's the growth that you
haven't seen anywhere before.
Right, because when platformspush out a new feature, they're
really likely to promote thatfeature.
Youtube now made a dedicatedbutton on the home screen for
(31:24):
shorts, so you're definitelygoing to get a lot of benefit by
jumping on trends early.
So now shorts have evolved.
Right, it's been like almostthree years I don't know three,
four years since shorts came out.
Almost three years I don't knowthree, four years since Shorts
came out.
And now there's a lot morecreators putting in a lot of
(31:44):
effort, like MrBeast is doingShorts and he's spending like
thousands, hundreds, tens ofthousands of dollars on each
Shortform video.
So there's a lot morecompetition.
But I would still say there'sopportunity there.
There's still white space therefor people to come in.
Interesting Shorts is thenumber one way for discovery.
(32:05):
You seem pretty passionateabout it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I love that.
I love to hear that let's talkabout some other aspects of
creation you may or may not bepassionate about.
I'd love to hear this let'stalk about the thumbnail process
.
Obviously, you have some bangerthumbnails.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I mean you don't have a video until you have a
thumbnail, I would.
I'm glad you said that how doyou do?
Speaker 1 (32:26):
you do you already have the thumbnail and title
figured out before you shootyour video, or where is that?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
yes, yes, good, I I would say the biggest change I
made, that blew up.
My channel is really, reallybeing stringent on that rule
where we have to figure out thepackaging before we upload.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I totally agree on this.
I totally agree on this.
So how long does it take you todo like I assume you have a
team that does thumbnails andstuff how long does the process
go from, like, the idea to theend goal, to the end result of
the thumbnail now?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It varies, but maybe like a week or so, maybe two
weeks.
It depends on the thumbnail.
We usually create multipleversions of each thumbnail.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Are you using A-B testing or no?
Yes, okay, have you found thatuseful?
Yes, very useful.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I mean, I was doing it before just manually.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, just going back for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
And is this one of the partsyou liked?
You liked helping out with thethumbnail process.
Do you do the thumbnailsyourself, like, how does that
process work?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yes, I am very involved in the creative process
for thumbnails and the ideaitself.
Because as I level up as acreator, there's like people
that work for me.
Now I have to think about likewhat my role in the company is
right and where I can have themost leverage with my time.
(33:52):
And the thought I had is theearlier I can get involved in
the creative process, the moreleverage that time has.
Because if it's in the ideaphase, one little change to the
idea can drastically impact theviews and one little change to
the thumbnail concept can havereally outsized impact on the
(34:13):
performance of the video.
So I am very involved in thatprocess.
Really outsized impact on theperformance of the video.
So I am very involved in thatprocess.
But the later it gets into theprocess for example, like, let's
say, scripting or whatever it'slike yeah, scripting a scene
might be cool but like it's notgonna impact the views
dramatically- Editing does,though.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So how in depth are you on that and like, how
involved are you in that?
And is that something thattakes a long Because you were
talking about before you weredoing 100 hours and stuff?
Where are we at now?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, I have editors that work for me.
I still review the video, so Itry to review at the beginning.
I try to review at every stage,but it's most importantly for
me to review at the beginningwhere the ideas and the
thumbnails and important for meto review the final version of
the edit.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And how often at the end are you like, ah, we just
need to change so much of this.
Is it normally like you have ateam that is so in tune with
your vision now that you don'thave to do that, or is it still
a lot of push back and forth?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
We most of the time don't have to change the video
dramatically, because that'slike a lot of wasted effort.
Like I think in the beginning,when I first started, when I was
filming by myself, editing bymyself, I would kind of just
YOLO the shoot.
I would maybe think of the idealike in the, and then I would
(35:38):
go out and film and then I'll belike, okay, I'll figure it out
in the edit.
Okay, yeah, but that was somuch work.
Sometimes the edit just didn'tturn out how I wanted it to and
then I have to figure out okay,what is the storyline here?
It just took so many hours andover time I found the more time
(35:59):
I put into pre-production, theeasier my editing Interesting.
So now we try to plan the videoout completely scene by scene
before we even start filming.
So every piece of content thatwe film we'll make it into the
edit.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
All right, we're going to it into the edit.
That's awesome.
All right, we're gonna go intothe last section here.
I'm gonna do some shotgunquestions here in a minute, but
I just wanna tell you a coupleof videos that I watched that I
really like, and mainly becausethey are things that I
personally enjoy.
The RC cars one actually washeavy and still kind of am into
RC cars now, so I saw youactually one of the cars at the
(36:38):
end.
The black one is one of theones I wanted to buy last year,
but I'm like I think it's soexpensive, so so amazing.
Though it's fine, I think like70, 80 miles an hour, you're
burning out tires every threeminutes Like I wanted that car,
and to see you drive around havefun with it seemed like it was
just a lot of fun, and I was aformer magician, so the magic
episode I just watched recentlywas really fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(36:58):
So what was it like doing those?
Because those are just like,it's like you're just playing.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
It's like the most fun ever Like.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What kind of a job is this?
You're just playing.
You're watching magic tricks,learning magic and driving RC
cars.
What is that like now?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I mean, the one thing that we try to keep on the
channel is we have an element oflearning in every single video
and these like fun hobbies arelike really great way for people
to like kind of dip their toesinto what it takes to do the
hobby, the fun parts of thehobby, and maybe like learn some
life lessons as well.
So I really love doing thosetype of videos.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And you say learning a lot.
There's a lot of science stuffyou're doing now and kind of
teaching and stuff.
Is that kind of what you wouldelevator pitch to someone who's
never heard of you or never seenyou before you go?
This is what my channel isabout.
It's about teaching in a funway science or something.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, I would just say we showcase science, tech
and innovations in the world ina fun way.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
We got some questions here.
I think these are going to bekind of fun, mainly because most
people don't ask thesequestions.
When you do podcasts orinterviews, I like to try to do
things that are different.
Have you ever unlisted ordeleted a video on your channel?
On this channel.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, I mean some stuff that just didn't align
with the content right now.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Was it older stuff, or was it kind of even like in
the last two, three years?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Some mostly older stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
And it was mainly it was like algorithmic reasons,
because it's not who yourcurrent audience is.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
No, it's just kind of like.
I mean, those videos weren'tgetting that many views in real
time anyway, so I don't think itaffected the algorithm, but
it's just more of like abranding perspective.
When someone comes to yourchannel, if you have like videos
on 10 different topics, like,what can they expect?
Right?
So, I just privated some videoswhere it was no longer related
(38:55):
but, like you can still see adistinct transition between my
college days and what I'm doingnow.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
What is the favorite video you've ever done?
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I think the Shallon series was really fun.
It was something that I plannedout for months and I'm really
glad that it turned out the wayit did, because it's kind of
like the modern day Karate Kid.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, would you do an updated version of that now,
since you liked it so much, oris that something that you think
maybe you're probably past?
I think maybe Like a differenttwist on it, or something.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I'm not going to count it out.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
All right, that's fair.
Which video did you think whenyou made it was going to do
really well, but it didn't?
Was there one you could thinkof, like you're like, oh, this
is going to be a banger.
And you're like, eh, it didn'treally hit the way I wanted it
to Not, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Let me see.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
And everything is relative right.
So your non-banger could be abanger for someone else.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I mean I think in the beginning I had more of an
expectation.
Oh, do you not haveexpectations now?
Well, I mean I haveexpectations now, but they're
like more met on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Listen, that's great, that's awesome, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
That's great.
In the beginning I hadexpectations that weren't met.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
So, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's really important
to have because, like, if youhave these expectations aren't
met on a regular basis, then itdefinitely is a demoralizing
kind of thing to go through whatyou were talking about kind of
earlier in your career too.
Yeah, if you could do one ofyour videos over again, which
one would it be?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
I don't think I would do any videos over again.
Wow, no regrets.
I think they were the best Icould do at the time.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Okay, I respect that.
Is there any videos that youuploaded, done that you kind of
wish I wish I didn't do that?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
do that one like you kind of like feel ambivalent
about now again, I just don'tlike to dwell on the past and
I'm like okay, a video did well,didn't do well.
I liked it, didn't like it.
I I think I just like take whatI can from that and just focus
on the next one was that alwaysyour thought process?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
if you have, you all, because a lot of people can't
do that yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I mean, like, what's dwelling on the past video going
to do for you, right?
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Yeah, I think that's important and I think it's hard
for people, because what yousaid earlier and I think this
goes for a lot of creators is toput a lot of time and effort
into something, and your channeland your videos are a
reflection of who you are.
So sometimes it feels like arejection of who you are, but
you don't feel that way.
Is that what you're basicallysaying?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
No, I do feel that.
I do feel that I definitelyfeel rejected.
Okay, but you're able to Adwelling on the rejection and
the feeling of depression is notgoing to get me anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I just recognize that .
I love that.
Is that something that's alwaysbeen something with you, or did
you have to learn that kind ofskill?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I think that muscle and that strength and the
tenacity develops over time, youcan start somewhere right.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
You get more unfazed over time You're like a thicker
skin.
Yeah, so for a content creator,we'll just talk to our content
creators now that are watchingand listening, newer content
creators that are in the space.
I mean you're in a kind ofcompetitive space.
If you were new today, whatwould be the things that you
would tell the new Hafu Go who'sjust today starting a channel?
(42:31):
Maybe has 100 subscribers?
What are the things that thatperson needs to know now Good,
bad and different, like even thethings that that person needs
to know now good, bad anddifferent, like even the things.
Like things are going to suck,like that's a that's a perfectly
valid piece of information.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
What would you say to that person, that creator yeah,
I mean things are gonna suckfor sure, but uh, definitely
push through it.
I think just when I started onYouTube, everything was a
guessing game.
Click-through rate wasn't evena thing.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
And there was so little information out there
about how to succeed on YouTube,so I had to figure out
everything on my own.
But now it's pretty clearfigure out everything on my own,
but now it's pretty clear.
You can get a very clearroadmap on how to succeed on
YouTube for free by watchingyour videos or just whatever
(43:26):
videos on YouTube that's outthere.
So I think the most importantthing is just be a learning
machine.
That's all you got to do right.
Every source, every piece ofcontent that you can learn.
Take that in Every creator youcan talk to.
Take that in Every video thatyou upload.
(43:46):
Analyze it, see what kind offeedback you're getting, see the
data, take that information inand try to improve the next one.
So your rate of progress isgoing to be equal to your rate
of learning.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yo, that was fire.
So really focus on that.
That was fire.
Okay, we're gonna finish upwith something I like to do
every once in a while.
So one of the things that theMainFit IQ channel does a lot is
we audit a channel.
We'll take a look at a video,the first 30 seconds or
something, and kind of critiquethe hook or whatever.
We're going to do that here.
I'd love for you to take a lookat this video.
This is from I think I can'tremember what the channel is.
(44:24):
All right.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I ain't holding back.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
You ain't going to hold back.
It's going to be.
I think it's like a 30-secondclip.
We're just going to look at theintro.
This was a small creator.
See, this is an older video.
For them it's called my twoyear search for a perfect black
t-shirt, which I think is a-.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Oh, that's my video.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Hafu Go.
I think let's take a look andsee what the heck let's see
Bro's trolling me.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
He can like bait me.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you'd be
willing to risk everything justto get it?
For the past few years, I'velusted, fantasized and chased
after the perfect black t-shirt.
Today I finally found it.
I want to share with you mystory.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
All right, that's like 25 seconds in.
What do you, what do youthought of this young creator?
I think they, they got a, theygot a future ahead of them, but
what?
What are your thoughts on thisvideo?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
wow I haven't looked back on my older videos in a
long, long time, but uh prettycringe, very cringe but it's
ambitious, like I love.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
First of all, I thought it's kind of for people
who are listening to audiopodcast.
You got to go to the YouTubechannel to watch that.
It's very intense.
He's got a like it looks like aCGI thing of Kanye there, like
a whole bunch of stuff going onA red background with was this
like in your apartment orsomething.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
It was in my mom's house.
What was the idea?
Instead of like a long ropeacross and then just hung shirts
in the background.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Where did you think of the idea of the perfect
search for a black t-shirt?
That's crazy.
That's an interesting idea.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
I mean, that was like a genuine thing that I was
doing.
I really just love wearingblack t-shirts.
I now have like 20 of the sameblack t-shirts.
So I did find a perfect blackt-shirt.
Because black is so simple.
You just put it on 20 of thesame black t-shirts.
So I did find a perfect blackt-shirt.
Um, because it's like black isso simple, right, you just put
it on.
It looks good, you don't have toworry about stains so simple so
I was like okay, it may be kindof interesting to make a video
(46:26):
on the topic and I'll tell youthis now there have been fashion
creators that made a video on asimilar topic within the last
two years.
That got like a lot more viewsthan I did because they didn't
approach it in the cringe waythat I did.
They were like more likereviewing different black
t-shirts like one dollar versusa five hundred dollar black
t-shirt.
That would have been way moreviral as a format.
(46:48):
But I don't know.
I think when you're beginningit's good to get these like
creative ideas out there, justso you can exhaust all your bad
ideas and you can eventually getto the good ones get to the
good ones, uh, so no, hafo goblack t-shirts, uh, on merch.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Huh, we're not gonna get that are we gonna get that.
I mean because I can be kind offire, I can be kind of fire.
Anyway, we thank you so muchfor joining us.
Hafu, um, we're gonna havelinks for his channels and
everything in the descriptionand the show notes for the audio
podcast listeners.
Hafu, anything you want to tellthese content creators before
we go today.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, I want to say I think you just got to keep
making more videos.
Like I said, just keep makingmore videos, learn from each one
, and I am hiring.
Hey, am hiring, if you are forwait, if you want to work behind
the scenes on youtube.
If you don't want to be infront of the camera, please
(47:49):
reach out to me via the emailthat you'll leave in the
description.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I I 100 know you will .
You will get people, get people.
That goes without saying.
There we have some very hungrycreators out there right now
yeah, I'm hiring for editors andum ideation people amazing.
Well, listen, this might beyour opportunity.
You never know.
Listening to the podcast couldchange your life, and we're here
to do that for you every singleweek here on the podcast.
We'll see you, guys and gals,in the next one.
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