Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Inside Adam Ivy’s ‘Scientific’ Formula for Exploding Your YouTube Channel | #Marketing - Ep. 83

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

What if you stopped chasing views and started building real influence? In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, Adam Ivy shares how he went from years of chasing attention to building a thriving business through purpose-driven content. After losing hearing in one ear and learning to listen in a new way, Adam discovered the secret that most creators miss: success on YouTube isn’t about going viral… It’s about providing value that builds trust, converts, and compounds over time. We dive into the systems, mindsets, and frameworks he used to turn a single 25-minute YouTube video into over $1 million in revenue, and how you can use the same approach to grow your brand, authority, and audience with intention. Key Highlights: ◼️How shifting from attention to intention completely changes your YouTube growth trajectory. ◼️The 5 C framework that builds clarity, content, clients, conversions, and confidence. ◼️Why valuable content beats viral content every time, and how to create it. ◼️The SOUND strategy for structuring videos that hold attention and drive action. ◼️How to turn one video into an entire binge-worthy content ecosystem that fuels your business. Adam’s story is a reminder that success online isn’t about luck or timing, it’s about consistency, purpose, and knowing exactly who you serve. Whether you’re just starting or trying to scale your YouTube audience, this episode will show you how to create content that actually builds a business, not just a following. Listen in and learn how to make your message binge-worthy, and build something that lasts! If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way)  Register for my next event → https://sellingonline.com/podcast Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's selling online.com slash podcast. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the marketing secrets, Russell Brunson Show, whatever you want to call it. I think we're, I shouldn't tell you this. I think I have, you know, roughly. Russell wants to rename his podcast every three months. So as you know, it started as marked in your car for like eight years. I went to marketing seekers for like five or six.

And I was like, I want to talk about more stuff. I'm called the Russell Brunson Show, but I'm not loving that either. So I have some ideas. Coming soon. Rebrand one last time. But until then, we're going to hang out. Let's just call it the podcast. We're hanging out on the podcast.

And I'm excited to be with you guys today. So today's episode, I'm actually in my inner circle meetings. I've been doing inner circle meetings for the last. two, four, six, this day six, six of six, basically all my inner circle members come out here and we have a chance to mastermind together. And it's, it's really special. I've been having so much fun. And I thought, you know what? Since you guys aren't here inner circle with me, what if I could bring some inner circle back to you? So one of my inner circle members, his name's Adam Ivy. He's awesome. He's a guy who built a huge YouTube channel and he teaches people YouTube now.

And anyway, he spoke at our mastermind in paradise a few months back and gave just an amazing presentation on YouTube and um and there's a lot more in there that I think you will love as well so I thought I would share with you as that um that presentation on today's podcast so if you ever thought about starting YouTube channel they want to wonder if you ever wondered like how do I do it what do I talk about all that kind of stuff um Adam is one of my favorite people and I think you're going to love learn from him so um yeah you guys are getting some an inner circle experience today as you are preparing someday to join my inner circle so um and when you are ready by the way after you've crossed a million dollars in sales you have the uh the ability to apply to me in my

inner circle if you go to inner circle for life.com that's where the applications are at so inner circle and then f-or-for-life.com so other than that I hope you guys enjoy this and learn some really cool stuff from Adam Ivey about how to use YouTube this is the russell brunson show so my original plan today was to dump a ton of value in a very short amount of time and that's still the plans, so let's go for it. If you guys are cool with that, you cool with that? Let's go. Four million views with one video, or 93,000 views with five. Which one do you think made me more money? Four million views made me zero. Took more money to create that thing. If you look at the videos on the right, it's a cluster, it's a launch. You guys, a lot of

you're familiar with that. But before I fell into this world, I was attention at him. I wanted to be the laugh and dancing clown in the music industry. When I had a little bit of extra time in my between really, really bad jobs, I was inspired by Weird Al

and so many other parody artists around the world, and I created this, a Wiz Khalifa, black and yellow. You guys remember black and yellow, right? I was all over the radio. I made red and yellow talking about McDonald's. It was my seventh video ever on YouTube, and it went viral. So I went from 16 views, 30 views, 7 views, maybe another 20 views,

and then boom, I do something that's not what I want to do. Just did it for a hobby, and it blew up. Talk about a mental whirlwind. So there's a giant difference between views and impact. It's a giant difference between attention, an intention. That's what I'm going to talk to you guys about today. I'm going to show you the difference. Oh yeah, disclaimer. Results may vary, especially if you never post, but hey, that's on you, not YouTube. You're not building an audience. You're building a waiting list of people

ready to buy from you. Everybody's like, I need more followers. Who are they following? Are you a leader? Are you just a guy shaking your butt and a pair of boy shorts for some views on TikTok? Hey, I can't twerk, by the way. Everything we create as a content creator, TikTok, Instagram. I'm talking YouTube today, is pre-selling your audience. If you're not building trust, if you're not bringing them into your world, if they don't know who you are, why they should care, what are you doing? Sell the camera, get rid of it. Everything is pre-selling. Because right now, somebody is building your dream business.

Not because they're better than you, not because they are more attractive than you, not because they have $10,000 camera gear or a good microphone or anything like that. It's because they understood something that you're about to learn today. I'm Adam Iby, and I went from sleeping in my 1989 Honda Accord to generating just under $4 million using YouTube. The difference wasn't going viral. The difference is going valuable. Repeat, valuable. Thank you.

This was me, 17 years old, sleeping in that 1989 Honda cord-truth story. I was bouncing from couch to couch to couch to all of a sudden. I'm 17. My buddy's parents are like, hey, enough is enough. Can't tell Adam go sleep somewhere else. So I found myself in the back of a Walmart parking lot, middle of winter in Wisconsin,

and just got done with a Taco Bell because it was like, you could fill up for like two bucks back then. And I'm sitting in the back of the parking lot, exhausted my resources for couches. I wasn't talking to my mom. I wasn't talking to my dad. My dad had sold the house.

He moved in with his girlfriend after my parents got divorced. He took my little brother, but he didn't have room for me. So I'm sitting in the back of a Honda court. I could see my breath because I couldn't keep the car rang. I didn't have money for gas.

And I thought, where am I going to go? I'm going to figure it out. I'm resourceful. Until I realized I dozed off. I woke up. My lungs hurt. My toes were frozen. And I started the next day with the same objective.

Find somewhere to sleep that night. I had a real crappy job. I was working best by like probably seven hours a week. Until I got a job at 18, working at a wood window factory. I thought my life had changed forever. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week, manual labor, building windows and doors for multi-million dollar houses. Did that for close to four years coming home every day, dripping wet and sweat, covered in sawdust. No heat in the winter, no air conditioning in the summer.

Putting in the work, I was living the life, making $46,000 a year, 80-hour weeks, I thought. And then I got scared. I said, this is not my life. I'm in my early 20s, and these old-timers are telling me, man, you're set up. You've got to figure it out. So I packed up everything I had in my 1994 Nissan Ultima. Sounds like a living big.

I went from the court to an Ultima. And I moved to Florida to pursue a music career. I discovered music producing from a friend I bumped into. I fell in love with it, and I said, this is my time. Let's do it. So I'd $3,400, air mattress, a bunch of clothes, and just figured it out. By 2011, at 26, I went viral with the video that I showed you, but I was still broke, working as a shipping manager for a wire rope and rigging company trying to make ends meet, while doing music, which was starting to take off. But that video right there changed my life, but not in the good way.

See, I got all this attention. People were like, you're amazing. of this. So I did. I chased the attention. These were my attention years. It's all I was doing. I'm glad only fans didn't exist back then because, you know, hey. But I was one step below that. I was doing parodies and bubble bass. We're eating Big Macs for views. That video got 250,000 views. I'm still proud of it. But didn't make any money because parody videos are copyrighted material. So all the ads on those, all the view money, goes to the record label that owns the original copyright of the song. Right? Now there's systems in place that you can finagle it,

but back then there wasn't. So that was the chasing attention years. In 2016, as a music producer, I went legally deaf in my left ear. To this day, it's very muffled. I have tinnitus. Not fun. So it's like, I'm an athlete, I'm a quarterback, and then somebody lopped off my arm. What the heck am I going to do now? So, I started making videos to help the music producers and artists in the musician community that I had desperately wanted to be a part of. I did it really selfishly, too.

I'm like, hey, if I can't eat, I'll give them the tools that I've been using and let them fight for scraps. It was going pretty well. I was growing a channel. In 2019, I created a video in 25 minutes that made me over a million dollars. net to this day, called 1,000 fans in 90 days. It's so funny the last few days we've been talking about Kevin Kelly's dissertation on 1,000 true fans.

But how long does that take? Right? 90 days made it Evergreen, gave it urgency, and the video just took off. No ads. I didn't. This was just another video in the mix of what I was doing. YouTube unlocked my life, but it took a while. those attention years from 2010 to 2017, man, I threw everything up against the wall. I was doing parodies. I was doing blogs. I was doing product reviews, tutorials.

Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Trying to serve my life. Then I realized, what if I switch my intention to serving their lives, providing value

for them, living self-wistly rather than selfishly? And you guys see it, it wasn't overnight. This is maturity coming from like a 20-year-old all the way to, I don't know, 30-something. Everything changed when I stopped asking, how do I get attention and started asking how can I serve? What happened from that? It's 12 consistent six-figure launches, completely organically, with clusters of videos like you saw in the first slide. Does that make it sense? Raise your hand? Okay.

They started working out. I also have to attribute the success to meeting my beautiful wife. Had the Lamborghini for a while. Then when our daughter was born, it switched to the van borgini. Losing my hearing was one of the most valuable lessons in my life because it taught me how to listen. I've been watching other people, chasing other people, trying to be like other people.

And when you're left with an affliction that stops you in your path, stops you in your tracks, you have to figure out what's next, right? I love YouTube. You guys know I'm a long phone guy? Because it's a time machine. These are two videos in very different fields. So after the red and yellow video took off, a few companies reached out. So it did have an impact in my life in a positive way.

I became the media director and the brand strategist for a few different companies. And I created that video from scratch, all me. the best laser engraving machine just set it up for SEO did 1.6 million views to this day grew that company from 5 million annually to 20 million annually

in 24 months and the reason I say that I can take credit for it is every single salesperson bought me lunches like every day like homey they just call and they're ready to buy this video what are you doing and that video almost never happened because the boss the owner said oh we don't

market like that we don't do things that way. I'm like, hey, just give it like a week. If you don't like it, I'll take it down. Okay, took off. That video's nine years old right now and still driving business for that company. Let's talk about me, the thousand fans in 90 days. Over a million in sales, that's a million net at this point.

Over 10,000 high-ticket applications from that video. Gained 30,000 subscribers to my channel at the time. And it still generates, it was that. 7,700 views I checked a night or two ago, and here's the proof. By the way, if you look at the far right and it says it made me $9,200, first three years, I never had ads on it, because back then it didn't matter as much as it does now. I figured if somebody can just get into my content, don't need to run an ad, because that'll be a buffer, right? Same strategy, different industries, different decades, the impact is there.

So what I'm going to do today for you guys is I'm going to go through three different steps because I have to. I want to teach you the sexy stuff, the tactical stuff, but we can't jump into that unless we start with the foundation. Is that cool? Okay. This is what I call my 5C framework. You need to have this ironed out out for your YouTube strategy before you ever hit record. First, clarity. Why are you jumping on YouTube?

Who are you serving? Who are you serving? Right? If you're not clear on what you're doing, don't expect anyone else to be. Clarity eliminates confusion. Either you know where you're going or you're lost. It's okay to be lost if you have like eight to ten years

to experiment like I did. Content. The content's not about throwing stuff up against the wall. It's not about chasing the people that you watch and are inspired by. It's about creating content that's not only going to to build your authority, but build trust and bring you into people's lives. Because again, if your content's not pre-selling, what is it doing?

Nothing. Wasting time. Which is pooled to. Client. You don't need a million followers. How many people in here are semi-sick of people telling you that you have to go viral to be successful? How many in this room are kind of sick of being told that they have to be entertainers and bubbly and charismatic in order to get attention? Me too. But shout out to those people.

We have to look at the client and how we're going to impact their lives from a selfless perspective, not how am I going to get a sale. Because if you're doing your job, the sales are going to come. Because we have conversions set in place. What are the avenues that you're going to get a sale?

you are going to utilize to make money from the content that you put out from serving the community that you care about. Then the fifth and final C only comes after you are practicing the first four, and that is confidence. You don't build confidence thinking about it. You don't get good at golfing, watching golfing videos on YouTube. You've got to swing the club. You have to do it over and over and over again. So many people in this room have a webinar, VSL. You have a challenge that you sit and you manicure and you iron out so many times so you can do a webinar for 150 people and hopefully close 20% of the room. But you'll throw a YouTube video up to 220 million possible viewers. You just wing it. We'll see what happens. You've got to put in the reps. You've

to put in the reps. Because confidence becomes your default when you're living in who you're going to be, not the apprehensive person that you might be today. All right. Foundation, we good? So make it sense? Strategy is where it starts getting fun.

So I'm going to go over my sound framework. Every single video that you're putting together should tick all these boxes. It's only five. First, the strategy. What role does this play in your bigger plan? Not every video is going to be a banger. I'm going to have HomeLem videos, like I showed you earlier,

and I'm going to have a whole lot of base hits. I might have some strikeouts. And if I'm lucky, I'll get a double and a triple on occasion. But not everyone's going to go viral. But how does it serve the bigger picture? There's only three type of audiences on YouTube. there's core, casual, and new. Your core audience, Russell could put out a video doing whatever,

and we'd be like, oh, this is awesome. Thank you, Russell. But it might not be mass appeal. Casual viewer knows your face, doesn't subscribe, doesn't really interact, but they will become familiar to them. And then there's obviously new to some people in this room, never seen me, we've never said hi. Majority of you guys are either casual or core friends of mine at this point.

outcome what should the viewers believe feel or do it needs to be a story i'm not talking about telling something that happened 15 years ago talking about a story arc what's the problem how'd you find a solution how are you going to resolve that problem for them or be the guide to take them to the where they need to be we have you it's obviously urgency what should they care about right now Because if the video doesn't serve them in a way that's going to be impactful right now, then why are they watching it? There's a lot of different options on YouTube. I don't know if you guys know that. Everybody that you watch, YouTube's trying to entice you to watch 12 other videos at the same time.

Hey, click me, click me, look at these videos. These are awesome. Narrative. What story makes us unforgettable? This is where a little bit of practice takes you to where you want to be. Because we all suck at storytelling day one, mostly. right? I'm sure there's some outliers in the room. But if I go up to a bunch of people and say, hey, did you see the game last night?

That was cool. It's a whole lot different than if I go up and be like, hey, did you see when the quarterback in the third quarter went back and then he got his shoulder dislocated? Now I'm opening the conversation. I'm not talking at them. I'm talking with them. Does that make it sense? And the direction is the, where do they go next? Because we have all this attention, and if we don't direct the attention, it's a wasted opportunity. Now we get into the fun and sexy stuff, the execution. I have what's called the binge method, which is working very well. I'll show you that here in a minute. This is a way to structure each video, whether it's the script, whether it's a detailed outline, if you just want to kind of go off the cuff but stay within the lines.

This is going to change everything for you guys if you take action, right? I can't lift the weights for you. I can just tell you what's going to make you buff as hell. Somebody who wants to be buff as hell. Bombshell hook. I call this the banger hook, actually. This is something that gets their attention. We've all heard everybody in their grandma say,

you need to get them with the hook. Hook story offer, which I love. It's really the only way. But you need to open up the video with a hook that's going to keep them. And then immediately go into the introduction of the segments. You've got to prime viewers for what's coming next. This is all going to make sense. I hope you guys are following me.

Each segment that we're bringing up is going to have its own hook, its own value, and then its own nudge into the next thing within the one YouTube video. So if I'm doing a video on Instagram growth, I'm talking about carousels, that segment might start. Now, not everybody watches Instagram Reels. They might not be in your stories, but they have the time and attention to watch multiple slides in a carousel. Value, value, value, value, valuable, this all the thing. But carousels themselves are not going to take you to where you want to be on Instagram. We have to make sure we don't miss this next step, which I'm about to get into.

So you see how I took their attention, and I'm like, hey, there's more. So we nudge them into the next segment. Then we generate engagement. This is throughout your video, obviously. Got to drive interaction. This could be a pop-up, the little like, comment, subscribe thing that you see on a million videos, including mine. It could be like, hey, if this is making sense, let me know in the comments below which of these you're going to do tomorrow. like, whatever that might be.

Then we get into E, which is end in momentum. Something that I don't hear enough people talk about is the importance of session time on YouTube. You can watch one video and click on somebody else's video. And YouTube's like, oh, that wasn't that good. If they watch one of your videos, then another one of your videos, then another one of your videos, then three hours later, they've watched all your videos. you have the highest value score that YouTube can give you and they're going to show it to everybody because you know how YouTube makes money?

It's kind of crazy. They show ads. So the longer you could keep people on your videos, YouTube gets to show them ads, you become like an affiliate for them or a JV partner in a way. Because you get like a very small percentage of those ads. They're very small. So we want to be able to take that momentum

and nudge them to another video. One of the easiest ways of doing this, if you don't know what the next video is going to be, is like, hey, if you like this video, you're going to love this video next. If you haven't yet, comment in the comments below, hit that subscribe button to join the channel family here, and I appreciate you watching. If you don't have a call to action, they're not going to do it. Because they're in their own world. They're watching. They might be taking notes. The pasta is overflowing on the stove.

Their kids are running around. You've got to direct them. who wants me to break down the binge framework in like a very real all right so it's a little bit the prints a little bit small i could not memorize this but you'll it's so let's say that the video's called why you're not getting clients the opening hook can be something like you're sent it 50 DMs a day posting content daily offering free consults and still not getting results what if i told you that the problem isn't working hard enough it's working on the wrong thing Entirely.

Introduce the segments. In the next 12 minutes, I'm revealing the three invisible mistakes keeping coaches from landing clients. Stay till the end because you'll know exactly which one is hurting your business and how to fix it. That's pulling people in, right? Now all of a sudden, I know that if the video's for me or not, then we get into the nudge. This is obviously aspects of the video. But fixing your message is just one step. Even the best messaging falls flat.

If you're making the second mistake, most coaches don't realize they're making. Can you second segment? Does this make it sense? Raise your hand? Okay. This is just something, like I mentioned, a second ago. If you've fallen into this trap, drop a yes in the comments. I guarantee 90% of you watching have done this before without realizing it.

You are part of their family. You are bringing them into a conversation. You're not talking at them. You're talking with them. End of momentum. Now that you know the three mistakes, sorry, now that you know three mistakes, but knowing isn't enough,

watch this video next where I show you exactly which one kills your client flow and how to be in the top 3% of your industry in under an hour a day. You see how that keeps the interest? You're like, oh, this is the next chapter of the book. I want to keep reading. Does that make sense?

Is this helpful? One thing I want you guys to remember when it comes to YouTube because I've spoken to so many people over the years, YouTube is intimidating. But YouTube's the only one that people are watching

on their TV at the end of the night. Not watching TikToks. YouTube's the only one that's getting your results after nine years. Not get that from TikToks. Your repetition becomes your reputation. If you are the guy

uploading one video every six weeks, that's the guy you become. You're the kind of sort of, not even one foot all the way in guy. This is a prime example of what I just showed you with the binge method. I started a brand new YouTube channel just over two months ago to show that it's science. It's repeatable.

That one video out of eight videos, because I've been traveling, making excuses now, has 4,000 views on a channel that has 300 subscribers now, but that one videos generated 147 of them. eight videos no ads telling my mom and a couple friends I'm not telling my big audience that I've already grown in a different industry because I don't want to screw up the algorithm

but you see how that retention graph flattens out for almost the entire video and within 20 seconds of the video editing ending I still have close to 40% retention that's because I kept people hooked with this binge method that I'm telling you guys about

imagine eight one-minute videos on TikTok that you're going to create anyway. Now, imagine if you just puzzle pieced them together into one cohesive thing. Not this one hook, and then you kind of like maintain the 20% that's still with you after 30 seconds till the very end. You're like, please don't go. Please just stay. Keep them interested. Because you know what's the greatest thing about keeping them interested? It means you value their tie.

not a lot of people do that these days the coolest thing about this is it's grown my email list by 312 contacts which in a room like this isn't much but for a brand new channel it is I'm proud of this growth and this channel's going to be big and the cool thing is

this channel can feed the entire growth ecosystem you guys want to see how one video can turn into 40 pieces of content just like that one 12 minute video can turn into more than 40 pieces of content. Is every 12-minute video going to give you 40 minutes or 40 pieces of content? No. It all depends on how you chop it up. It all depends on if your segments are tight. Because if one video, like the one I just showed you, that one had

18 segments. Each individual segment had a hook, so I'll have at least 16 vertical videos I could pop out of it. Turn it into blogs, turned it into podcast. Turn it into tweets and quote posts and all these different things because you're writing a book, not just a paragraph. You have way more to feed the rest of the system. One thing I want to talk about very quickly is the attention infinity loop. We have focused attention, we have distracted attention. In the middle is trust and authority. Most people spend 75% of their time perfecting their content and isolation, then 25% just kind of half button it. You need to be creator B

because this is how the growth starts looking when you're creator B. First few months, you feel invisible, awkward. It's not for you. It's not working. Month 4 through 8, you're building momentum. Month 9 through 18, you're becoming known. You're becoming a household name. By 18 months in, you're the obvious choice.

Here's the problem. Take a picture of this, because I don't want it to be you. Most people quit after month 2. There's perfect and there's progress. Perfect is fear. progress is ambition. Done is better than perfect and consistent is better than both. One thing I want all of you guys to remember as you walk out of here today is that your scars

are your credentials. You didn't have to crawl through the mud. You didn't have to make all the sacrifices you made to be in this room. You did all of that to serve them. Winston Churchill says, we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill. about AI says, the only thing worse of the procrastination is watching someone else, get your YouTube

views, bro. At 17, I was sleeping in my Honda cord. By my mid-30s, I generated over $3 million through YouTube. Your lowest moments don't define your ceiling. Right now, there's somebody out there desperate for what you have to offer. They're desperate for what's in here.

They're desperate for what's in here. They don't have the brain that we have in this room. They don't have the scar. Who's brave enough in this room to do their first binge-worthy video on the next seven days? Raise your hand. I want you guys to look to the left and right of you. Those are your accountability partners.

It could be a spouse. It could be somebody that you met this week. Russell brings us together here to elevate the entire herd. It's not just you. It's not just you. It's us. So stop waiting for permission. stop waiting for perfection

stop waiting for Monday your time to serve us now thank you you