The Shintaro Higashi Show - 100k Subscribers on YouTube

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

It's official: Shintaro's YouTube channel has hit the 100k subscriber milestone! In this episode, Shintaro and Peter look back on the history of his channel, and look to its future. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

welcome back guys to the shindaragashi show with peter yu today i just want to say a great thank you to everybody that has been watching my videos and listening to my podcast 100,000 subscribers on youtube wow that is yeah why would anyone listen to me yeah that's amazing 100,000 well how yeah when did you when did you start like how long did it take now you know i mean like in the beginning i kind of like started putting up random videos yeah i remember i always had a youtube account and there was some that kind of like took it off and you know i didn't really start pumping out content for until about like a year and a half two years right right maybe two years right i think it was two years ago that's when like you you started recording a couple of videos after practice yes and you know i wasn't very good at it but i was

a natural at it right so i made a couple videos like five slow motion videos basic judo throws but it wasn't even before that like i made a sode video and it was super quick and concise you know like three points boom boom boom right i want to go like this yeah and they people always like that yeah yeah like i remember my first video yeah it was like 30 000 views on facebook or something right off the bat i'm like oh holy moly you know and people started following yeah yeah facebook situation until facebook changed all the algorithms and stuff like this right and then i made like a uchimata video where i like do ouchi cut the hand into uchimata super clean quick it's like why do i do this boom boom boom done right two minute clip and people

were like oh i get that why why right and it was super concise and then i think people appreciated that and that's when i started to little by little posting more videos onto my youtube and it really started taking off right right so let's see well let's kind of kind of go through your popular video just kind of a recap yeah you're 100 000. so i remember the biggest one one of the first biggest viral videos i guess was the slow-mo video yeah that was actually more viral on facebook like i got that got over a million views on facebook like early on and it was huge because the ijf shared that yeah it was like one of the top videos of the year yeah you know it's like oh no doing uchimata eliana's doing this and then it was me pretty amazing like after practice like you know my dojo it's like all

right yeah that was did they reach out to you before you're sharing or they just kind of took it they reached out yeah oh yeah pickering who was in charge of like the ijf media division was like hey shantaro you know uh i don't know if you remember me from back in the day but like you know you're really taking off here can we use some of your videos i'm like yeah sure nice yeah it's a good line to igf yeah yeah i did say too i was like hey can i use some of the igf stuff and then you know uh talk about it he's like sure but never really did anything that requires editing skills yeah i refuse to pick up yeah right so the what's the other one oh i always thought it was kind of interesting. You had a...

Remember when you used to cut weight and then... Yeah, the How to Lose 20 Pounds in 5 Days. That was my first viral YouTube video. Right. That's the one that took off. And it wasn't even a judo audience. Right. It was just like dieting and you're cutting weight.

Yeah, yeah. You know what I was doing? I was trying to make 178. me yeah for judo nationals nationals yeah nationals right and then i wanted to make weight before right i want to make weight you know 170 for the first time that year or you know the first time in many years that's right like you know what i'm going to do a mock weigh-in right right and i'm going document it so i'm gonna lose 20 pounds in five days which is you shouldn't even do that right you should always be close to to the weight you know it's like a practice round it was like a practice unless you have no body fat on you and you're trying to get down to the

waist yeah i had tons of body fat on me yeah right yes so it's like i shouldn't have actually it was really dumb you know i should have dieted down much closer but you know who wants to hear that you know i'm losing seven pounds in four days the right way you know right no one wants to see that right so i wanted to do it it was a nice little challenge you know i like challenges you know and of course like some of it is like i was eating a lot and i was super hydrated and i was super puffy. Lots of glycogen stores. So, you know, the first five pounds came off like instantaneously, right? Right, right. And I documented that and, you know, that was something fun that I did that got me a lot of views and that immediately got me over like a thousand subscribers or something like that.

Nice. And then from there, I just started plugging away. Yeah. Yeah. There's some. And then I just looked at the your top video list uh the five basic judo throws that's that one super that one's crazy that's like yeah anytime someone types in judo on youtube it's just google is like this is what's relevant

this is what people want to see if they want to know about judo right right and then the click-through rate is so high so now it's like google pushes it to the top even this month it's my highest viewed video oh wow after all this time a little cash cow nice yeah anytime i do anything interesting and technical like oh here's a russian tie go for kata guma go for this and that people don't want to like yeah whatever yeah because the majority of people who are doing it or watching it are people who are beginning, starting off. I'm interested in judo, right? If you look at the judo pyramid, it should be more white belts than anything, right? It's like a little funnel thing.

Yeah. It has to be a funnel. Yeah. Nice. So that's another thing. And then, of course, one of the most popular topics in martial arts is self-defense. And it seems like you have a few, and then they're all highly ranked, highly viewed. Yeah, people want to know how to defend themselves and how does judo fall into that.

That's always an interesting topic. And I'm a believer in judo is useful, but not for every situation. Right. And for people to make sense of it they watch these videos and then you know if you search judo and self-defense mine comes up so you know that's another one that's popular i want to make more of those i definitely want to branch off i don't want to be too technical on the youtube with the judo because you know that's really not for everybody right and that doesn't help grow the sport i think right okay so that those are so we kind of went over like kind of

look uh you know throw back to these main videos so now as as you try to grow the channel you've had some help on the way i had some help not too much i did 90 of the stuff myself i think you know and not to like you know take away from anybody or anything like that. But it's not like I had a full blown team. Right. Now I have one guy that kind of helps me out. Yeah. But like in the beginning, when I was getting my MBA, I met someone that worked at YouTube.

She was the head of YouTube content creation and she was in my MBA program. And I asked her, I was like, hey, you know, I have a YouTube, a Facebook video that kind of went viral, whatever it is. Like, how do I, you know, you have any advice for me? And she was like hey you know i have a youtube facebook video that kind of went viral whatever it is like how do i you know you have any advice for me and she was like just post yeah you'll figure it out as you go consistency yeah yeah consistency is a key google rewards that more than anything right just being consistent right and uh i see that was like good advice not great advice i think but it was good enough for me to be like, right, might as well just do it. Especially for me.

There's no silver bullet to it, really. I mean, there's so many moving parts. Thumbnails and algorithm and keywords and linking videos to other videos and then picking a niche and, you know, playing the algorithm game. And, you know, all these different things really matter. Right. Like search engine optimization. But, you know, at the end of the day. Right. I love teaching judo and I'm good at it. And then, you know, sustainability was the number one thing when I set out to do this. And in the beginning it was like, all right, guys, practice is over. All right, you hold my phone.

All right, today we showed this, Tai Otoshi. This is how I do it, right side versus left side. This is how I do it against righties. And, you know, here we go. Boom, back, right? And then I would make like five of them after practice. It takes no longer than 15 minutes. And then I post them every week. So like once a week, I would film.

And then 20 minutes every week i would schedule them out right in the beginning i didn't even do descriptions really yeah this is my tile yeah and then i eventually like went back and fixed some of that stuff i think i don't know if you know but there's a youtuber named casey nice that he's like a you know vlogging whatever but he said you know it's not about the equipment whatever it's about the story it's about the content and you know you can use a like your iphone and people still watch it and you're kind of the test you're like the living proof of that i mean the content's good people like it very concise you you know you say you teach what people want to learn and yeah then you don't need a lot of fancy stuff when i spoke to a google consultant yeah it was like because they they help creators create

right and their thing that they said my type of content is a lean in content as opposed to a lean back content lean back content's like right, let's watch this guy. What's his story? He's taking a drive through the city. I see. Go and eat cupcakes, meeting this girl. Music, jump cuts, super interesting, blah, blah, blah. Check out my whatever, right?

Right. As opposed to mine is like, let me show you this thing that I do pretty good. It's very technical. Pinky goes here, hand goes there, judo this, judo that, and people who are watching it are interested in judo. It's like really lean-in content. Your audience is more engaged,

I guess. Yeah, I guess you could say that. Engagement's another metric. How many people comment and all this stuff. Technically, you're supposed to respond to all those messages, which I'm very, very bad at doing.'m not like too good at the engagement side you know i think

people who watch it are engaged but right it's sort of one directional and i do feel bad about it but it's like man if i responded to every comment like i wouldn't have any time to do anything else right and we're actually like gonna work on that we're taking some concrete steps towards that for engagement so we'll uh tell you guys about it in a bit but in on that topic let's kind of so you've you've tried to make it sustainable you try to make it very minimal and simple the upload process yeah but now now that you've done it you're you're one of the you know you're a mini influencer in a way hundred thousand subscribers of this subscribers so yeah so like what would you like any lessons learned what that

you want to apply in the future going forward yeah there's a lot I should be doing you know yeah I feel like I should double down on this a little bit more yeah right because there is the validation of people saying hey there's value here right right i want to watch and listen to what this guy has to say about judo and that makes me feel great because i spent so much time doing judo yeah um i definitely do need to play the game a little bit better i think uh you know more baity things more know, people want to see certain interesting things, right? Like we had a jujitsu brown belt visit in the day and it's like,

how does Shintaro fare against that guy? You know? Oh God. I see. Right. That would have been super interesting, you know? Right.

I kicked his butt, but it's like, but it's like, people want to see that, you know, people want to, people care about that kind of stuff. Did you film that?

No, I didn't film that. I didn't stop. I come to visit and work out. It's like, hey, let me film me relentlessly beating the piss out of you and put it on YouTube. Yeah, that's not nice. But it's like some content that's more lean back. Sometimes I'll do Rondori videos, but I feel weird doing them.

Because it's usually not fair when you see like oh bjj purple bow goes against a wrestler uh that wrestler is not a representative of all wrestlers right right maybe that wrestler wrestled for two years in high school maybe that bjj purple bow does bjj every day who knows right it's just never a fair thing right right so i don't really like that kind of stuff do i consume that kind of stuff yes it's like moving back content it's funny it's fun you know it's your junk food yeah yeah the japanese judo youtuber he's really famous right now uh right he went to my father's alma mater and you know he did this thing like he's a lightweight uh 66 so he's like 140 pounds like 140 pound black belt versus 350 pound guy

that does bjj uh you know and it was super silly right because what was the profile of the bjj guy just heavy as a beginner oh god of course yeah and you know that's what you want right you want uh it's like that confirmation bias. Right, right. I mean, of course he's not going to – if he went up against somebody who's 350 pounds, he got his butt kicked. Like, oh, I fought someone double my weight. What happens next? And then if that guy lost, why would he put that up? He wouldn't.

You want to be entertained. So I want to do a little bit more entertainment-based stuff, not just just instructional and i want to vary the content so it's not boring right because i consume this stuff too and it's like if same thing every single time it's like just different spin and flavor of the same you know meal gets redundant right so I should be doing a little bit more different content. Like I have a lot of contacts in many different communities. Uh-huh. I have a bunch of wrestling friends that I went to college, you know, wrestling college.

And all those guys, I talked to them on a daily, not a daily basis, but like a weekly basis. Yeah. You know, and I was on the phone with one of them the other day. I was like, maybe I'll get this guy to come to the dojo and I'll just wrestle him and film it and put it up. You know, do the first wrestler. You know what I mean? Of course, it's not fair because i wrestled right right right but like

that would be an interesting video yeah more like lean back content yeah yeah it takes time to do and you know right i have so much other stuff going on raising a daughter that's a big part of my time so i should do a little bit more of that. I should do more of the proven YouTube checklists. Hey, guys, if you like it, comment down below. Make sure you hit the bell icon in the top right. Smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. Dude, you got that now. People do this, but it works.

It works, right? Call for action. I just want to do it. Call for action. It works. It's proven. Every single YouTube related. Really?

It does work? It does work. I thought it was like a little gimmick yeah it's a gimmick but you know what people listen hey if you like this thing you know make sure you subscribe like share and subscribe you know and uh i just don't like it i see i get annoyed every time i have to deal with that i think there was like a thing for you like people liked it that people liked it i didn't do it yeah but my metric showed you know like it's very slow growth yeah it's been you know right in the beginning was popping but

now it's just like a very very steady slow titrating situation right but if every single time they have to watch a video of mine it's like hey guys like please share comment on the thing and then every time they did i responded to the comments consistently that's the big one all right if they're like hey i don't really know how this gets i don't really get it like i don't know how you get this and you know i went on him like hey this is exactly how you get it and blah blah blah and i'm like responding and engaging it sends him a notification they're like you know what this guy's all right right he's paying attention i'll subscribe you know what i mean so it's like that constant bombardment with like you know reaching out getting their notifications going and then

right having dialogue and it's like i should do more of that i just don't have time you know that's the problem i don't have time it's like i work at fuji i have two dojos i have a kid you know i'm making youtube content now you know busy man like i have a yeah and i have a lot of hobbies you know so we're like you so now we are you know trying different venues to you know you mentioned the engagement part so you have you have a new thing going on for yeah i'm experimenting like i have video series for sale right i do everything through judo fanatics i've experimented with dojo.com that's kind of a nice platform that's kind of up and coming. Now I'm messing around with Teachable, and I have a Russian Thai two-on-one series on there. Of course, eventually I want a one-stop shop to consolidate everything. But I don't have a computer science background.

You don't need it now. But it's like being in front of a computer, clicking around, developing these things. It's really not my thing. I don't like doing that at all. I i don't like you know yeah i'm busy sorry i got an mba but i don't like the business side of all this stuff i like going to dojo doing judo teaching judo i mean it makes sense that's why you're good at you know that's why you like yeah i don't like to work that's the thing like i don't wanna right uh and people spend hours a day doing this stuff right i know guys sensei seth he's doubled down on this and that's what he does

full time you know he's like i quit everything i'm doing this this is what i do he can't he did a collab with him i did a collab with him that was fun you know he reached out and he was very very follow-up heavy and i was like all right i'll do it uh-huh nice made it as simple as possible he came over filmed for a couple hours and that was it you know took him out show them the city nice nice that was lovely but yeah i'm doing teachable yeah we'll drop the link down down in the description thank you and you know hopefully one of these things you you know, really hits. And, you know, for me, it's consistently little by little every day. Even though my mind goes to like, okay, what is the big goal here?

What is the big, you know, situation? But that's really how you do it. You just little by little plug away at it and then you just do, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to do it. Nice. Try to be, at least. You know, I don't want to overanalyze anything and uh you know yeah so the so there's teachable and then we are trying

another thing so patreon we're gonna start there yeah it's gonna be more intimate that's the goal with that one so it's like you know i don't really like responding to all these comments on youtube but the goal with the patreon is to have a much more smaller intimate community because you know i don't really like responding to all these comments on youtube but the goal with the patreon is to have a much more smaller intimate community because you know i'm okay doing this stuff but you are a software engineer doing this side project for free essentially just yeah right so it's like hopefully you know we get a intimate close look in peter's marriage and his phd right and then we'll have a discord and you have access to us yeah and then we can talk you can chat with us you know we'll probably do some

special episodes for you guys if you know if you are supporting us through patreon yeah maybe like a group call yeah whatever it is and you know of course judo coaching is at the forefront of all this stuff right judo coaching is what i do of all this stuff. Right. Because judo coaching is what I do. Yeah. Grappling, not just judo. Right. So you'll have access to me in more ways. And, you know, people reach out to me on Instagram all the time.

Right. You know, and I do appreciate that, but it is hard to get back to everybody. Right. It's like every day. You get bombarded. Yeah. I get like 20, 30 messages from random people. And then like to go through each and every single one and like give

real sustainable good answer it's not sustainable i just can't do it yeah you know so you know i'm sorry if i message it but keep sending them you know it makes me feel good yeah you live on the likes yeah messages yeah cool so patreon we're gonna do that yeah we'll drop the link below yeah yeah thank you 100 000 subscribers wow what an honor yeah you know and i hope to keep doing it i hope to keep right you know everything i gotta do like i said it's gotta be sustainable right hopefully 10 years from now i'm still showing you guys tomonagi and stuff yeah right and 1 million subscribers by then yeah i don't even think there's a million people doing judo but maybe i think there is yeah right yeah yeah cool i heard there's 1 million active competitors in

france alone there you go so gotta learn french yeah exactly spanish french yeah japanese korean everything and you know we gotta gonna you know widen the horizon cool all right well thank you yeah thanks thank you guys for your support thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next episode