December 1, 2025 • 46 mins
Auto-clip your long form into viral shorts- https://link.vidiq.com/podcast-to-shorts
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Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/Na8rto6X_M0
We bring John back to unpack leaving a staff role for creator life, why viral shorts didn’t feel like success, and how a mission to help creators beat “slop” changed everything. We answer audience questions on TV viewers, brand ROI, streaming strategy, and AI editing’s limits.
• redefining success from views to impact and mission
• separating formats when shorts overshadow long form
• subtitles, metadata and clarity reviving old stories
• outside perspective as the only reliable “metric”
• cutting ego, tightening hooks and payoff discipline
• TV watch time depressing sub conversion on travel content
• pitching brands with ROI proof and affiliate data
• multi‑streaming pragmatics and YouTube‑native packaging
• repurposing landscape to vertical without bad crops
• AI editing as assistant, not storyteller
• simplifying platforms to avoid burnout and ship more
John's Instagram - https://instagram.com/HeyJohnScott
John's Creator Advice - https://youtuber.help/
John's Viral Shorts Course - https://viral.school/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to the Only Podcast.
It's here for you more thanyou're here for us.
I'm here, Travis, every singleweek, telling you how to grow
your YouTube channels and alsotalking to super interesting
people.
And I've done that today.
I'm successful yet again as Ibrought back an old favorite of
many of you who've been aroundthe VidIQ Ecosphere for a very
long time.
John is back.
(00:20):
How are you doing, John?
Hey, how's it going?
You're not dead, which iswonderful.
SPEAKER_00 (00:25):
I'm dead.
SPEAKER_01 (00:27):
I'm just super busy.
SPEAKER_00 (00:29):
Very quiet.
SPEAKER_01 (00:30):
So we're going to talk a little bit about that
where John's been.
We're also going to answer yourquestions here, as we always do
every single week.
Gonna have a good old timetalking about YouTuber-y things
and all the rest.
If you're new here, of course,we try to help you grow your
YouTube channel and uh hangtight because we're gonna answer
some questions that have beensubmitted to us.
We'll also tell you how to dothat later on.
And uh let's just jump into somefun stuff, YouTuber-y things.
Uh, let's talk about a littlebit about where you've been and
(00:52):
what's been going on with you.
So, just a couple months ago, uhyou had you have gone off from
Bid IQ.
We'll actually go into like yourhistory of the because it's kind
of interesting.
Uh, to do your own uh mainchannel stuff.
So now you yourself are acontent creator in and of your
you are company John.
The company is John.
Uh tell us how that transitionhas been from going from a job,
(01:13):
you know, that you go to.
I mean, you don't leave thehouse and go to, but you know, a
job, uh, to just being your ownboss and everything.
Tell us a little bit about that.
What's that been like?
SPEAKER_00 (01:22):
Uh, confusing to be honest with you.
Um, when I left Vid IQ, it wasbecause on my main channel my
shorts were going viral and theywere paying all my bills,
basically.
And so, like, my last video wasabout that, and I started
focusing on that.
And um then people in thecomments started asking me to
(01:43):
teach them how to make the viral3D shorts that I was making.
And so in my spare time, I madea course.
And like the month that I madethe course, I be I barely made
any videos on YouTube, so I hadlike very little income coming
in when I was making the course.
And so I put that out and I gotback to animating, and it didn't
(02:03):
feel as fulfilling, I guess.
I I think it's because all thecomments and stuff I was getting
were obviously children orreally dumb adults, and it's
like you're gonna get that withshorts entertainment, right?
Sure.
But when every comment says 6'7,you're just like, what about
yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (02:21):
So if you had to uh let's talk about uh perception
versus reality, right?
Like, because you've doneeverything from uh helping other
creators uh you know do theirchannel stuff to being the the
guy himself.
What are the perceptions you hadgoing into being full-time for
yourself versus the reality ofthat?
SPEAKER_00 (02:40):
I think uh I didn't I didn't quite know what my
mission was, what what mypurpose was.
And I've since found it, but ittook it took jumping into having
success to realize that thatwasn't what success was to me.
And so when I started gettingcomments like, hey, my first
(03:01):
short just went viral, and I'mlike, that feels way more
fulfilling than getting millionsof views for some reason, and so
I kind of started heading thatdirection.
And you you know I've alwaysstruggled with like niche.
Well, if you're if you're 36 orolder and you struggle with
niche for years and years, screwit, just get a mission instead.
(03:23):
And so now helping creators ismy mission, and I don't know, I
forgot about niche a while ago.
So yeah, it helps, honestly.
SPEAKER_01 (03:31):
Well, let's just for people who don't know, uh might
as well get people caught up onhow we met.
Um, because we've known eachother for and this is weird,
John, for a couple years now.
It's hard to it's weird to saythat.
Dude, it doesn't seem like it.
SPEAKER_00 (03:43):
It seriously feels like yesterday.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Yeah, it seems like we just so the way this worked
is um a couple years back, I wasrunning a program called uh
VideQ Max, and it was a groupcoaching uh program here, and
John came through as as one ofthe students, which was really
great.
And um, he was in the Discordwhile we were doing a live
stream audit, I think.
And I think your channel cameup, I believe.
(04:05):
You were being audited by Roband stuff, I believe.
Is that right?
Sound right to you?
SPEAKER_00 (04:09):
Yeah, the channel was at Mocknicks, and it was an
animation channel.
I wasn't I never even had myface on YouTube at that point.
SPEAKER_01 (04:15):
That's right, which is really interesting because
it's completely different now.
So um I remember watching thatand going, holy crap, this guy
can can really can really go.
He can edit.
So I was uh thinking about doingmy own kind of personal channel
uh with some stuff, and I reallywanted really good editing.
And what John didn't know at thetime was that I was holding off
(04:35):
on doing the channel until Ifound an editor because I knew
that the editing part was gonnahave to be on point for it to be
any good.
So I was like, hey, do you uh doyou do anything on the side?
Would you be interested in doingthis thing?
And I sent him a message and Iwasn't sure what you would say.
I'm I'm curious as to what yourside of this felt like because I
don't actually know that.
Like, what was that day like?
Because you were on the streamand then the same day I'm like,
What are you up to?
(04:56):
Tell me what that was likebecause I've never heard your
side of it.
SPEAKER_00 (04:59):
At the time, I was living in Germany and I was
watching a lot of VidIQ, but Iwasn't getting the advice that I
needed.
My channel was very specific,and best practices didn't really
hit the spot for me.
Yeah, and so I knew that I hadto connect to somebody
personally and get outsideperspective.
And I always submitted to thething like trying to get on the
stream to have somebody look atit.
(05:20):
And uh I knew when Max come upcame up, you guys advertised
like Max gets priority, you pickone from Max every time.
And so I sat there for a while.
I didn't have much money becauseI I was still like becoming a
citizen, so I didn't have a job.
Um, in in Germany, like theyhave something called it's like
a work school where you go as astudent and then you get paid
(05:41):
like five bucks an hour orwhatever.
Okay, and so I sat there knowinglike I this is not something I
can afford, but my whole lifewhere I've gotten has been
through networking.
And I know that if I go inthere, I'm gonna connect to
somebody that will lead mesomewhere.
And so I struggled with that abit, and I'm like, you know
what?
I'm gonna pull the trigger.
And so I put the money in, andthen one day later, I got the DM
(06:06):
from you because one day, yeah,I got I immediately got on the
channel and I was like, okay, sothat was the goal, but it was to
I wanted people to see like whatI was made of, and then it
worked out.
Yeah, I would dude.
I remember when after thatstream, after I talked to you a
little bit, I went to my wifeand I said, You know what'd be
really awesome if I got to workat VidIQ at the end of this.
(06:28):
Like, that would be the dreamjob.
I s dude, I swear, I said thatto her, and she's like, That
would be really cool.
And then a couple months later,she's like, You got your dream
job.
Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, itreally worked out.
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
So, what ended up happening was um we worked
together on uh a channel calledTravis Tries the World, which of
all the content I've ever doneon YouTube, I am most proud of
all of that.
There's not a single video thatwe worked on that I'm not proud
of, not just because of how coolthe stuff came out, but like we
it was so collaborative.
We would sit on calls for likean hour and just come up with
ideas and some wacky stuff wewould do.
(06:59):
And I I do miss that to acertain degree because like we
had I feel like some of the mostcreative stuff I've ever come up
with has been with in a callcall with you.
Um, but you made it all come toreality, like your editing
style, your ability to dospecial effects and stuff that I
can't do made that stuff come toreality.
And then there was an opening uhfor a thumbnail designer for
VidIQ, and I'm like, I know youcan do thumbnails because you
had done some of mine.
(07:20):
I'm like, this is be a good stepin, this would be a good way to
get you in the door.
And it wasn't long before youwere doing edits, and then you
were on the channel, and thenyou were doing all the stuff,
and then and I'm not surprisedby any of this.
I knew you were talented when Ifirst met you.
So, you know, as things wentbetter for you and you started
creating content, obviously youryour personal stuff started to
(07:41):
take off, and you you made a bigpivot.
So you went from you know, whenyou first went into vidIQ at the
animation channel, when did youdecide to like make a channel
that has nothing to do with likeyou showed your face?
Like, what did that come to be?
How did you come to that?
SPEAKER_00 (07:56):
Uh, when I first started collaborating with
Travis, it was about two weeksafter I started the Hey John
Scott channel um with withTravis Tries with you.
Uh like I'm talking about you inthird person as if you're not
here.
And um I I remember thinking,well, now I got this free time,
like I kind of I want my versionof that too, and I still didn't
(08:18):
know what I wanted.
And if you go back into all thevideos that are privated, I
tried a lot of different things.
I even tried like Moist Criticalstyle commentary, which got my
first copyright claim, Iremember.
Or it was like a warning orsomething because it was a meme
that had the audio claimed bysome unrelated anyway, it
doesn't matter.
Um, I I just remember trying afew things, and right around the
(08:40):
time that we got me into doingthumbnails, that's when I'm
like, okay, I've got a job.
Now I can focus on Travis andme, and like the time freed up.
And so after experimenting for awhile, I did like creator help
stuff for a second on therebefore I joined vidIQ.
And then I knew that I hadlearned so much from Tim
(09:01):
Schmoyer about storytelling thatI wanted to give it a shot.
And I put out three shorts backto back on Instagram that told a
story, and they all did superwell.
And I told everybody at VidIQ,like, hey, look, these are
getting like hundreds ofthousands of views, and maybe I
make a video about thatsometime, and I didn't for a
long time.
I also uploaded those to the HeyJohn Scott channel and they
(09:22):
tanked big time.
Dude, a couple I mean, it wasactually like two years later.
I I was I tried a bunch ofdifferent niches, like ADHD
related after I got diagnosedwith ADHD, and then I was like,
okay, maybe I do creatorself-help to avoid um you know
distractions or productivity orto talk about productivity, that
(09:43):
sort of thing.
Um avoid burnout was really thebig focus.
But eventually I just put up anew story about a firehouse that
was like it looked like a watertower, and I thought, well,
maybe I get back intostorytelling.
Put that one up, my channel hit,and then I thought, well, what
the hell?
What why why did these three doso bad?
And so I deleted them, and thenI re-exported them with new
(10:07):
metadata with subtitles on themthis time because I knew that
that was better.
The subtitles, it gets peopleengaged.
I put them all up, they all wentmillions of views, and since
then I'm like, yeah, well, thisis a shorts channel now, and so
that's that's kind of where itwent.
I mean, that it I don't know.
I as soon as one story hit, I'mlike, something's something's
not right here.
(10:28):
And so YouTube had finallyfigured out from that one video
that that's what people wanted.
And honestly, I think YouTubeprobably makes bank off of the
shorts feed because it's like adrug.
And so it I anytime I put like along form on there a couple
months ago, I tried blog orvlogging and stuff, it like
won't give it.
It's like John, you need to godo shorts, right?
So that's why I that's why Imoved away from the channel in
(10:49):
general.
But yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:51):
Yeah, we talk, we talk about that in VidIQ.
Like, um, you know, YouTubewants you to put all types of
formats on your same channel,but not all types of formats can
succeed on the same channel.
You could literally probablytake your long form stuff you've
done, put it on a completelyseparate channel, and it would
definitely do better than itdoes on the main channel.
So it's like, you know, what arewe supposed to do as creators?
And I know that um we we have tokind of uh we we go, we we will
(11:12):
tell you what YouTube tellseveryone, right?
We will inform you because a lotof creators um don't hear all
the information we hear aboutYouTube, but we're also gonna
tell you like what we've seen.
And what we've seen is despitethe fact that we know for a
fact, YouTube wants you to beable to put everything on one
channel that we just see theproofs in the pudding.
Uh, if you have a channel thatdoes really great with shorts,
it's very rare, very rare, notimpossible, but very rare to see
(11:36):
longs do just as well on thatchannel.
It just doesn't tend to happen.
It doesn't mean there aren'tpeople out there that don't do
it.
Of course, there are a couple ofchannels that are able to do
that, but for the most part, itjust isn't a thing that
typically works.
So, John, I know that like youwere super analytical and you
would like in a lot of ways,like a y a younger me would do
(11:57):
the same things that you're, youknow, you do, or you'd like
super research things and reallyjump in and try to understand
concepts so you can use them inyour own content.
Um, what would you say is likeone or two of the things that
really took you to anotherlevel, especially with your
content?
SPEAKER_00 (12:17):
Um I think it was a revelation I had recently that
that I could point out.
Um, so it's something that Itell people that I help now.
I didn't realize what theanalytics were doing to me until
I saw it happening to everybodyelse.
(12:38):
And uh just just real quickstory.
Um I got added as a mod to uhsubreddit called Shorts
algorithm because they saw megiving advice on there and they
were like, hey, will you modthis?
I'm very busy, and I'm like,sure.
And um nine out of ten postsover there are people talking
about analytics.
Most of them are slot, but I'llget into that later.
(13:00):
Uh, but they talk aboutanalytics and they get lost in
them.
And the people that I help in mycommunity now, I found like the
one metric that works that stopsconfusing people.
They're like, it got 90%retention.
Yeah, but it got it's a10-second video.
Like it all these things, theytry to they try to keep one set
rule that works for everything,and it's not the case.
(13:22):
And there are variables that wedon't see that make people focus
more on the analytics and not oncreating.
So the one true metric to me isperspective, outside
perspective.
And when I started gettingoutside perspective from other
people, especially when Istarted at vidIQ, and through my
failures at vid IQ, that's whenI'm like, oh okay, now I get it.
(13:44):
But until then, I was I was aslost as any other creator.
So that outside perspective ishuge for sure.
And have you ever had somebodytell you a story where you
already knew the ending, but youhad to sit through it because
you're polite, and so every nowand then they'll go into like a
(14:07):
different detail, and you'relike, This is I know the point
that you're getting to, and thishas nothing to do with it, but
you're not gonna say anything,you're yeah, okay.
And then they finally get to thepoint and you're like, Oh wow,
and you're so polite, you don'twant to be rude.
The internet doesn't care likethat.
The internet doesn't have to bethe polite, they'll just walk
away from the conversation.
And so, any unrelated detail,anything that you think might be
(14:31):
funny, anything ego centric, getrid of it, kill it, right?
Get to the point, and as soon aspeople understand that they can
trust you, then you can startbuilding that personable
relationship.
And uh, that took a while too,because I thought, man, I I got
some funny stuff here.
Sure, it's funny to me and myfriends, but to somebody that
doesn't know me, they don't givea crap, right?
(14:51):
So that was another big one thatI I have a tough time teaching
that to other people, especiallyas with storytelling, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (14:58):
No, that that's that's good to know.
So of course, storytelling islike huge, obviously, and it's
one of the things you reallyconcentrate a lot on.
Um, outside perspective isreally important, and and all
the things you're saying are arejust different aspects of what
make a content creator moresolid, more well-rounded.
You know, we talk about littlestrategies here and there, but
one of the things that I Ireally want people who listen to
(15:19):
this podcast or watch it onYouTube uh really gather is that
it's it's it's all these littlethings, not just one big thing.
There's not this one thing we'regonna tell you, oh, use this tag
in your videos, and you'll getall these views.
I think you just have torecognize that the we're we're
talking about appealing tohumans, and that in and of
itself is a complicated thing.
It's why I don't really spend asmuch time worrying about the
(15:43):
algorithm.
I am a person who's reallyinterested in human beings and
like why humans do the thingsthey do, which is why I've been
super successful at helpingother people grow, because I'm
not worried about, oh, you'reyou're I I mean, I do talk about
click-through rates and stuff,but to be honest, I'm more like,
well, why did they click?
And then why do they stay?
And that's the psychology thatyou really need to get into.
It's another level of thing.
Now, some creators um succeed bydoing and they don't even
(16:06):
realize how they're doing it,they just know that this is good
content when they make it, andthey they've never looked at
their metrics in their life.
You see that a lot with some bigcreators, like I don't know what
a CTR is, I just make a videoand it does well.
Well, it's because yousubconsciously know this stuff
anyway.
It doesn't mean that you don'tneed to know the stuff, they
just already know it, eventhough they don't recognize that
they know it.
So everything you're saying is100% true.
And sometimes the output outsideperspective will prove to you
(16:29):
that you're doing things thatare egocentric, that you're just
blathering on about stuff thatpeople aren't interested in.
And um, that's why there'sthings like the skip ahead
feature on YouTube now, which isyeah, you can't skip ahead on a
conversation, right?
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
Just be like skip 10 seconds.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (16:44):
You w I wish I'd go 2x, man.
Let's get to 2x speed on thisthing.
SPEAKER_00 (16:48):
It's why community is so important.
Like, that's why Max was so hugeto me.
That's why Discord is so huge tome, because it's as simple as
hey, why where did you drop offhere?
When did you stop payingattention?
Or when did you get bored?
And the stuff people will sayyou never thought about.
Right.
You might you might look at theretention graph and think, okay,
that's where the dip is.
(17:08):
It's because of this reason, butyou don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (17:11):
You don't know until somebody tells you.
SPEAKER_01 (17:14):
Yeah, having someone else look at the same thing and
come up with a completelydifferent answer is is actually
critical.
This is why you can'tnecessarily go to your
non-creator friends and ask themif they think a video is good.
Um, you kind of have to go topeople that uh kind of
understand what is good and thenask their unabashed uh opinion.
SPEAKER_00 (17:30):
So or your audience.
Or a comment will tell you forsure if you if you want them to
be honest.
SPEAKER_01 (17:36):
A good step in the right direction, that's for
sure.
All right, so we got a couple ofquestions.
We're gonna do uh just a coupletoday.
I think we'll have some fun withthem.
Uh John, um I will I can'tremember the last time you you
were on the podcast, it'sprobably been a minute or so.
We have a lot of new people thatare watching and listening now,
so probably won't recognize anyof these names.
But let's go ahead and do thefirst one.
So there's a couple ways you canuh send us uh a question.
(17:58):
If you're listening to the audioonly podcast, there's a link in
the show notes that says send usa text message.
This first one, I believe, is atext message.
Uh and it is from Chris and LynnLydia.
Hi, Vidye crew.
We run a travel channel that'sbeen active for 18 months.
We're happy with our growth sofar.
600,000 views and 66,000 watchhours.
(18:19):
That's awesome.
But our subscriber count isrelatively low at 4,000, which
works out to about 150 views persubscriber.
All right, before we get toodeep into this you can see where
they're starting to put mathstogether, don't necessarily have
anything to do with each other,but they don't know.
But let's just keep going.
In your podcast last week, okay,this was weeks ago, Tori
mentioned that for her channel,40% of the watch time comes from
TV.
And this was considered high.
On our channel, 66% of our watchtime from the past year comes
(18:42):
from TV.
We suspect this is a majorfactor in our low
subscriber-to-view ratio, sincesubscribing via TV is much more
cumbersome than a mobile anddesktop.
By the way, I would agree withthis.
Uh, I know that you will tell methat subscribers aren't the only
metrics of a channel success,and I agree to it in a certain
extent, but can someone pleasetell brands that?
And this that is that is a truthbomb.
Let's continue with thequestion.
That is a truth bomb rightthere.
We'd love to hear your thoughts.
(19:03):
Number one, do you have anystrategies or advice for
converting TV viewers tosubscribers beyond standard CTAs
at the end of videos?
Or is this a limitation we needto explain to brands when
pitching?
Now, this is cool.
It's so a lot of people thiswon't directly relate to because
they're thinking, oh, I don't Idon't pitch the brands and
stuff, but there's some thingsthat we'll probably talk about
here that I think are importantbecause TV is becoming larger
and larger on YouTube, and youshould be trying to create some
(19:25):
of your content for TV.
I know for shorts that isn't asbig, although from what I
understand, people are watchingshorts on TV more and more than
they ever have before, which iskind of wild.
Because I actually do getrecommended shorts on my TV.
Uh, and I watch a lot of YouTubeon TV.
But as far as like the TV thing,what are your thoughts when it
comes to this, John?
Because you haven't worked withyou directly, I'm like, you
(19:46):
could do some TV content forYouTube easy.
Like you have some great pacingand stuff that would be amazing.
So, do you have any strategiesor advice for converting TV
viewers to subscribers?
What do you think?
SPEAKER_00 (19:57):
Okay, uh, well, the reason that they're focused on
subscribers seems to be thebrand angle.
Yes, right.
Yes.
And so before I get to theconversion, I I almost wouldn't
even like make that an importantthing, but I'll explain why here
in a second.
Um, when it comes to brands, ifyou if you have 100 subscribers,
but you can show them the datathat they'll buy their crap,
(20:20):
that they'll buy their product,you say, hey, look, these people
are interested.
Look at here's my demographic.
What like they want to buythere, the people that watch my
stuff want to buy your product.
And so if you're trying to pitchto an unrelated brand, they're
gonna look at the metrics.
But if you try to pitch to avery specific brand that you
could help, like you offer themvalue, you don't have to worry
(20:41):
about that stuff, and it's allabout the presentation.
So that said, when it comes tothe subscriber thing, I honestly
think it just happensorganically, like you're not
gonna have a magic word to saythat that even if you tell them
to subscribe, sure.
But on a TV, I just think thatthe watch time is the most
important.
(21:02):
I recently had a person I did acreator breakdown for, uh, I
still gotta give it to themtoday, but they had the same
situation, they did cruisecontent.
Uh I found out after someresearch that about 90% of
cruise viewers, they they don'twatch because they're going on a
cruise.
They don't have a ship booked,they watch because they want to
(21:23):
re-experience the cruise.
And so the advice I'm givingthis person is uh the reason
reviews are the most importantuh like uh topic for cruise is
because people are just tryingto experience it, and the
narrator is actually getting inthe way of what they want to
experience.
So I guess whatever makes thatuh TV viewing uh situation like
(21:46):
what do why TV?
Why do they enjoy it so much?
Typically, TV is backgroundcontent, it's relaxing content,
it's comfort content.
It's not like let's turn it onTV and get a bunch of
information and study, you know.
So I guess kind of finding theperspective of the TV viewer and
seeing like what they reallyenjoy and doubling down on that.
That's without specifics of yourchannel.
SPEAKER_01 (22:07):
Right, right, right.
And I think what you said thereis really important.
Um, there's there's so manyaspects to this.
First, let's go back to thesubscriber thing.
Just like you said, yeah, brandsare important, uh, are
interested in subscriber feesbecause they don't understand
subscriber numbers because theydon't understand what it
actually means.
They think if your subscribernumber is high, that means
they're gonna get a good returnon investment.
The only thing they really careabout is the return on
investment.
Uh, and the way you can startout with that is if you have, I
(22:29):
mean, you're big enough that youcan get um YouTube affiliate
sales, do a couple videos aboutum products that you use, and
then put the affiliate links inyour um description, and then
you'll have analytics for that.
You'll literally be able to go,I did a video about this you
know, hairbrush that I had, andlook how many sales I generated
through Amazon.
I can do the same for you.
So the idea is that you youbuild up the information ahead
(22:50):
of time and then you can pitchto them uh with that because
that's the only thing theyreally care about.
Sometimes they don't know thatthat's what they need to care
about, but that is the onlything you need to care about.
And by the way, we have a videoon here in the podcast and on
audio podcast with Justin Moore,who broke down how to pitch
everything to anybody, no matterwhat your channel size is, and
he is incredible.
(23:10):
And if you look, if you'rewatching a YouTube video, you
can see John right now withSponsor Magnet, the his book.
Uh Justin is amazing, and hehelps small creators get
ridiculous amounts of money.
Like, stupid.
I need to talk to him, really behonest.
Uh, I need to do that.
Um, so there's that.
Like, if that's what you'reworried about, there.
Um, and is it a limitation toexplain?
(23:30):
So we just kind of explainedthat.
I think at the end of the day,you do just want more views.
Subscribers are great, but theydon't equate views.
Um, really great channels getmore views to subscribers
anyway.
So hopefully you're experiencingthat if you're a successful
channel.
And and while again, Iunderstand that brands tend to
look at that stuff.
If you can show them that if yougive me this money, I'm gonna
(23:51):
make you more money, they don'treally care at all.
Like they don't.
Um, and I have a friend who umwho's making a really incredible
amount of money with very fewviews on his channel.
Um it's it's kind ofbreathtaking, and it really like
opened my mind to that.
Okay.
Next question from Marshall.
(24:12):
Hey, VidIQ team, my name isMarshall from Australia, from
the upside down, as I like tocall it.
Uh, and have been listening tothe podcast since about April of
this year.
Since I've been listening toyour advice, it has helped me
get one of my three channels Irun going off since last year,
when I restarted the channel inOctober of last year.
What would be better for mysmall channel that has 27 subs
at the time of running thisemail doing live streams on
(24:34):
Twitch, YouTube, or justrecording it like I already do,
uh, then uploading it?
So I guess they're saying thatone of their I assume it may be
gaming.
I don't know if it's on Twitch,you would assume maybe gaming
here.
I was trying to figure that out.
Yeah, yeah, it's and by the way,a lot of these uh emails are
truncated.
Some people tend to send reallylong emails, and I gotta, you
know, kill my darlings to getthe right email in.
(24:55):
Um so at this point, they'rebasically, I think, before we
get to the second question, it'slike, what would be better for
your small channel?
Um, doing live streams onTwitch, YouTube, and or just
recording it and then uploading.
I think really you need to dothe content for the platform
you're on.
I don't, I don't like, I mean,unless you have something really
spectacular that happens onTwitch specifically and you
weren't streaming on YouTube,uh, do it natively on YouTube.
(25:16):
Stream on YouTube and then usethe I there, I don't know if
it's out yet, but I know theyhave a feature coming out
that'll take best clips fromyour your live stream on YouTube
and immediately make videos outof them.
So you should just be uhmulti-streaming, in my opinion.
If you're gonna be streaming atall, just multi-stream, meet
people where they are.
Because I'll be honest, like ifI see there's some things I
watch on YouTube streaming thatare also live streaming on
Twitch, but I'll watch it onYouTube because I don't have to
(25:39):
worry about commercials there.
If you don't have the Twitchprime, not even Twitch Prime,
but like you know, Twitchsubscription or whatever, you
might get commercials.
And even you, even if you likeTwitch, most people have Amazon
Prime, which means you know,there's a good chance that uh
some of you might have umpremium, which means you don't
have to worry about ads, soyou're watching it on YouTube
rather than Twitch.
And I don't like seeingpersonally, um, and you might
(26:03):
not be able to get around thisreplays of Twitch streams on
YouTube that haven't beenformatted for YouTube.
Like you see a bunch of Twitchthings come up, and like, that's
that I don't even know what thatis.
So I I personally don't likethat.
So I think, in my opinion,that's what you should do.
But what what do you think, EricJohn, for this first question?
SPEAKER_00 (26:19):
I I want to back you up first.
I do watch some Twitchstreamers, but it's only the
ones that look like like myscreen right now, where it's
just me in the bottom corner andthen they're looking at their
channel or they're looking atwhatever content they're looking
at.
Um and that's like becausethere's nothing else, it's just
Twitch, like all the Twitchcrap.
I don't, I don't, it doesn'thelp anything, right?
(26:42):
If they respond to them andthat's off screen, that's fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and I'll watch, dude, I'llwatch like two hours worth
because it's like I don't feellike I'm left out, right?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (26:50):
But yeah, so I totally back you up on that.
Yeah, um, I guess I got I I knowyou go where people are, right?
I know that lesson.
I've learned that lesson.
And yet I didn't learn it,apparently, until recently.
Um I so so when I was startingall of my offers, like the the
(27:13):
course and my community andstuff like that, I I use Kajabi.
And it's like you can build apodcast, uh community course,
you can sell books on there,whatever.
It's just a it's an all-aroundcreator platform.
And uh I started my community onthere, and I got like one
person, my paid community, and Igot one person in there for like
(27:34):
a month, and it's just me andhim talking, and I'm like, I'm
putting like all these updatesand tools and all sorts of crap
in there that help me when Icreate.
I'm like, man, what what iskeeping people from coming?
And then I thought, you knowwhat?
I'm just gonna switch over to myDiscord because I have like 700
people in there that are alreadyin my community.
(27:55):
The moment I switched, peoplewere like, Oh, you got a
community?
Yeah, jump in.
Jump like and now I got like Igot like 20 people in there
paid, and it's it's so nicebecause I went where people
were.
And so the more you simplifyyour whole structure, I do I
couldn't even imagine doinganother channel right now.
Like, I just focus on the one,and then like I use the the John
(28:17):
Scott on Instagram to promoteit, and like it's a back and
forth.
And anything more than that, I'mactually hurting my business
because I'm spreading myself toothin.
I'm focusing on things that haveno ROI, and so it's just like,
yeah, simplify, go where peopleare for sure.
That's that's definitely whatyou want to do.
That's a lot of stuff to do.
SPEAKER_01 (28:36):
You know who recently who who just and I you
know it's funny considering Iconsider this person kind of a
mentor.
You know who also is learningthis lesson?
Uh Darrell Eaves.
Oh, yeah?
As he's moving his communityback to Discord, so it was on
Discord, he made a privatething, now he's moving it back
to Discord.
So I feel like in some ways I'mjust the smartest person in the
room, but uh no one seems toknow it.
(28:56):
Okay, what's the second questionhere?
Okay, second question is how isit best to go around uh
sponsors?
As I have now got my firstsponsor for two of my channels,
even though my second iscurrently a bit behind my sports
channel.
I assume they mean in size.
What is the best way to promptthe sponsorship I have to my
channel and what should I bedoing with it?
And I believe what they'reactually asking here is how do I
get people to engage with thesponsorship thing on their
(29:19):
channel?
Final question is it a good ideato have social media for each
channel like Instagram andTikTok to promote my channels
and content to other audiencesin hopes they'll come to YouTube
to watch or not?
That's the only question I'mreally gonna worry about
focusing on because we alreadytalked about sponsorships and
stuff before.
Uh, is it worth doing uh thecomplete focus on YouTube only?
Because you know a little bitabout this, because you you were
(29:40):
on YouTube and you've doneincredibly well on Instagram.
And now that you've kind of doneboth, like what is the strategy
when you have like I know yourlove for like YouTube, but by
the same token, you gotta paythe bills, right?
And you gotta go with thesuccesses.
And it doesn't mean you couldn'tbe successful, you could still
be as successful on YouTube, butyou've done so much great stuff
on Instagram stuff.
So what What would you think thewhen when you're trying to
(30:01):
explain to someone about this?
SPEAKER_00 (30:04):
Uh right now, just to to give context, I have a
channel that's that it iscreator help, but it's more like
creator rant because there'ssome things that I could never
say at VidIQ.
It's not family friendly at all.
That's fair.
That's fair.
And it's called it's calledcreator rant.
It's, I mean, I just kind ofpopped it down there.
But you can see some of thestuff that I talk about is yeah,
(30:26):
it's things that are going wrongwith YouTube.
It's talking about slopcreators.
Uh, but what I found, let mejust scroll back up because that
one's not good.
But um, what I this only has 106subscribers because it's just
brand new.
Yeah, and what I'm finding isthat it is still paying my bills
because I'm showing my socialproof of the people that I help
(30:47):
through Instagram.
So creator rant is, dude, I'vehad that logo by the way, for
like three years.
I showed it to Dan one time.
He's like, dude, that's so funnybecause it looks like me, and I
never used it.
And I had to, I had to create abrand to like put behind the
course that I made.
And that's I was like, allright, fine, I'll use that one.
So anyway, um, that's that'slike a small channel, and I'm
(31:10):
still getting what I need fromit because on Instagram it's
John Scott.
And so if you if you run a biglike franchise or whatever,
people don't want to followCoke, they want to follow the
CEO of Coke.
And so that's kind of what I doover there.
And so people get to know theguy behind Creator Rant and what
he can do for them, and thenit's over here for my general
(31:32):
content, over there for like gethelp directly from me, and I
just got this guy a millionviews and that sort of thing.
And so, in that same vein forlike a sports channel or
whatever, your main content cango on YouTube and you can do
shorts and stuff like that.
Um, but posting your um I'mgonna go Gary V about this, but
(31:56):
okay, put posting like all day,every day, you're behind the
scenes, whatever you're doing,post it.
Post it, post it, post it.
Because you might get five, tenposts out there, but one of them
will hit.
It's just a numbers game overthere.
And so uh when that one hits,then everybody knows who you
are.
Like a lot, at least thosepeople do.
(32:16):
I know getting people from oneplatform to another is tough.
So really just take theplatforms, simplify it as much
as as you can, and like have agoal in mind for that.
And that's what I did withCreator Rant.
But I used to be in the sameboat where I'm like, but I'm
gonna try here, here.
I only post on TikTok, so nobodyposts my sh my stuff on there
first, right?
(32:37):
Because if you do, then they'relike the owner.
And um, yeah, so I don't I hateTikTok.
But anyway, that's that I justtry to simplify as much as I
can.
Otherwise, I would I'd bespreading myself too thin.
And everything you do whenyou're spread it thin is is
useless, right?
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (32:54):
I feel like as a as a smaller creator, concentrating
on so many things might be ahindrance and it might slow you
down because just I mean, whenyou're established, it's hard.
If you're not established, likeunless you don't have a job and
stuff and you don't have nothingelse to do, okay, if if that's
the case, fine.
But I just feel like you willslow your overall um growth down
(33:15):
by quite a bit trying to spreadbetween all these different
platforms, trying to understandwhat they are.
Because generally speaking, justtaking a piece of content and
posting the same exact thingelsewhere doesn't always work.
Um, if you're really analyticalabout it, like John has been,
and he figured out kind of somesecret sauce, you know, a year
or so ago about it.
That's one thing.
But by and large, he had to do alot of work to get to that point
(33:37):
anyway.
So I feel like what he just saidabout the Gary Vee part is
actually very true.
Like, take your shots, figureout what works, and then start
to figure out like, okay, can Ispread this across multiple
platforms?
Can I do this?
So, you know, whatever time youhave during the course of a day
or a week, concentrate that onsomething that you can succeed
at and that is uh viable andsomething that's not gonna burn
(33:57):
you out rather than just tryingto be everywhere all the time,
all the time.
SPEAKER_00 (34:02):
So one one really important caveat to this, and I
I listened to Gary Vee foryears, right?
But it only made sense.
This this advice only made sensewhen I was pissed about
something.
When I was so passionate that Iwas gonna post it regardless, I
didn't care how it performed.
Once I started doing that, andhonestly, it happened after I
(34:25):
left, but um I got I got socaught up in all the slop that
was going on, and I wanted tohelp curb this slop.
And by the way, slop notsynonymous with AI, it's there's
a crossover, right?
But it's it's content thatrequires zero effort or human
input.
SPEAKER_01 (34:42):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (34:42):
And so, like stolen content, form clips, prompted
content, non-reaction content,like the ones where they have
the mouth full of water and theyjust watch somebody else's like
that's stealing, right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:53):
And so every day I'd see it and I'm like, I can't
hold my tongue anymore.
I have to say something.
And how do I what's my missionis to put the create back in
creator and to help curb thisslop.
And it all just came together.
When it all came together forme, I don't care what I post
anymore because it's all it'sall in one direction, it's all
(35:14):
with that goal in mind.
Yeah.
So if you're just if you're justmaking channels to make them
hoping one will succeed, it willbe much more difficult than if
you post something you'repassionate about or good or good
at, you know, something that youknow.
So just take that however youwant.
I I figured that really neededto be said because that's how I
learned.
SPEAKER_01 (35:33):
Yeah, no, I I respect that.
I respect it.
Uh, you can also send us anemail at the boost at vidiq.com,
but I thought we'd do somethingdifferent this time for the next
two questions, and that is lookat comments that were left on
the YouTube channel.
I thought this would be kind offun.
Um, this one's from Dr.
Terry Wenner, I think it is.
Uh, I use landscape for longform, but shorts require
vertical layout.
(35:54):
I have to change them, and Idon't think shorts look as good.
Is everyone doing this or isthere a better way?
And as someone who's done both,I would love to know what what
your secret sauce would be forsomething like this.
Do you shoot for the edit of theshort so that everything works,
or are you just taking whathappened and then making it long
and short?
SPEAKER_00 (36:12):
Okay, um the only way I'm gonna explain, okay.
First of all, I don't if I'mgonna shoot a short, it's gonna
be with my phone specifically,and I shoot it vertical.
SPEAKER_02 (36:21):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
Uh if I'm converting content, I found a way that
works for me.
But the the angle that you'reseeing right now, if you if you
crop it in, I can't really show,but actually maybe I can.
If you Yeah, there we go.
If you start to crop it in, likethe vertical will start to hit
like this.
And then for some reason, likenot for some I don't know why I
(36:46):
said that, but like you wantyour eyes on the eyeline, right?
So this is where you want youreyes, and it feels like I'm
very, very close.
But the only way to correctlycrop this and have the thing
that you're supposed to look aton the eye line is to do it like
this, and so shooting verticalspecifically for vertical is why
that works.
But here was my workaround.
(37:06):
So I did a short for this, andin Premiere, it's like super
fast to cut yourself out now.
Like in Premiere beta, it'sAdobe Premiere for those that
don't edit, but all it is is aclick of a button and it gets
rid of your background.
And so now I kind of found abetter way, like, dude, this
took maybe two minutes, and likeit's so easy, Travis.
SPEAKER_01 (37:33):
I can't do any of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (37:36):
I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, yeah, no, I can't do this stuff.
I'm glad that uh like I look atthis and I'm like, that's gonna
take me two years to make.
SPEAKER_00 (37:45):
Yeah, so it it takes two seconds now.
Before it would have taken me along time, but because there's
just one button for it, AI is agreat tool for creators who want
to still be creative.
And so now this is what I do isI just cut myself out of the
background and I'll drag myselfif I want to put myself up.
The eye line is where it saysmore ad sense revenue.
Okay, but if I want to put pullmyself up, I'll just like darken
(38:06):
the the bottom or whatever.
And so that's how I do it iscropping, cutting out whatever,
just filling in the space withother things, and that's kind of
what I'm doing now.
It is very difficult to turnyour uh long form into a short
form unless you are like thisfar back.
And when you're this far back,you can do podcasts and stuff
(38:28):
like that and turn it into, butlike you have to start filming
this far back, and when you do,you lose a lot of detail.
So it's up to you how you wantto do that, but I just figured
that's how I do it.
I'll show you that.
SPEAKER_01 (38:40):
I think that uh any kind of the thing is that even
if someone did do exactly whatyou just said, it might have
sparked something in them to go,oh okay, no, I don't have to go,
but if I do this and it, youknow, you just sparked a new way
for them to do it, that's fine.
And we see that all the time onthis channel.
Like we we uh we'll say onething and then we'll get an
email like a week or two laterto go, oh yeah, I was thinking
about this thing, and you justyou just you know gave me an
(39:01):
idea, and it's I love that.
I think that's fantastic.
We have very smart people thatwatch this podcast, which I
love, and very creative peoplebecause we're you know we're all
creators, so anyway.
Uh last question.
This one's interesting because Ifeel like so.
AI is a tool and controversialamong creators or not.
Um, there are some good thingsfrom it, for sure.
(39:22):
This is one I'm actually kind ofexcited about, so I hope it gets
good.
And this is from Katie with acamera.
Katie with a camera says, Do youthink AI editing will produce
videos that are similar to eachother?
Like, will AI edited shorts allhave the same exact editing
style?
I don't think so.
But what are your thoughts onlike AI editing specifically,
like for content, not just youknow, thumbnails and stuff, but
(39:44):
like actual content.
Do you think it'll get to thepoint where it'll be something
that you can rely on?
SPEAKER_00 (39:48):
I'm not sure what AI editing is.
SPEAKER_01 (39:50):
So, like video editing, it like you put in
because some some companiesactually have this.
SPEAKER_00 (39:55):
Uh I mean, I I know I know video, but like what does
it do?
Is it like taking a long formand cutting it up?
SPEAKER_01 (40:02):
Is that so like OBIS?
Currently, yes, but the idea isthat at some point it will do
everything, include adding musicand all this other stuff.
There's a couple of companiesout there, I can't remember
which one I saw a video from,where allegedly this, and you
know, you can't really like youhave to take them at their word
that like they'll show you thisclip and it's like, holy cow,
it's really good.
And they're like, this was doneby AI.
Like, whoa, they did the music,it did the zoom ins, it did
(40:23):
everything that you would thinkyou would need someone uh with
human cells to do.
SPEAKER_00 (40:29):
Okay, I I get what you're saying.
I think as it stands, yeah, andhonestly, I don't see this
changing much in the future.
Okay, but AI sucks atpsychology, and the moment that
AI will get better at psychologyis the moment that psychology
changes.
SPEAKER_01 (40:47):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (40:48):
How quickly do we get used to Chat GPT saying
certain phrases?
Sure.
Right?
Like within the week, we'rewe're sick of it saying the word
fluff now.
And that it's like, yeah, butlike two weeks ago everybody was
like, Yeah, I don't want to hearany fluff.
And now it's like, okay, let'sget right to the point.
No fluff.
And now everybody's like, Whatcould it just stop saying fluff?
Could it just stop could it juststop using M dashes?
(41:09):
Like, it doesn't matter whatthey change it to, we're gonna
get used to it.
And so Interesting.
If if AI advances to a pointwhere it's like ever dynamically
changing, sure, but it stillcan't I I feel like it still
can't accurately predict whatpsychology will change into,
what hooks will get us next.
That's why marketing is so goodbecause they keep up with how
(41:33):
humans evolve.
And sure, AI might be able to dothat, but it's still gonna take
human effort to to get it there.
I mean, I don't know.
I just don't see it hooking thesame way that I could.
SPEAKER_01 (41:44):
Yeah, and the other thing is um I I think I think
one good thing about it is itcan do a lot of the the rough
cuts probably pretty well andget you to a point where you
just put the sauce on top.
SPEAKER_00 (41:54):
Yeah, as a tool, great.
I have no problem with AI.
I dude, my business would not bewhere it is without AI, like
building websites and stuff,using Zapier to connect Discord
to like a purchase.
I don't know how to do that, butthe little AI tool or Chat GPT
helps me get through it amazing,right?
SPEAKER_02 (42:12):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (42:13):
So uh I just when people use AI to do everything
and then they feel entitled tomake money from it, stuff like
that, that's where the issue is.
Everything else is like, yeah,AI is great, every AI improves a
lot.
If you AI generate your scriptand say it word for word, I
gotta be honest, it at least theaudio is gonna be slop.
(42:34):
Like just like have an opinion,have some conviction, right?
But if you take your existingcontent, you let AI cut it up,
and then you put your touches onit, put the human input.
Yeah, I could see that work,especially for podcasts.
Yeah, yeah.
But like when AI starts to Idon't I don't know anything
about Opus, but I know what itused to do.
It would just like kind of takewhat it thought was good.
(42:57):
I didn't think those were good,right?
SPEAKER_01 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (42:59):
I watched the podcast and I'm like, why didn't
they use that?
SPEAKER_01 (43:02):
Right, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00 (43:03):
They were a robot, right?
Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_01 (43:05):
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (43:06):
Yeah.
unknown (43:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:09):
It is interesting though, if you think about where
we were literally a year ago, weweren't even at the point where
half the stuff that happens nowcould could even be done.
Like now we're at a place that'slike it's it's crazy.
Every couple of months, it growsexponentially.
Well, at any rate, the thingsthat you are up to, what are
what are you gonna be doing forthe next uh what what's 2026
look like for you?
Because we're not we're almostat the end of 2025 as a
recording of this.
SPEAKER_00 (43:30):
I um so uh with the mission of putting the create
back in the creator and stoppingthe slop, basically that's
that's where I'm at.
Like, dude, I can't I almostwant to stop modding that one
Reddit because it's just allbad.
And I I keep trying to correctpeople, but it's overwhelming
the amount of people that wantto make money with no effort.
(43:51):
They're like, oh yeah, like I Itook uh queso's clips and then I
put subtitles over it, but whydid I get denied monetization?
Yeah, but and then you tell themand they're like, Yeah, but
everybody else is doing it.
And it's like just because theyhaven't been caught yet or they
slip through the cracks doesn'tmean it's YouTube's not cracking
down on it.
They're cracking down so hardthey're getting rid of channels
(44:12):
that don't deserve it.
Right.
So it's uh it's a mess, butyeah, sorry, that that's like
kind of where my mission is.
And so slowly but surely I'mgetting more creators into my
personal community, which iscalled real creator community.
Okay because it's like there'sso many that just dude, you're
not a creator, you're aprompter.
Like you're you're a thief,you're not you're not doing
(44:35):
anything.
And so uh yeah, I got a littlestreet team in there that we do
um like report parties and umcopyright take down putting like
I teach them when I started JohnScott LLC, I went through like
2,000 of my clips that gotstolen, and I I got so many
channels deleted.
Like I should have recorded it,dude.
(44:55):
It was crazy.
SPEAKER_01 (44:55):
Yeah, that would have been cool for a video.
SPEAKER_00 (44:58):
But anyway, yeah, that's the state of the the
creator world.
And when I was just doing shortsand getting millions of views
and stuff, I felt like I wasn'tI wasn't making the world that I
wanted to see.
Like I wasn't being the change Iwanted to see.
SPEAKER_01 (45:12):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (45:13):
Now I feel like I am.
Um two days ago, one of my firststudents said, Hey, my shorts
just started hitting millions ofviews.
And I went to his channel and hehad one that was like 10
million, one that was 30million.
Wow.
I'm like, damn, I got somethinghere.
That's crazy.
And so um just putting that outlike that fulfills me more than
getting them myself.
It's I don't know, it's it'sawesome.
SPEAKER_01 (45:35):
No, that's the way I've been for pretty much my
entire career, especially hereat VidIQ, because I was coaching
and then everything else.
It's it's been less about me andmore about uh everyone else.
So uh if you want to check outJohn, there'll be some links in
the description and the shownotes.
And you know, he'll be backaround.
He's around, you see him around.
Just keep it keep your eye out,especially if you're watching
the main Vit IQ channel.
You might see him pop up hereand there, uh maybe on the live
stream or something.
(45:56):
So keep your eye out for that.
Yeah, I hope so.
SPEAKER_00 (45:57):
That's that's what I'm hoping.
I missed him.
I think I'm missed thecommunity.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
We missed you too, John.
We talk about you all the time.
In a good way, believe it ornot.
But I think they're gonna belike, it's gonna be bad.
It's all bad.
Anyway, we hope that you'veenjoyed.
Of course, you're watching theYouTube channel.
You can hit subscribe, hit thatlike button if you do.
And if you have hype points, whydon't you hit that hype button?
I mean, why not?
Just hit the hype.
I don't even know what thatmeans anymore, but hit the hype.
And if you're listening to theaudio podcast, leave us a five
star review.
We always love those.
(46:21):
See y'all in the next one.
Hey, welcome to the Only Podcast.
It's here for you more thanyou're here for us.
I'm here, Travis, every singleweek, telling you how to grow
your YouTube channels and alsotalking to super interesting
people.
And I've done that today.
I'm successful yet again as Ibrought back an old favorite of
many of you who've been aroundthe VidIQ Ecosphere for a very
long time.
John is back.
(00:20):
How are you doing, John?
Hey, how's it going?
You're not dead, which iswonderful.
SPEAKER_00 (00:25):
I'm dead.
SPEAKER_01 (00:27):
I'm just super busy.
SPEAKER_00 (00:29):
Very quiet.
SPEAKER_01 (00:30):
So we're going to talk a little bit about that
where John's been.
We're also going to answer yourquestions here, as we always do
every single week.
Gonna have a good old timetalking about YouTuber-y things
and all the rest.
If you're new here, of course,we try to help you grow your
YouTube channel and uh hangtight because we're gonna answer
some questions that have beensubmitted to us.
We'll also tell you how to dothat later on.
And uh let's just jump into somefun stuff, YouTuber-y things.
Uh, let's talk about a littlebit about where you've been and
(00:52):
what's been going on with you.
So, just a couple months ago, uhyou had you have gone off from
Bid IQ.
We'll actually go into like yourhistory of the because it's kind
of interesting.
Uh, to do your own uh mainchannel stuff.
So now you yourself are acontent creator in and of your
you are company John.
The company is John.
Uh tell us how that transitionhas been from going from a job,
(01:13):
you know, that you go to.
I mean, you don't leave thehouse and go to, but you know, a
job, uh, to just being your ownboss and everything.
Tell us a little bit about that.
What's that been like?
SPEAKER_00 (01:22):
Uh, confusing to be honest with you.
Um, when I left Vid IQ, it wasbecause on my main channel my
shorts were going viral and theywere paying all my bills,
basically.
And so, like, my last video wasabout that, and I started
focusing on that.
And um then people in thecomments started asking me to
(01:43):
teach them how to make the viral3D shorts that I was making.
And so in my spare time, I madea course.
And like the month that I madethe course, I be I barely made
any videos on YouTube, so I hadlike very little income coming
in when I was making the course.
And so I put that out and I gotback to animating, and it didn't
(02:03):
feel as fulfilling, I guess.
I I think it's because all thecomments and stuff I was getting
were obviously children orreally dumb adults, and it's
like you're gonna get that withshorts entertainment, right?
Sure.
But when every comment says 6'7,you're just like, what about
yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (02:21):
So if you had to uh let's talk about uh perception
versus reality, right?
Like, because you've doneeverything from uh helping other
creators uh you know do theirchannel stuff to being the the
guy himself.
What are the perceptions you hadgoing into being full-time for
yourself versus the reality ofthat?
SPEAKER_00 (02:40):
I think uh I didn't I didn't quite know what my
mission was, what what mypurpose was.
And I've since found it, but ittook it took jumping into having
success to realize that thatwasn't what success was to me.
And so when I started gettingcomments like, hey, my first
(03:01):
short just went viral, and I'mlike, that feels way more
fulfilling than getting millionsof views for some reason, and so
I kind of started heading thatdirection.
And you you know I've alwaysstruggled with like niche.
Well, if you're if you're 36 orolder and you struggle with
niche for years and years, screwit, just get a mission instead.
(03:23):
And so now helping creators ismy mission, and I don't know, I
forgot about niche a while ago.
So yeah, it helps, honestly.
SPEAKER_01 (03:31):
Well, let's just for people who don't know, uh might
as well get people caught up onhow we met.
Um, because we've known eachother for and this is weird,
John, for a couple years now.
It's hard to it's weird to saythat.
Dude, it doesn't seem like it.
SPEAKER_00 (03:43):
It seriously feels like yesterday.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Yeah, it seems like we just so the way this worked
is um a couple years back, I wasrunning a program called uh
VideQ Max, and it was a groupcoaching uh program here, and
John came through as as one ofthe students, which was really
great.
And um, he was in the Discordwhile we were doing a live
stream audit, I think.
And I think your channel cameup, I believe.
(04:05):
You were being audited by Roband stuff, I believe.
Is that right?
Sound right to you?
SPEAKER_00 (04:09):
Yeah, the channel was at Mocknicks, and it was an
animation channel.
I wasn't I never even had myface on YouTube at that point.
SPEAKER_01 (04:15):
That's right, which is really interesting because
it's completely different now.
So um I remember watching thatand going, holy crap, this guy
can can really can really go.
He can edit.
So I was uh thinking about doingmy own kind of personal channel
uh with some stuff, and I reallywanted really good editing.
And what John didn't know at thetime was that I was holding off
(04:35):
on doing the channel until Ifound an editor because I knew
that the editing part was gonnahave to be on point for it to be
any good.
So I was like, hey, do you uh doyou do anything on the side?
Would you be interested in doingthis thing?
And I sent him a message and Iwasn't sure what you would say.
I'm I'm curious as to what yourside of this felt like because I
don't actually know that.
Like, what was that day like?
Because you were on the streamand then the same day I'm like,
What are you up to?
(04:56):
Tell me what that was likebecause I've never heard your
side of it.
SPEAKER_00 (04:59):
At the time, I was living in Germany and I was
watching a lot of VidIQ, but Iwasn't getting the advice that I
needed.
My channel was very specific,and best practices didn't really
hit the spot for me.
Yeah, and so I knew that I hadto connect to somebody
personally and get outsideperspective.
And I always submitted to thething like trying to get on the
stream to have somebody look atit.
(05:20):
And uh I knew when Max come upcame up, you guys advertised
like Max gets priority, you pickone from Max every time.
And so I sat there for a while.
I didn't have much money becauseI I was still like becoming a
citizen, so I didn't have a job.
Um, in in Germany, like theyhave something called it's like
a work school where you go as astudent and then you get paid
(05:41):
like five bucks an hour orwhatever.
Okay, and so I sat there knowinglike I this is not something I
can afford, but my whole lifewhere I've gotten has been
through networking.
And I know that if I go inthere, I'm gonna connect to
somebody that will lead mesomewhere.
And so I struggled with that abit, and I'm like, you know
what?
I'm gonna pull the trigger.
And so I put the money in, andthen one day later, I got the DM
(06:06):
from you because one day, yeah,I got I immediately got on the
channel and I was like, okay, sothat was the goal, but it was to
I wanted people to see like whatI was made of, and then it
worked out.
Yeah, I would dude.
I remember when after thatstream, after I talked to you a
little bit, I went to my wifeand I said, You know what'd be
really awesome if I got to workat VidIQ at the end of this.
(06:28):
Like, that would be the dreamjob.
I s dude, I swear, I said thatto her, and she's like, That
would be really cool.
And then a couple months later,she's like, You got your dream
job.
Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, itreally worked out.
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
So, what ended up happening was um we worked
together on uh a channel calledTravis Tries the World, which of
all the content I've ever doneon YouTube, I am most proud of
all of that.
There's not a single video thatwe worked on that I'm not proud
of, not just because of how coolthe stuff came out, but like we
it was so collaborative.
We would sit on calls for likean hour and just come up with
ideas and some wacky stuff wewould do.
(06:59):
And I I do miss that to acertain degree because like we
had I feel like some of the mostcreative stuff I've ever come up
with has been with in a callcall with you.
Um, but you made it all come toreality, like your editing
style, your ability to dospecial effects and stuff that I
can't do made that stuff come toreality.
And then there was an opening uhfor a thumbnail designer for
VidIQ, and I'm like, I know youcan do thumbnails because you
had done some of mine.
(07:20):
I'm like, this is be a good stepin, this would be a good way to
get you in the door.
And it wasn't long before youwere doing edits, and then you
were on the channel, and thenyou were doing all the stuff,
and then and I'm not surprisedby any of this.
I knew you were talented when Ifirst met you.
So, you know, as things wentbetter for you and you started
creating content, obviously youryour personal stuff started to
(07:41):
take off, and you you made a bigpivot.
So you went from you know, whenyou first went into vidIQ at the
animation channel, when did youdecide to like make a channel
that has nothing to do with likeyou showed your face?
Like, what did that come to be?
How did you come to that?
SPEAKER_00 (07:56):
Uh, when I first started collaborating with
Travis, it was about two weeksafter I started the Hey John
Scott channel um with withTravis Tries with you.
Uh like I'm talking about you inthird person as if you're not
here.
And um I I remember thinking,well, now I got this free time,
like I kind of I want my versionof that too, and I still didn't
(08:18):
know what I wanted.
And if you go back into all thevideos that are privated, I
tried a lot of different things.
I even tried like Moist Criticalstyle commentary, which got my
first copyright claim, Iremember.
Or it was like a warning orsomething because it was a meme
that had the audio claimed bysome unrelated anyway, it
doesn't matter.
Um, I I just remember trying afew things, and right around the
(08:40):
time that we got me into doingthumbnails, that's when I'm
like, okay, I've got a job.
Now I can focus on Travis andme, and like the time freed up.
And so after experimenting for awhile, I did like creator help
stuff for a second on therebefore I joined vidIQ.
And then I knew that I hadlearned so much from Tim
(09:01):
Schmoyer about storytelling thatI wanted to give it a shot.
And I put out three shorts backto back on Instagram that told a
story, and they all did superwell.
And I told everybody at VidIQ,like, hey, look, these are
getting like hundreds ofthousands of views, and maybe I
make a video about thatsometime, and I didn't for a
long time.
I also uploaded those to the HeyJohn Scott channel and they
(09:22):
tanked big time.
Dude, a couple I mean, it wasactually like two years later.
I I was I tried a bunch ofdifferent niches, like ADHD
related after I got diagnosedwith ADHD, and then I was like,
okay, maybe I do creatorself-help to avoid um you know
distractions or productivity orto talk about productivity, that
(09:43):
sort of thing.
Um avoid burnout was really thebig focus.
But eventually I just put up anew story about a firehouse that
was like it looked like a watertower, and I thought, well,
maybe I get back intostorytelling.
Put that one up, my channel hit,and then I thought, well, what
the hell?
What why why did these three doso bad?
And so I deleted them, and thenI re-exported them with new
(10:07):
metadata with subtitles on themthis time because I knew that
that was better.
The subtitles, it gets peopleengaged.
I put them all up, they all wentmillions of views, and since
then I'm like, yeah, well, thisis a shorts channel now, and so
that's that's kind of where itwent.
I mean, that it I don't know.
I as soon as one story hit, I'mlike, something's something's
not right here.
(10:28):
And so YouTube had finallyfigured out from that one video
that that's what people wanted.
And honestly, I think YouTubeprobably makes bank off of the
shorts feed because it's like adrug.
And so it I anytime I put like along form on there a couple
months ago, I tried blog orvlogging and stuff, it like
won't give it.
It's like John, you need to godo shorts, right?
So that's why I that's why Imoved away from the channel in
(10:49):
general.
But yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:51):
Yeah, we talk, we talk about that in VidIQ.
Like, um, you know, YouTubewants you to put all types of
formats on your same channel,but not all types of formats can
succeed on the same channel.
You could literally probablytake your long form stuff you've
done, put it on a completelyseparate channel, and it would
definitely do better than itdoes on the main channel.
So it's like, you know, what arewe supposed to do as creators?
And I know that um we we have tokind of uh we we go, we we will
(11:12):
tell you what YouTube tellseveryone, right?
We will inform you because a lotof creators um don't hear all
the information we hear aboutYouTube, but we're also gonna
tell you like what we've seen.
And what we've seen is despitethe fact that we know for a
fact, YouTube wants you to beable to put everything on one
channel that we just see theproofs in the pudding.
Uh, if you have a channel thatdoes really great with shorts,
it's very rare, very rare, notimpossible, but very rare to see
(11:36):
longs do just as well on thatchannel.
It just doesn't tend to happen.
It doesn't mean there aren'tpeople out there that don't do
it.
Of course, there are a couple ofchannels that are able to do
that, but for the most part, itjust isn't a thing that
typically works.
So, John, I know that like youwere super analytical and you
would like in a lot of ways,like a y a younger me would do
(11:57):
the same things that you're, youknow, you do, or you'd like
super research things and reallyjump in and try to understand
concepts so you can use them inyour own content.
Um, what would you say is likeone or two of the things that
really took you to anotherlevel, especially with your
content?
SPEAKER_00 (12:17):
Um I think it was a revelation I had recently that
that I could point out.
Um, so it's something that Itell people that I help now.
I didn't realize what theanalytics were doing to me until
I saw it happening to everybodyelse.
(12:38):
And uh just just real quickstory.
Um I got added as a mod to uhsubreddit called Shorts
algorithm because they saw megiving advice on there and they
were like, hey, will you modthis?
I'm very busy, and I'm like,sure.
And um nine out of ten postsover there are people talking
about analytics.
Most of them are slot, but I'llget into that later.
(13:00):
Uh, but they talk aboutanalytics and they get lost in
them.
And the people that I help in mycommunity now, I found like the
one metric that works that stopsconfusing people.
They're like, it got 90%retention.
Yeah, but it got it's a10-second video.
Like it all these things, theytry to they try to keep one set
rule that works for everything,and it's not the case.
(13:22):
And there are variables that wedon't see that make people focus
more on the analytics and not oncreating.
So the one true metric to me isperspective, outside
perspective.
And when I started gettingoutside perspective from other
people, especially when Istarted at vidIQ, and through my
failures at vid IQ, that's whenI'm like, oh okay, now I get it.
(13:44):
But until then, I was I was aslost as any other creator.
So that outside perspective ishuge for sure.
And have you ever had somebodytell you a story where you
already knew the ending, but youhad to sit through it because
you're polite, and so every nowand then they'll go into like a
(14:07):
different detail, and you'relike, This is I know the point
that you're getting to, and thishas nothing to do with it, but
you're not gonna say anything,you're yeah, okay.
And then they finally get to thepoint and you're like, Oh wow,
and you're so polite, you don'twant to be rude.
The internet doesn't care likethat.
The internet doesn't have to bethe polite, they'll just walk
away from the conversation.
And so, any unrelated detail,anything that you think might be
(14:31):
funny, anything ego centric, getrid of it, kill it, right?
Get to the point, and as soon aspeople understand that they can
trust you, then you can startbuilding that personable
relationship.
And uh, that took a while too,because I thought, man, I I got
some funny stuff here.
Sure, it's funny to me and myfriends, but to somebody that
doesn't know me, they don't givea crap, right?
(14:51):
So that was another big one thatI I have a tough time teaching
that to other people, especiallyas with storytelling, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (14:58):
No, that that's that's good to know.
So of course, storytelling islike huge, obviously, and it's
one of the things you reallyconcentrate a lot on.
Um, outside perspective isreally important, and and all
the things you're saying are arejust different aspects of what
make a content creator moresolid, more well-rounded.
You know, we talk about littlestrategies here and there, but
one of the things that I Ireally want people who listen to
(15:19):
this podcast or watch it onYouTube uh really gather is that
it's it's it's all these littlethings, not just one big thing.
There's not this one thing we'regonna tell you, oh, use this tag
in your videos, and you'll getall these views.
I think you just have torecognize that the we're we're
talking about appealing tohumans, and that in and of
itself is a complicated thing.
It's why I don't really spend asmuch time worrying about the
(15:43):
algorithm.
I am a person who's reallyinterested in human beings and
like why humans do the thingsthey do, which is why I've been
super successful at helpingother people grow, because I'm
not worried about, oh, you'reyou're I I mean, I do talk about
click-through rates and stuff,but to be honest, I'm more like,
well, why did they click?
And then why do they stay?
And that's the psychology thatyou really need to get into.
It's another level of thing.
Now, some creators um succeed bydoing and they don't even
(16:06):
realize how they're doing it,they just know that this is good
content when they make it, andthey they've never looked at
their metrics in their life.
You see that a lot with some bigcreators, like I don't know what
a CTR is, I just make a videoand it does well.
Well, it's because yousubconsciously know this stuff
anyway.
It doesn't mean that you don'tneed to know the stuff, they
just already know it, eventhough they don't recognize that
they know it.
So everything you're saying is100% true.
And sometimes the output outsideperspective will prove to you
(16:29):
that you're doing things thatare egocentric, that you're just
blathering on about stuff thatpeople aren't interested in.
And um, that's why there'sthings like the skip ahead
feature on YouTube now, which isyeah, you can't skip ahead on a
conversation, right?
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
Just be like skip 10 seconds.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (16:44):
You w I wish I'd go 2x, man.
Let's get to 2x speed on thisthing.
SPEAKER_00 (16:48):
It's why community is so important.
Like, that's why Max was so hugeto me.
That's why Discord is so huge tome, because it's as simple as
hey, why where did you drop offhere?
When did you stop payingattention?
Or when did you get bored?
And the stuff people will sayyou never thought about.
Right.
You might you might look at theretention graph and think, okay,
that's where the dip is.
(17:08):
It's because of this reason, butyou don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (17:11):
You don't know until somebody tells you.
SPEAKER_01 (17:14):
Yeah, having someone else look at the same thing and
come up with a completelydifferent answer is is actually
critical.
This is why you can'tnecessarily go to your
non-creator friends and ask themif they think a video is good.
Um, you kind of have to go topeople that uh kind of
understand what is good and thenask their unabashed uh opinion.
SPEAKER_00 (17:30):
So or your audience.
Or a comment will tell you forsure if you if you want them to
be honest.
SPEAKER_01 (17:36):
A good step in the right direction, that's for
sure.
All right, so we got a couple ofquestions.
We're gonna do uh just a coupletoday.
I think we'll have some fun withthem.
Uh John, um I will I can'tremember the last time you you
were on the podcast, it'sprobably been a minute or so.
We have a lot of new people thatare watching and listening now,
so probably won't recognize anyof these names.
But let's go ahead and do thefirst one.
So there's a couple ways you canuh send us uh a question.
(17:58):
If you're listening to the audioonly podcast, there's a link in
the show notes that says send usa text message.
This first one, I believe, is atext message.
Uh and it is from Chris and LynnLydia.
Hi, Vidye crew.
We run a travel channel that'sbeen active for 18 months.
We're happy with our growth sofar.
600,000 views and 66,000 watchhours.
(18:19):
That's awesome.
But our subscriber count isrelatively low at 4,000, which
works out to about 150 views persubscriber.
All right, before we get toodeep into this you can see where
they're starting to put mathstogether, don't necessarily have
anything to do with each other,but they don't know.
But let's just keep going.
In your podcast last week, okay,this was weeks ago, Tori
mentioned that for her channel,40% of the watch time comes from
TV.
And this was considered high.
On our channel, 66% of our watchtime from the past year comes
(18:42):
from TV.
We suspect this is a majorfactor in our low
subscriber-to-view ratio, sincesubscribing via TV is much more
cumbersome than a mobile anddesktop.
By the way, I would agree withthis.
Uh, I know that you will tell methat subscribers aren't the only
metrics of a channel success,and I agree to it in a certain
extent, but can someone pleasetell brands that?
And this that is that is a truthbomb.
Let's continue with thequestion.
That is a truth bomb rightthere.
We'd love to hear your thoughts.
(19:03):
Number one, do you have anystrategies or advice for
converting TV viewers tosubscribers beyond standard CTAs
at the end of videos?
Or is this a limitation we needto explain to brands when
pitching?
Now, this is cool.
It's so a lot of people thiswon't directly relate to because
they're thinking, oh, I don't Idon't pitch the brands and
stuff, but there's some thingsthat we'll probably talk about
here that I think are importantbecause TV is becoming larger
and larger on YouTube, and youshould be trying to create some
(19:25):
of your content for TV.
I know for shorts that isn't asbig, although from what I
understand, people are watchingshorts on TV more and more than
they ever have before, which iskind of wild.
Because I actually do getrecommended shorts on my TV.
Uh, and I watch a lot of YouTubeon TV.
But as far as like the TV thing,what are your thoughts when it
comes to this, John?
Because you haven't worked withyou directly, I'm like, you
(19:46):
could do some TV content forYouTube easy.
Like you have some great pacingand stuff that would be amazing.
So, do you have any strategiesor advice for converting TV
viewers to subscribers?
What do you think?
SPEAKER_00 (19:57):
Okay, uh, well, the reason that they're focused on
subscribers seems to be thebrand angle.
Yes, right.
Yes.
And so before I get to theconversion, I I almost wouldn't
even like make that an importantthing, but I'll explain why here
in a second.
Um, when it comes to brands, ifyou if you have 100 subscribers,
but you can show them the datathat they'll buy their crap,
(20:20):
that they'll buy their product,you say, hey, look, these people
are interested.
Look at here's my demographic.
What like they want to buythere, the people that watch my
stuff want to buy your product.
And so if you're trying to pitchto an unrelated brand, they're
gonna look at the metrics.
But if you try to pitch to avery specific brand that you
could help, like you offer themvalue, you don't have to worry
(20:41):
about that stuff, and it's allabout the presentation.
So that said, when it comes tothe subscriber thing, I honestly
think it just happensorganically, like you're not
gonna have a magic word to saythat that even if you tell them
to subscribe, sure.
But on a TV, I just think thatthe watch time is the most
important.
(21:02):
I recently had a person I did acreator breakdown for, uh, I
still gotta give it to themtoday, but they had the same
situation, they did cruisecontent.
Uh I found out after someresearch that about 90% of
cruise viewers, they they don'twatch because they're going on a
cruise.
They don't have a ship booked,they watch because they want to
(21:23):
re-experience the cruise.
And so the advice I'm givingthis person is uh the reason
reviews are the most importantuh like uh topic for cruise is
because people are just tryingto experience it, and the
narrator is actually getting inthe way of what they want to
experience.
So I guess whatever makes thatuh TV viewing uh situation like
(21:46):
what do why TV?
Why do they enjoy it so much?
Typically, TV is backgroundcontent, it's relaxing content,
it's comfort content.
It's not like let's turn it onTV and get a bunch of
information and study, you know.
So I guess kind of finding theperspective of the TV viewer and
seeing like what they reallyenjoy and doubling down on that.
That's without specifics of yourchannel.
SPEAKER_01 (22:07):
Right, right, right.
And I think what you said thereis really important.
Um, there's there's so manyaspects to this.
First, let's go back to thesubscriber thing.
Just like you said, yeah, brandsare important, uh, are
interested in subscriber feesbecause they don't understand
subscriber numbers because theydon't understand what it
actually means.
They think if your subscribernumber is high, that means
they're gonna get a good returnon investment.
The only thing they really careabout is the return on
investment.
Uh, and the way you can startout with that is if you have, I
(22:29):
mean, you're big enough that youcan get um YouTube affiliate
sales, do a couple videos aboutum products that you use, and
then put the affiliate links inyour um description, and then
you'll have analytics for that.
You'll literally be able to go,I did a video about this you
know, hairbrush that I had, andlook how many sales I generated
through Amazon.
I can do the same for you.
So the idea is that you youbuild up the information ahead
(22:50):
of time and then you can pitchto them uh with that because
that's the only thing theyreally care about.
Sometimes they don't know thatthat's what they need to care
about, but that is the onlything you need to care about.
And by the way, we have a videoon here in the podcast and on
audio podcast with Justin Moore,who broke down how to pitch
everything to anybody, no matterwhat your channel size is, and
he is incredible.
(23:10):
And if you look, if you'rewatching a YouTube video, you
can see John right now withSponsor Magnet, the his book.
Uh Justin is amazing, and hehelps small creators get
ridiculous amounts of money.
Like, stupid.
I need to talk to him, really behonest.
Uh, I need to do that.
Um, so there's that.
Like, if that's what you'reworried about, there.
Um, and is it a limitation toexplain?
(23:30):
So we just kind of explainedthat.
I think at the end of the day,you do just want more views.
Subscribers are great, but theydon't equate views.
Um, really great channels getmore views to subscribers
anyway.
So hopefully you're experiencingthat if you're a successful
channel.
And and while again, Iunderstand that brands tend to
look at that stuff.
If you can show them that if yougive me this money, I'm gonna
(23:51):
make you more money, they don'treally care at all.
Like they don't.
Um, and I have a friend who umwho's making a really incredible
amount of money with very fewviews on his channel.
Um it's it's kind ofbreathtaking, and it really like
opened my mind to that.
Okay.
Next question from Marshall.
(24:12):
Hey, VidIQ team, my name isMarshall from Australia, from
the upside down, as I like tocall it.
Uh, and have been listening tothe podcast since about April of
this year.
Since I've been listening toyour advice, it has helped me
get one of my three channels Irun going off since last year,
when I restarted the channel inOctober of last year.
What would be better for mysmall channel that has 27 subs
at the time of running thisemail doing live streams on
(24:34):
Twitch, YouTube, or justrecording it like I already do,
uh, then uploading it?
So I guess they're saying thatone of their I assume it may be
gaming.
I don't know if it's on Twitch,you would assume maybe gaming
here.
I was trying to figure that out.
Yeah, yeah, it's and by the way,a lot of these uh emails are
truncated.
Some people tend to send reallylong emails, and I gotta, you
know, kill my darlings to getthe right email in.
(24:55):
Um so at this point, they'rebasically, I think, before we
get to the second question, it'slike, what would be better for
your small channel?
Um, doing live streams onTwitch, YouTube, and or just
recording it and then uploading.
I think really you need to dothe content for the platform
you're on.
I don't, I don't like, I mean,unless you have something really
spectacular that happens onTwitch specifically and you
weren't streaming on YouTube,uh, do it natively on YouTube.
(25:16):
Stream on YouTube and then usethe I there, I don't know if
it's out yet, but I know theyhave a feature coming out
that'll take best clips fromyour your live stream on YouTube
and immediately make videos outof them.
So you should just be uhmulti-streaming, in my opinion.
If you're gonna be streaming atall, just multi-stream, meet
people where they are.
Because I'll be honest, like ifI see there's some things I
watch on YouTube streaming thatare also live streaming on
Twitch, but I'll watch it onYouTube because I don't have to
(25:39):
worry about commercials there.
If you don't have the Twitchprime, not even Twitch Prime,
but like you know, Twitchsubscription or whatever, you
might get commercials.
And even you, even if you likeTwitch, most people have Amazon
Prime, which means you know,there's a good chance that uh
some of you might have umpremium, which means you don't
have to worry about ads, soyou're watching it on YouTube
rather than Twitch.
And I don't like seeingpersonally, um, and you might
(26:03):
not be able to get around thisreplays of Twitch streams on
YouTube that haven't beenformatted for YouTube.
Like you see a bunch of Twitchthings come up, and like, that's
that I don't even know what thatis.
So I I personally don't likethat.
So I think, in my opinion,that's what you should do.
But what what do you think, EricJohn, for this first question?
SPEAKER_00 (26:19):
I I want to back you up first.
I do watch some Twitchstreamers, but it's only the
ones that look like like myscreen right now, where it's
just me in the bottom corner andthen they're looking at their
channel or they're looking atwhatever content they're looking
at.
Um and that's like becausethere's nothing else, it's just
Twitch, like all the Twitchcrap.
I don't, I don't, it doesn'thelp anything, right?
(26:42):
If they respond to them andthat's off screen, that's fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and I'll watch, dude, I'llwatch like two hours worth
because it's like I don't feellike I'm left out, right?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (26:50):
But yeah, so I totally back you up on that.
Yeah, um, I guess I got I I knowyou go where people are, right?
I know that lesson.
I've learned that lesson.
And yet I didn't learn it,apparently, until recently.
Um I so so when I was startingall of my offers, like the the
(27:13):
course and my community andstuff like that, I I use Kajabi.
And it's like you can build apodcast, uh community course,
you can sell books on there,whatever.
It's just a it's an all-aroundcreator platform.
And uh I started my community onthere, and I got like one
person, my paid community, and Igot one person in there for like
(27:34):
a month, and it's just me andhim talking, and I'm like, I'm
putting like all these updatesand tools and all sorts of crap
in there that help me when Icreate.
I'm like, man, what what iskeeping people from coming?
And then I thought, you knowwhat?
I'm just gonna switch over to myDiscord because I have like 700
people in there that are alreadyin my community.
(27:55):
The moment I switched, peoplewere like, Oh, you got a
community?
Yeah, jump in.
Jump like and now I got like Igot like 20 people in there
paid, and it's it's so nicebecause I went where people
were.
And so the more you simplifyyour whole structure, I do I
couldn't even imagine doinganother channel right now.
Like, I just focus on the one,and then like I use the the John
(28:17):
Scott on Instagram to promoteit, and like it's a back and
forth.
And anything more than that, I'mactually hurting my business
because I'm spreading myself toothin.
I'm focusing on things that haveno ROI, and so it's just like,
yeah, simplify, go where peopleare for sure.
That's that's definitely whatyou want to do.
That's a lot of stuff to do.
SPEAKER_01 (28:36):
You know who recently who who just and I you
know it's funny considering Iconsider this person kind of a
mentor.
You know who also is learningthis lesson?
Uh Darrell Eaves.
Oh, yeah?
As he's moving his communityback to Discord, so it was on
Discord, he made a privatething, now he's moving it back
to Discord.
So I feel like in some ways I'mjust the smartest person in the
room, but uh no one seems toknow it.
(28:56):
Okay, what's the second questionhere?
Okay, second question is how isit best to go around uh
sponsors?
As I have now got my firstsponsor for two of my channels,
even though my second iscurrently a bit behind my sports
channel.
I assume they mean in size.
What is the best way to promptthe sponsorship I have to my
channel and what should I bedoing with it?
And I believe what they'reactually asking here is how do I
get people to engage with thesponsorship thing on their
(29:19):
channel?
Final question is it a good ideato have social media for each
channel like Instagram andTikTok to promote my channels
and content to other audiencesin hopes they'll come to YouTube
to watch or not?
That's the only question I'mreally gonna worry about
focusing on because we alreadytalked about sponsorships and
stuff before.
Uh, is it worth doing uh thecomplete focus on YouTube only?
Because you know a little bitabout this, because you you were
(29:40):
on YouTube and you've doneincredibly well on Instagram.
And now that you've kind of doneboth, like what is the strategy
when you have like I know yourlove for like YouTube, but by
the same token, you gotta paythe bills, right?
And you gotta go with thesuccesses.
And it doesn't mean you couldn'tbe successful, you could still
be as successful on YouTube, butyou've done so much great stuff
on Instagram stuff.
So what What would you think thewhen when you're trying to
(30:01):
explain to someone about this?
SPEAKER_00 (30:04):
Uh right now, just to to give context, I have a
channel that's that it iscreator help, but it's more like
creator rant because there'ssome things that I could never
say at VidIQ.
It's not family friendly at all.
That's fair.
That's fair.
And it's called it's calledcreator rant.
It's, I mean, I just kind ofpopped it down there.
But you can see some of thestuff that I talk about is yeah,
(30:26):
it's things that are going wrongwith YouTube.
It's talking about slopcreators.
Uh, but what I found, let mejust scroll back up because that
one's not good.
But um, what I this only has 106subscribers because it's just
brand new.
Yeah, and what I'm finding isthat it is still paying my bills
because I'm showing my socialproof of the people that I help
(30:47):
through Instagram.
So creator rant is, dude, I'vehad that logo by the way, for
like three years.
I showed it to Dan one time.
He's like, dude, that's so funnybecause it looks like me, and I
never used it.
And I had to, I had to create abrand to like put behind the
course that I made.
And that's I was like, allright, fine, I'll use that one.
So anyway, um, that's that'slike a small channel, and I'm
(31:10):
still getting what I need fromit because on Instagram it's
John Scott.
And so if you if you run a biglike franchise or whatever,
people don't want to followCoke, they want to follow the
CEO of Coke.
And so that's kind of what I doover there.
And so people get to know theguy behind Creator Rant and what
he can do for them, and thenit's over here for my general
(31:32):
content, over there for like gethelp directly from me, and I
just got this guy a millionviews and that sort of thing.
And so, in that same vein forlike a sports channel or
whatever, your main content cango on YouTube and you can do
shorts and stuff like that.
Um, but posting your um I'mgonna go Gary V about this, but
(31:56):
okay, put posting like all day,every day, you're behind the
scenes, whatever you're doing,post it.
Post it, post it, post it.
Because you might get five, tenposts out there, but one of them
will hit.
It's just a numbers game overthere.
And so uh when that one hits,then everybody knows who you
are.
Like a lot, at least thosepeople do.
(32:16):
I know getting people from oneplatform to another is tough.
So really just take theplatforms, simplify it as much
as as you can, and like have agoal in mind for that.
And that's what I did withCreator Rant.
But I used to be in the sameboat where I'm like, but I'm
gonna try here, here.
I only post on TikTok, so nobodyposts my sh my stuff on there
first, right?
(32:37):
Because if you do, then they'relike the owner.
And um, yeah, so I don't I hateTikTok.
But anyway, that's that I justtry to simplify as much as I
can.
Otherwise, I would I'd bespreading myself too thin.
And everything you do whenyou're spread it thin is is
useless, right?
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (32:54):
I feel like as a as a smaller creator, concentrating
on so many things might be ahindrance and it might slow you
down because just I mean, whenyou're established, it's hard.
If you're not established, likeunless you don't have a job and
stuff and you don't have nothingelse to do, okay, if if that's
the case, fine.
But I just feel like you willslow your overall um growth down
(33:15):
by quite a bit trying to spreadbetween all these different
platforms, trying to understandwhat they are.
Because generally speaking, justtaking a piece of content and
posting the same exact thingelsewhere doesn't always work.
Um, if you're really analyticalabout it, like John has been,
and he figured out kind of somesecret sauce, you know, a year
or so ago about it.
That's one thing.
But by and large, he had to do alot of work to get to that point
(33:37):
anyway.
So I feel like what he just saidabout the Gary Vee part is
actually very true.
Like, take your shots, figureout what works, and then start
to figure out like, okay, can Ispread this across multiple
platforms?
Can I do this?
So, you know, whatever time youhave during the course of a day
or a week, concentrate that onsomething that you can succeed
at and that is uh viable andsomething that's not gonna burn
(33:57):
you out rather than just tryingto be everywhere all the time,
all the time.
SPEAKER_00 (34:02):
So one one really important caveat to this, and I
I listened to Gary Vee foryears, right?
But it only made sense.
This this advice only made sensewhen I was pissed about
something.
When I was so passionate that Iwas gonna post it regardless, I
didn't care how it performed.
Once I started doing that, andhonestly, it happened after I
(34:25):
left, but um I got I got socaught up in all the slop that
was going on, and I wanted tohelp curb this slop.
And by the way, slop notsynonymous with AI, it's there's
a crossover, right?
But it's it's content thatrequires zero effort or human
input.
SPEAKER_01 (34:42):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (34:42):
And so, like stolen content, form clips, prompted
content, non-reaction content,like the ones where they have
the mouth full of water and theyjust watch somebody else's like
that's stealing, right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:53):
And so every day I'd see it and I'm like, I can't
hold my tongue anymore.
I have to say something.
And how do I what's my missionis to put the create back in
creator and to help curb thisslop.
And it all just came together.
When it all came together forme, I don't care what I post
anymore because it's all it'sall in one direction, it's all
(35:14):
with that goal in mind.
Yeah.
So if you're just if you're justmaking channels to make them
hoping one will succeed, it willbe much more difficult than if
you post something you'repassionate about or good or good
at, you know, something that youknow.
So just take that however youwant.
I I figured that really neededto be said because that's how I
learned.
SPEAKER_01 (35:33):
Yeah, no, I I respect that.
I respect it.
Uh, you can also send us anemail at the boost at vidiq.com,
but I thought we'd do somethingdifferent this time for the next
two questions, and that is lookat comments that were left on
the YouTube channel.
I thought this would be kind offun.
Um, this one's from Dr.
Terry Wenner, I think it is.
Uh, I use landscape for longform, but shorts require
vertical layout.
(35:54):
I have to change them, and Idon't think shorts look as good.
Is everyone doing this or isthere a better way?
And as someone who's done both,I would love to know what what
your secret sauce would be forsomething like this.
Do you shoot for the edit of theshort so that everything works,
or are you just taking whathappened and then making it long
and short?
SPEAKER_00 (36:12):
Okay, um the only way I'm gonna explain, okay.
First of all, I don't if I'mgonna shoot a short, it's gonna
be with my phone specifically,and I shoot it vertical.
SPEAKER_02 (36:21):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
Uh if I'm converting content, I found a way that
works for me.
But the the angle that you'reseeing right now, if you if you
crop it in, I can't really show,but actually maybe I can.
If you Yeah, there we go.
If you start to crop it in, likethe vertical will start to hit
like this.
And then for some reason, likenot for some I don't know why I
(36:46):
said that, but like you wantyour eyes on the eyeline, right?
So this is where you want youreyes, and it feels like I'm
very, very close.
But the only way to correctlycrop this and have the thing
that you're supposed to look aton the eye line is to do it like
this, and so shooting verticalspecifically for vertical is why
that works.
But here was my workaround.
(37:06):
So I did a short for this, andin Premiere, it's like super
fast to cut yourself out now.
Like in Premiere beta, it'sAdobe Premiere for those that
don't edit, but all it is is aclick of a button and it gets
rid of your background.
And so now I kind of found abetter way, like, dude, this
took maybe two minutes, and likeit's so easy, Travis.
SPEAKER_01 (37:33):
I can't do any of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (37:36):
I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, yeah, no, I can't do this stuff.
I'm glad that uh like I look atthis and I'm like, that's gonna
take me two years to make.
SPEAKER_00 (37:45):
Yeah, so it it takes two seconds now.
Before it would have taken me along time, but because there's
just one button for it, AI is agreat tool for creators who want
to still be creative.
And so now this is what I do isI just cut myself out of the
background and I'll drag myselfif I want to put myself up.
The eye line is where it saysmore ad sense revenue.
Okay, but if I want to put pullmyself up, I'll just like darken
(38:06):
the the bottom or whatever.
And so that's how I do it iscropping, cutting out whatever,
just filling in the space withother things, and that's kind of
what I'm doing now.
It is very difficult to turnyour uh long form into a short
form unless you are like thisfar back.
And when you're this far back,you can do podcasts and stuff
(38:28):
like that and turn it into, butlike you have to start filming
this far back, and when you do,you lose a lot of detail.
So it's up to you how you wantto do that, but I just figured
that's how I do it.
I'll show you that.
SPEAKER_01 (38:40):
I think that uh any kind of the thing is that even
if someone did do exactly whatyou just said, it might have
sparked something in them to go,oh okay, no, I don't have to go,
but if I do this and it, youknow, you just sparked a new way
for them to do it, that's fine.
And we see that all the time onthis channel.
Like we we uh we'll say onething and then we'll get an
email like a week or two laterto go, oh yeah, I was thinking
about this thing, and you justyou just you know gave me an
(39:01):
idea, and it's I love that.
I think that's fantastic.
We have very smart people thatwatch this podcast, which I
love, and very creative peoplebecause we're you know we're all
creators, so anyway.
Uh last question.
This one's interesting because Ifeel like so.
AI is a tool and controversialamong creators or not.
Um, there are some good thingsfrom it, for sure.
(39:22):
This is one I'm actually kind ofexcited about, so I hope it gets
good.
And this is from Katie with acamera.
Katie with a camera says, Do youthink AI editing will produce
videos that are similar to eachother?
Like, will AI edited shorts allhave the same exact editing
style?
I don't think so.
But what are your thoughts onlike AI editing specifically,
like for content, not just youknow, thumbnails and stuff, but
(39:44):
like actual content.
Do you think it'll get to thepoint where it'll be something
that you can rely on?
SPEAKER_00 (39:48):
I'm not sure what AI editing is.
SPEAKER_01 (39:50):
So, like video editing, it like you put in
because some some companiesactually have this.
SPEAKER_00 (39:55):
Uh I mean, I I know I know video, but like what does
it do?
Is it like taking a long formand cutting it up?
SPEAKER_01 (40:02):
Is that so like OBIS?
Currently, yes, but the idea isthat at some point it will do
everything, include adding musicand all this other stuff.
There's a couple of companiesout there, I can't remember
which one I saw a video from,where allegedly this, and you
know, you can't really like youhave to take them at their word
that like they'll show you thisclip and it's like, holy cow,
it's really good.
And they're like, this was doneby AI.
Like, whoa, they did the music,it did the zoom ins, it did
(40:23):
everything that you would thinkyou would need someone uh with
human cells to do.
SPEAKER_00 (40:29):
Okay, I I get what you're saying.
I think as it stands, yeah, andhonestly, I don't see this
changing much in the future.
Okay, but AI sucks atpsychology, and the moment that
AI will get better at psychologyis the moment that psychology
changes.
SPEAKER_01 (40:47):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (40:48):
How quickly do we get used to Chat GPT saying
certain phrases?
Sure.
Right?
Like within the week, we'rewe're sick of it saying the word
fluff now.
And that it's like, yeah, butlike two weeks ago everybody was
like, Yeah, I don't want to hearany fluff.
And now it's like, okay, let'sget right to the point.
No fluff.
And now everybody's like, Whatcould it just stop saying fluff?
Could it just stop could it juststop using M dashes?
(41:09):
Like, it doesn't matter whatthey change it to, we're gonna
get used to it.
And so Interesting.
If if AI advances to a pointwhere it's like ever dynamically
changing, sure, but it stillcan't I I feel like it still
can't accurately predict whatpsychology will change into,
what hooks will get us next.
That's why marketing is so goodbecause they keep up with how
(41:33):
humans evolve.
And sure, AI might be able to dothat, but it's still gonna take
human effort to to get it there.
I mean, I don't know.
I just don't see it hooking thesame way that I could.
SPEAKER_01 (41:44):
Yeah, and the other thing is um I I think I think
one good thing about it is itcan do a lot of the the rough
cuts probably pretty well andget you to a point where you
just put the sauce on top.
SPEAKER_00 (41:54):
Yeah, as a tool, great.
I have no problem with AI.
I dude, my business would not bewhere it is without AI, like
building websites and stuff,using Zapier to connect Discord
to like a purchase.
I don't know how to do that, butthe little AI tool or Chat GPT
helps me get through it amazing,right?
SPEAKER_02 (42:12):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (42:13):
So uh I just when people use AI to do everything
and then they feel entitled tomake money from it, stuff like
that, that's where the issue is.
Everything else is like, yeah,AI is great, every AI improves a
lot.
If you AI generate your scriptand say it word for word, I
gotta be honest, it at least theaudio is gonna be slop.
(42:34):
Like just like have an opinion,have some conviction, right?
But if you take your existingcontent, you let AI cut it up,
and then you put your touches onit, put the human input.
Yeah, I could see that work,especially for podcasts.
Yeah, yeah.
But like when AI starts to Idon't I don't know anything
about Opus, but I know what itused to do.
It would just like kind of takewhat it thought was good.
(42:57):
I didn't think those were good,right?
SPEAKER_01 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (42:59):
I watched the podcast and I'm like, why didn't
they use that?
SPEAKER_01 (43:02):
Right, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00 (43:03):
They were a robot, right?
Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_01 (43:05):
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (43:06):
Yeah.
unknown (43:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:09):
It is interesting though, if you think about where
we were literally a year ago, weweren't even at the point where
half the stuff that happens nowcould could even be done.
Like now we're at a place that'slike it's it's crazy.
Every couple of months, it growsexponentially.
Well, at any rate, the thingsthat you are up to, what are
what are you gonna be doing forthe next uh what what's 2026
look like for you?
Because we're not we're almostat the end of 2025 as a
recording of this.
SPEAKER_00 (43:30):
I um so uh with the mission of putting the create
back in the creator and stoppingthe slop, basically that's
that's where I'm at.
Like, dude, I can't I almostwant to stop modding that one
Reddit because it's just allbad.
And I I keep trying to correctpeople, but it's overwhelming
the amount of people that wantto make money with no effort.
(43:51):
They're like, oh yeah, like I Itook uh queso's clips and then I
put subtitles over it, but whydid I get denied monetization?
Yeah, but and then you tell themand they're like, Yeah, but
everybody else is doing it.
And it's like just because theyhaven't been caught yet or they
slip through the cracks doesn'tmean it's YouTube's not cracking
down on it.
They're cracking down so hardthey're getting rid of channels
(44:12):
that don't deserve it.
Right.
So it's uh it's a mess, butyeah, sorry, that that's like
kind of where my mission is.
And so slowly but surely I'mgetting more creators into my
personal community, which iscalled real creator community.
Okay because it's like there'sso many that just dude, you're
not a creator, you're aprompter.
Like you're you're a thief,you're not you're not doing
(44:35):
anything.
And so uh yeah, I got a littlestreet team in there that we do
um like report parties and umcopyright take down putting like
I teach them when I started JohnScott LLC, I went through like
2,000 of my clips that gotstolen, and I I got so many
channels deleted.
Like I should have recorded it,dude.
(44:55):
It was crazy.
SPEAKER_01 (44:55):
Yeah, that would have been cool for a video.
SPEAKER_00 (44:58):
But anyway, yeah, that's the state of the the
creator world.
And when I was just doing shortsand getting millions of views
and stuff, I felt like I wasn'tI wasn't making the world that I
wanted to see.
Like I wasn't being the change Iwanted to see.
SPEAKER_01 (45:12):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (45:13):
Now I feel like I am.
Um two days ago, one of my firststudents said, Hey, my shorts
just started hitting millions ofviews.
And I went to his channel and hehad one that was like 10
million, one that was 30million.
Wow.
I'm like, damn, I got somethinghere.
That's crazy.
And so um just putting that outlike that fulfills me more than
getting them myself.
It's I don't know, it's it'sawesome.
SPEAKER_01 (45:35):
No, that's the way I've been for pretty much my
entire career, especially hereat VidIQ, because I was coaching
and then everything else.
It's it's been less about me andmore about uh everyone else.
So uh if you want to check outJohn, there'll be some links in
the description and the shownotes.
And you know, he'll be backaround.
He's around, you see him around.
Just keep it keep your eye out,especially if you're watching
the main Vit IQ channel.
You might see him pop up hereand there, uh maybe on the live
stream or something.
(45:56):
So keep your eye out for that.
Yeah, I hope so.
SPEAKER_00 (45:57):
That's that's what I'm hoping.
I missed him.
I think I'm missed thecommunity.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
We missed you too, John.
We talk about you all the time.
In a good way, believe it ornot.
But I think they're gonna belike, it's gonna be bad.
It's all bad.
Anyway, we hope that you'veenjoyed.
Of course, you're watching theYouTube channel.
You can hit subscribe, hit thatlike button if you do.
And if you have hype points, whydon't you hit that hype button?
I mean, why not?
Just hit the hype.
I don't even know what thatmeans anymore, but hit the hype.
And if you're listening to theaudio podcast, leave us a five
star review.
We always love those.
(46:21):
See y'all in the next one.
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