Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Evan Carmichael on Surviving Entrepreneurship | Leadership | YAPClassic

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Most people have had an inkling to start a YouTube channel, but don’t know what it takes to run and grow one. In fact, the average YouTube growth rate is 1,000 subscribers in 22 months. How do you build a sustainable channel that organically attracts consistent viewers? Evan Carmichael has been running an entrepreneurial YouTube channel since 2008. He has garnered over 3.5 million subscribers and 500 million total video views. His goal is to help 1 billion entrepreneurs.  In this episode of YAP Classic, Evan gives Hala some insider tips on building and growing a successful YouTube channel, such as designing engaging thumbnails, conducting split tests, and utilizing end cards. He talks about how to overcome shyness and anxiety as a content creator. Hala and Evan also discuss ways to eliminate negativity from your life and gain confidence in the face of insecurity.  Topics Include: - Evan’s goal of helping 1 billion entrepreneurs  - Purpose comes from Pain  - Learning from Bill Gates - Combining talent with hard work  - Evan’s advice for people who don’t believe in themselves - Eliminating negativity  - Continuing Zig Ziglar’s legacy  - Transitioning to YouTube - Evan’s YouTube growth strategies  - Overcoming awkwardness and anxiety  - Tips for building a popular YouTube channel - How to use an end card - What is a split test?  - Hacks for YouTube advertising  - How long should your YouTube videos be?  - And other topics… Evan Carmichael is an entrepreneurial coach, author, speaker, and venture capitalist. He hosts a popular entrepreneurial YouTube channel that boasts over 3.5 million followers, where he interviews top entrepreneurs like Tony Robbins, Ed Mylett, and Oprah Winfrey. He offers courses through his company, Evan Carmichael Communications Group. He has written four books, including Built to Serve and The Top 10 Rules for Success. Evan was named one of the World’s 40 Social Marketing talents by Forbes. He was also put on Inc.'s list of 100 Greatest Leadership Speakers and named one of their 25 Social Media Keynotes Speakers you Need to Know.  Resources Mentioned: YAP episode #60: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/young-and-profiting-with-hala-taha/id1368888880?i=1000469316006  Evan’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ModelingTheMasters  Evan’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/Evan-Carmichael/e/B01JJZTIHM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share  Evan’s Website: https://believe.evancarmichael.com/homepage  Evan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evancarmichael/?originalSubdomain=ca  Evan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evancarmichael/  Evan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/evancarmichael?lang=en  Sponsored By:  Invesco - Discover the possibilities at Invesco.com/ETFSolutions More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review -  ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Join Hala's LinkedIn Masterclass - yapmedia.io/course

Today on Yap, we're resurfacing one of my favorite interviews from the Yap archives, episode number 60 with Evan Carmichael. Evan is an insanely popular entrepreneur and YouTuber. He has over 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube and a total of over 500 million views. His goal is to help one billion entrepreneurs, and he's on the right track. Evan is an expert when it comes to scaling YouTube channels, and today we're diving into all things YouTube, like design. signing thumbnails, advertising your channel, conducting split tests, and so much more. We also talk about entrepreneurship and how to find confidence when you don't believe in yourself and how to remove negativity from your life in order to make room for growth.

And lastly, he shares some tips for introverts who are looking to become content creators. This episode is chock full of wisdom for everyone, whether you want to start a YouTube channel or you want to become an entrepreneur. Enjoy my interview with the king of YouTube, Evan Carmichael. All right, everybody. Welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast. Today, I have an awesome guest, Evan Carmichael. Thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you for love, Hala. Great to be here. Yeah, very excited for you to be here today. So you are a serial entrepreneur and you've done so much in your life. But right now, you're essentially a trainer and a coach to entrepreneurs. And you're also a media personality with a huge YouTube following. So tell us about that. audacious goal. Where did you come up with the goal to try to help one billion entrepreneurs? And are there even a billion entrepreneurs that exist today?

Yeah. So I believe in having a goal so big that you never reach it. So I'm not the kind of person who has a five or 10 year goal. I think if you have a 10 year goal for yourself, you're thinking small. I think if you think about who you were 10 years ago, like who was Hala 10 years ago, could she have with any accuracy predicted where you are right now? Not if you're growing, right? I'm going to have the young and profiting podcast. No, no, I didn't know. There's no way. Not if you're growing, right? And so what makes you think you can do it going forward, right? So you can't predict anything in a 10-year window for yourself if you're growing. So I think it's mission. I want to solve the world's biggest problem. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. It's meant to

be some giant number that I'm never going to hit. But then it fuels decision-making on a day-to-day basis. So it's why I don't do a lot of one-on-one coaching. I'm trying to reach a ton of people. It's why I'm on this show. Episode 60. Let's go. Yeah, let's go. It's why I'm on this show. It's why I have my YouTube channel. It's why I write books. I'm trying to hit the masses. And so I think everybody having that North Star to say, this is what I'm trying to do for the rest of my life makes a big difference. So I read, or maybe I heard it on an interview that you believe that your purpose comes from your pain, right? And so your purpose is to help one billion entrepreneurs. Where did you, like what was the pain that stemmed all this?

So in my first business, I was 19. I struggled a lot as an entrepreneur. I had 30% of a startup company. I was making 300 bucks a month. And I didn't know what to do. I made it harder on myself in that I told my friends that I was living the entrepreneur life and I was hustling. But really, I couldn't hang out with them because 20 bucks for pizza and beer was too much for me. So I isolated myself. I made it really hard on myself. And I'm a visual learner. There wasn't a lot of visual content at that time. So I'm 39 now. It was 19, 20 years ago. YouTube didn't exist. And I now want to make the path easier for other people who are struggling with what I struggled with. And so for the listeners, for the viewers, whatever you struggled with, whenever you felt the lowest as a human, the least amount of self-worth and lowest self-confidence that moment, what happened? There's lots of people who currently are what you used to be.

Yeah. And you got through, but a lot of people don't get through. And so you represent hope to them. And helping them and seeing their eyes light up and being a source of inspiration for them will fill you up in a way that other work doesn't. And so I want people to find out what their purpose is and then unleash it into the world. Oh, that's beautiful. That's an awesome mission.

So you've studied the lives of many successful entrepreneurs, most notably Bill Gates, right? So you credit him with helping you turn around your first business. Can you share that story with us? And for those of you who don't know, Bill Gates is the second richest man in the world and he was the founder of Microsoft. One, awesome that you did your homework and research. Two, wow, I can't believe that that's even a caveat now that people don't know who Bill Gates is again. Maybe younger people don't know.

I'm some younger listeners. It makes sense. It's just how much the world has changed. So worse in my life is when I told my business partner that I quit. We were struggling. I wasn't making money. I felt worthless. And so I said, I quit.

I need to feel like I'm a valuable human in something. It wasn't for lack of effort. Like every day, it's all I was doing every day is working. And I wasn't getting results. And so I said, I need to feel worth, worth, like I have worth as a human. So I quit. And then I cried, you know, stuff kind of my eyes, my nose. I was lost.

And then I woke up the next morning and I said, you know what? I can't quit on this yet. Like I haven't given it everything. If I look back in 10 years, I'm going to say, I wish I tried a little bit harder. I wish I did a little bit more. I can't quit yet. But I can't just keep doing the same thing. Like there's got to be something else.

Somebody has solved this problem before. And so I just asked myself, who has sold software before? And the only person I could think of was Bill Gates, who started Microsoft. So I looked at Bill Gates' story and how he got started, right? So, you know, Hall mentioned he's one of the richest men in the world. I didn't care how he made an extra million dollars now. It's like zero to one. How did he do that?

Because that's what I wanted to do. And he did it through partnerships. So I applied his lessons into my business within a short amount of time, I had my first deal for $13,500. And that may not sound like a lot of money. But to me, that was, man, I was just like rich. That was rich. I had money.

I was rolling in it. That's crazy. But more important than that, it gave me hope. And it gave me a strategy I can use again and again and again. And so for the past 20 years, what have I done? Whenever there's something I don't know how to do, I ask myself, how can I model success? Who has done this thing that they can teach me and I can just learn from them? So for anybody familiar with my YouTube channel, there's a lot of content on there learning from successful people because I want to make it easier.

Because if you're trying to learn from an Elon Musk, a lot of the content might be boring. He's not a fantastic speaker. They ask some questions that you may not care about. And so we try to take eight hours of footage and condense it down into 15 minutes of awesome knowledge for you to learn from. Yeah. So if you guys haven't been on his YouTube channel, it is absolutely amazing. He's got these awesome like, you know, 10 reasons why XYZ is successful.

And he really does his research in terms of the people that he studies. And it's really interesting to me because you don't necessarily like talk to them in person or do any interviews with them. You're really just like researching them and finding the stuff that's online and then curating it, which is so important. important to understand that, like, you don't actually need to talk to someone one-on-one to get information from them. A lot of people, you know, have books and have videos and you can study their lives and learn from them without necessarily knowing them personally. Yeah, I mean,

I've had the good fortune of having a bunch of them on. So we had Tony Robbins on and we had Gary V. on and we had Grant Cardone on. Yeah. We've had these people on. But, yeah, like, I'm never going to meet Steve Jobs. It's not going to happen. But we could still learn from him. Yeah. And so that's what I'm trying to do is give. people every day a resource to go and learn from because here's what happens if every day you're watching a video or listen to a podcast or reading a book from somebody who's done a lot more than you you may not notice a shift in yourself day to day but if you did that every day and you look back three months six months a year later like man I've grown so much you can't help like if you're

this is episode 60 of hell a show if you go back and you watch every episode like if you take the next 60 days and start from zero and just go, you'll be a different person in 60 days. Yeah, totally. Because you got Hala in your ear, giving you confidence, boosting you up, making you feel amazing, right? And we need that because, you know, Hala might be a cheerleader for you in your life, but you probably don't have a lot of cheerleaders in your life right now. And so even though Hala may not know you, you can still learn from her, you can still

get her wisdom, and you can still apply it to make a meaningful change in your life. I love that. Let's stick on Bill Gates a little bit longer. So he was like a genius. He got almost a perfect SAT score. He was like a coder when he was a teenager. And so it seemed like he had like this natural ability for technology and computers and things like that. What do you think about talent?

Do you think that it's something that everybody naturally has or do you believe that we need to work at it in order to be very good at one thing? I think everybody has the ability to be Bill Gates at something where you can combine what you're naturally good at with a lot of hard work and repetition and skill. So Bill Gates might have been wired a certain way, to think a certain way, to have some national intelligence, but he still worked a lot to build his business up. And I think a lot of people, either one, don't believe that they could be the greatest in the world of something. You could be the greatest in the world at something. I believe that. It just may not be what your parents want you to do or what you went to school for, right? It's something totally different.

Halap probably didn't go to school for podcasting. No. LinkedIn live streaming, right? It's like, you don't go to school for that, right? So it's probably she's the weird duck in her family. Like, you're doing a what? You go home for Christmas or New Year's and explaining what you do. Like, yeah, I've got a LinkedIn live show and we bring people on.

Like, seems totally foreign and different. But believing that you could be the greatest in the world that's something. And then every day chasing that down to get better at the skill, I think is inside everybody. Most people just either one, don't believe themselves enough to chase something down or to go off and actually find it. And now a quick break from our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence.

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low confidence? Like what's your advice to them to start moving the needle to start believing in themselves a little bit more? One, recognize that that's not you talking to you. Those are other voices in your head. Those are your parents. Those are your teachers. Those are your aunts, uncles, friends, community. You're not born and automatically think I suck.

So this has been something that's been planted inside you. Already that is a step. Yeah. So next step, we need to remove the negativity from our lives. Who is it that when you hang around, you feel worse about yourself? Maybe that's your parents. Maybe that's your friends. Just because you went to high school with somebody,

it doesn't mean you should still be their friend now. A lot of us are in friends out of convenience more than anything else. So the asset test becomes when you're with somebody and you leave. Like I'm talking to how when this is done, I'm going to feel pumped, right? You want to be around more people like that. When you're done leaving them, you feel great and they feel great. We don't have that many people in our lives who are like that. A lot of people after we've spent time with them, you feel like you need a nap or you need a shower.

It's like you've just been drained and now you're dirty. Totally. And so eliminating as much as possible those people from your life or just to topics. Maybe you love your mom, but whenever you talk about your career, it leads down to this mess. So I'm not talking about my career with my mom, but we're going to talk about all this other stuff. Yeah. So you eliminate the negativity. Now you've got a hole.

You've got all this, you've got extra time. You're not hanging out with your negative friends, but what are you going to do with your time? You need to inject more positivity. Whether that's remotely, like my YouTube channel. Halla's show, books, podcasts, or whether that's physical of going out and going to events and going to meet up and going to conferences and trying to meet people, that three-step process. Amazing advice. Really great advice. So Zig Ziglar is somebody that you apparently worked with. I heard you talk about that in passing, but in what capacity did you work with him?

So I haven't worked with Zig himself. We worked with his son. Okay. I love Zig. I mean, Zig was one of the founding fathers of personal development. A lot of people don't know who he is. is, if you walk down the street and say, hey, who's Zig Ziglar? Most people have never heard of them. If people don't know who Bill Gates is, they definitely don't know who Zig Ziglar is. So, I mean, one of the fathers of personal development, and he was one of the first guys to get on the road and create books and create programs. And for me, part of what's become a part of my mission is helping preserve the legacies of

some of these people. So when we were doing a tribute video to Zig, we worked with his son who's taking over the Ziegler brand to get content and put it together and share it because I want people to know who Zig Ziglar is and otherwise that content could be buried and lost forever. I want people to hear the message. Like I want more voices coming out and speaking because maybe they don't, maybe when they hear from Zig they don't quite get it. But then Halle with her spin, with her story, maybe that's the moment that it actually tweaks and you make the change. And so all of my content, we've done 6,000 videos plus on my YouTube channel, it's all positivity,

it's all belief, it hopefully is inspiring and motivating you. But Eric Thomas is going to yell at you and Oprah Winfrey is going to hug you. And everybody has their own style. But it's still Oprah and Eric Thomas are often saying the same things, just with a different technique. Yeah, everybody resonates with different people. You have to find the right person that resonates with you. So let's switch to YouTube. You actually started off with a blog site, with a website.

So first, tell us why you ended up transitioning to YouTube. And I think that was like 10 years ago. So what made you transition from the website to focusing more on YouTube? Yeah. So April 2009 was my first video. So it's almost 11 years now. Wow. Crazy.

Crazy. Wow. You got in so early. I mean, I'm sure it didn't feel like that back then. Well, here's the thing. So why did I do it? One, I love testing out different things. I love trying on different things.

even this. Like we're doing a LinkedIn live broadcast, right? I haven't done that many. You introduced me to Streamyard, a new software I've never heard of, right? Like I love trying out different things. And some of them stick and most of them don't. But I'm a visual learner. So I used to learn a lot through books. I don't listen to a single podcast because auditory is the worst for me. If I couldn't see you right now, I'd be like this. I'd close my eyes and really focusing in because it's hard for me to learn through auditory. So I wanted more visual content because I'm a visual learner. So I wanted to create YouTube videos.

This new platform called YouTube. So let's make some videos that I can help people with. At the time, though, YouTube was not an educational platform. YouTube 11 years ago was, you know, cat coughing up a hairball and man falls downstairs. So you did get in really, really early. Memes. Like I'm making 10-minute thought leadership. videos. Nobody was, but it also wasn't smart, right? I mean, my first video in one year had three

comments on it. And the first one was my mom. And the second was my older sister. And then the third comment was some random guy who happened to find my videos. So if you think about it, like in a year of the video being up, only one person commented on my video. Yeah. I just stuck with it. Right. I just kept going. I just kept creating content. So crazy. 6,000 videos later. So it took me five years to get the 7,000 subscribers.

You think about it, five years, 7,000 subscribers. Now, I wasn't committed full time. I wasn't putting out as much content. But also the platform had to catch up to what I was making. Yeah. So how did you scale? How did you get from 7,000 to 2 million in five years? A couple of things.

One, I took it more seriously, just like anything else, right? Like, this is episode 60. If you're doing, a lot of people get to episode three and then stop. Like, oh, I didn't get people watching. Nobody's giving me comments. There's no shoutouts. Yeah. And they quit, right?

Yeah. If you keep going and we do this again for episode 600, it's going to be even bigger, right? Yeah. Like I just kept going where a lot of people quit because they're not getting the results. Two, YouTube caught up, right? Like YouTube became an educational platform. People will consume education and long form videos. People will watch a three-hour video on YouTube.

It's crazy. Yeah. That was not what was happening when I first started. And in three, I got better, right? Like you do something 6,000 times. You're going to get better. I'm introverted naturally. That doesn't come off when I'm doing stuff like this.

But I'm an introvert. I don't like the spotlight. I don't need to have the limelight on me. Go back and watch my first videos. They're all still up there. You can see how awkward and nervous and shy and anxiety I had and making the content. But I wanted to serve. I wanted to help.

And so that's why I created it. So I just got better. Like you said you were a little awkward. You're like a little introverted naturally. How did you start to have more presence, speak better, things like that? One, recognize that I need to stop being selfish, that it's not about me. It's about the audience. It's not about me being great.

It's about helping people. Like every time I switch it to even here, if I'm nervous about coming on your show, it's like, it's not about me. I'm here to help Hala and her audience hopefully learn something. And shifting it to service reduces anxiety, increases the confidence, increasing the motivation and all like, I've got something that can help people and I need to stop being selfish and get it out there. Two, modeling success, just like I did with Bill Gates in my first business, look at other people

who are communicating and what can you learn from them. So I would study Tony Robbins and Les Brown and Zig Zigler and Oprah and all the people that I have profiled on my channel over the years. And your goal is to be the best you, right? It's not to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or anybody. It's like, but I could take this piece from Oprah and this piece from Bill Gates and this piece from Kanye and you slowly become a better version of you. I think a lot of people watching and listening could get there a lot faster than me. It's been a slow work in progress.

Most people aren't going to make 6,000 videos to get to this point. But it's the consistency and willingness to follow through because you have a mission that matters and drives you. Yeah, that's awesome. And it totally shows that, you know, you put in the hours. Like, you've got a really good presence and you speak really well. Let's talk about credibility on YouTube. So let's say you come across somebody new who's new to YouTube. For me, when I look at a new podcast, there's certain things that I look at.

I look at reviews, like number of reviews. Are they real? Are they actually saying the person's name? Or did they buy those reviews? There's certain things that I look for to judge credibility. For you, when you go on a YouTube page, you being like a YouTube guru, what do you look for? So I guess it depends on what I'm, why am I on that page? To see like if you feel like this person is having good progress on YouTube, let's say,

like is about to do well or has the potential to do well. So if we're living inside like the thought leadership space, like you're an expert in getting your message out as opposed to, because YouTube is everything. YouTube could be prank, prank videos and food challenges. Let's stick on like self-improvement, that type of space. So I look at does the person have something that I'm learning? from? Have I learned from this human? So people mostly focus on the wrong thing. People mostly focus on what microphone am I going to use and what's in my background and how's my hair and is the lighting perfect? All the stuff that you probably don't ever want to be an expert at.

If you want to be in person development, be a speaker, be a trainer, be the person up front, most people will spend 20 minutes recording the video and then eight hours editing it. You're training the wrong skill. You're focusing on your time and I think that you don't want to get great at. Now, if you're a producer or you're an editor or you are a camera person and that's your skill, great. Like, you have stuff better look fire. But I look first at not how well it's shot and how great the background is. I care about the content. Can you teach me something in your message? And then that's really all I look for is like, did I learn something? So you don't care, like you're not looking at subscribers or view counts or comments or anything like that.

Does engagement matter on YouTube the same way it matters on social network platforms? For sure. Like if you're talking about now, how do I rank my videos and how do I get exposure for my content? Yes, the more engaged of the community you have. This is why when people buy fake subscribers, it actually destroys their channel. Because here's what happens. YouTube, you make a video. You know, Hall is going to make a video of her top 10 rules of success.

Awesome. We often get discouraged. Like, oh, we need people to come on the channel. I need to buy a whole bunch of subscribers. I need to look good. I need to look good. So how YouTube works is when you launch a video, it doesn't go out to the broad audience yet.

It goes to a percentage of your subscribers. If they like it, it goes to a greater percent of your subscribers. If they like it, it goes to all your subscribers. And if they like it, it goes out into the YouTube world. If you bought fake subscribers, when your video goes out, they're not going to watch it. And so YouTube's saying, well, if your own subscribers are not watching it, why would we ever push it out to non-subscribers,

to people don't know who you are. Yeah. And so people just get stuck in this death spiral with now they can't get out of it. Totally. They bought all these subscribers who never engaged with the content. Yeah.

And I think that's for like most social network platforms. Like buying fake followers like just kills your momentum. You really need to do it organically or else like you have no community. And you're basically like speaking to no one. You just look good for somebody who's clicking on your page for like a hot second and doesn't know any better. So let's talk about continuing the session. I know that when it comes to.

to YouTube, continuing the session, increasing minutes watched, keeping them on YouTube is really important. So talk to us about how we can ensure that people stay on YouTube so that our videos get suggested. Okay, so you set the keyword there suggested. Suggested is how you actually grow. People think of YouTube as a search engine, which it is, second largest search engine in a world, but most views don't come from search. Most channels don't blow up through search, which is what we think of.

it comes from suggested. So somebody might type in, how do I, blank, blank, blank. One video shows up. They watch that video, but then they consume five to eight more from the recommended videos down the side, right? That's where you need to be showing up. So step one is you need to show up against your own channel before you're going to show up against other people's channels.

Okay. So if somebody's having a YouTube channel, go incognito mode to your own channel, watch any video, and see how many of my videos are actually showing up that. the side. Not when you're logged in as you because it's your channel. Of course your stuff is going to show up. Incognito mode and see how many of your videos are showing up. Okay. You can also look in your analytics to see where is suggested in your... So suggested videos on your own channel. If your videos are suggested for your own channel. If you are not suggested against your own channel, you're never going to be suggested against somebody else's channel. Okay. Same logic. Like if my own people

aren't watching it, why would YouTube ever send it off to new people? But ultimately, like if you're making videos about success, you want to be showing up against my videos, which are about success. But you won't until you rank against your own videos first. Okay. So how do you rank against your own videos first? One, consistent thumbnail design. Okay. People, especially at the beginning, are all over the map.

Different logos, different fonts, different branding. So somebody could be watching your video and they like it. And your video could be showing up down the side, but they're not going to click on it because they don't know that that's your video. Got it. Because you use a different font. because you're too far out, right? So like headshots from the chin to like top of the head because it's mobile consumption.

So full body shot you might love and it looks great on your desktop. But when somebody goes to the phone, they don't even know who that is. Just looks like some woman or some guy on a thumbnail, right? Yeah. So especially for a personal brand, headshot always. And by the way, you can re-upload those thumbnails. So they're not stuck forever. And so let's say you change your branding like that happened to me.

I still need to do this. I need to update all my thumbnails. But that's something you can go back retroactive. actively and do. Yeah, even looking at this live stream here, right? You've got your colors. There's two shades of blue. You know, your name and my name look the same, right, in terms of the font and a background. You've spent your time thinking about what does my brand look like. And so I need to know what a Hala thumbnail looks like. Totally. So that you're not losing views. If you can start teaching YouTube that when somebody watches one Hala video, they watch eight, they're going to start

recommending you like crazy. If you teach them that they watch one video and then they bounce, they're not going to recommend you as much. So consistent thumbnail design is one. Two is a series. So if you're going to give me a 10-part series on how to launch a podcast, that could be a 10-part series and people will then consume the whole series, right? They watch the first video about how to book GESP. And the second video about gear and a third video about questions to ask, right?

And so if I really want to start a podcast, I'm going to watch all these videos and you're teaching YouTube, hey, people are loving my content. And then a third one that I would say, this is something a lot of people overlook, is the end cards. Yep. So you've got end cards that last 20 seconds at the end of every video. Don't tell people to subscribe in your video. Don't say, hey, guys, you like to subscribe. Don't tell people to thank you for watching.

As soon as people feel like it's over, the video's over, they leave. You don't subscribe to any channel. Think about your own behavior. You didn't subscribe to the channel because the person on camera said, subscribe to my channel. Yeah. You subscribe to the channel because you like their content. You've probably seen four of their videos. Like, I like what this person's putting out.

So your goal at the end of a video is to make them go watch another video. So you need to think, if you're recording this video, what video do I currently have on my channel that's most relevant to this video? So already live. Already live on the channel. What's the most relevant video? So treat it like a sports analogy, if it's the end of a first quarter in basketball, you don't expect people to go home. They're coming back for the second quarter and the third quarter and the fourth quarter.

Treat that like every video is just the first quarter. They should come back and watch your next video for the second quarter. So what is the second quarter video for this topic? So if you're talking about podcasting, lead them to another podcasting video. Yeah. And so do you recommend like we just like put the link in the description and that's how they navigate to it or just tell them about it? Yes, but most people don't consume through description.

It doesn't hurt. It just won't help that much. Okay. So you have 20 seconds at the end for an end card. And what the end card means is you can actually put a video on the screen that people can click. Okay. So it's like something you do through YouTube. Through YouTube.

But you have to talk about it in the video. So you have 20 seconds. You think you're already about what's my next video that they need to go watch. And you say, hey, if you like this video, you have to go watch this next one where I talk about whatever. It's right there. Go click it. Right? And like point to it and look at it so that they go click it, right?

And make it a relevant, awesome video, right? You're not sending them to some piece of junk. Like that's another video on your channel that you're proud of. Yeah. But you tell them to go click on it. Yeah. If you have editing capabilities, like you have an editor helping you. Yeah.

Then you have 20 seconds total to use. 10 seconds is you pitching that next video. The last 10 seconds is highlights of that video that you then show up. So whatever the best parts of that next video. of that next video is, you tease it at the end of your current video. Okay. If you don't have editing capabilities, then you pitch that video for 20 seconds. Yeah.

I'm going to teach you how to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'll see you there. Like, just assume they're going to go there, right? You're not kicking them out. Yeah. So then you're starting to trigger inside YouTube. Why are we doing this? We want to extend the session time. Yeah.

We want to tell YouTube that our videos are linked, that when people watch one Hala video, they watch eight Hala videos. And now we're going to start being suggested against our own videos. And when that happens, we're going to start getting suggested against other people's videos. Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touchpoints every single cold customer has with your brand.

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transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. So let's talk about some of the written content around our YouTube videos. So there's a bunch of different space. There's the headline or the YouTube title. There's the description. And then We actually had a question from Lyndon Gray. He's asking, do tags work on YouTube? So what do you think about these written words? I know you mentioned that search isn't really the way that people find your videos. So is there just no point to optimize those things?

There's definitely a point to optimize. We're just not optimizing for search. The only search optimized channels where you got to be thinking search first is where people are not going to subscribe to your channel. Okay. So you, Hala, want people to subscribe to your channel because it's going to be. awesome content that's coming out. If you had a how do I unclog my toilet? Nobody's going to subscribe to that channel, right? They just have a problem with their toilet and need an answer. So that's what we want to optimize for search, right? But for most people, if you're in person

development, you're not up, you want to optimize for people to subscribe to your channel. Okay. So text matters a lot, but you want to think what's going to get people to click. So we use text on the thumbnail itself. That's not searchable, but the text on a thumbnail is what people will see. Okay. Title next. And again, we're optimizing for clicks.

So everything that people have learned about already from digital marketing, just apply to now YouTube. So think about if you're sending an email out, what's the subject going to be? It's going to be something that's going to make me want to open up that email. Yeah. Apply the same thing to the text on your thumbnail and the text in the title. If you were doing a landing page to promote. Oh, your coaching service.

Like, what's the title going to be at the top, that headline? Think about that to be the title of your video. So we're definitely optimizing, but optimizing for people to click on it, not optimizing for search terms that's going to show up. Got it. Description, very little, and tags like nothing. Really? Yeah.

Interesting. So have you ever heard of that tool called Tube Buddy that everybody promotes? Do you feel like that's just garbage then? No, no. Hold on. I love Tube Buddy. I help them build a whole bunch of their back end. Oh, okay.

But not for tags. Okay. Got it. You can do it for tags. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a great tool just to make sure you've got the basics and you're not totally like off the ball. Tags might be half of one percent of your success.

So great. Throw it in there. Yeah. But it's not going to be the thing. I use TubeB buddy every day. I love their AB split test tool. So for any marketers, TwoBuddy is the best out there right now for A.B. Split testing.

So once your video goes out, we wait a week and then we test the thumbnail. Yeah. One thumbnail versus an. one headline versus another headline and see what converts the best. We've done over 1,800 different split tests. We're going to do 3,000 more this year. I split test more than anybody that I've ever met on YouTube. And two buddy, I love two buddy. They're the ones that I use for all of that. Yeah. Just not for tags. So I know what a split test is, but not everybody is a marketer. So can you explain what a split test is and the different types of experiments you do on YouTube? So is this video

going to be on YouTube? Yeah. Great. Okay. So this is going to go up on YouTube, Hala can experiment. Like, what's the thumbnail going to be? Maybe it's Hala's face. Maybe it's my face. Maybe it's both of our faces. Maybe it's both of our faces when we're like super energetic or maybe I'm crying or there's different options that you can put. So with two buddy, what it does is it tests one against the other and it shows you which one gets more clicks. So Hala by herself gets 8% click through rate. Hala with Evan gets 7% click through right. Evan by himself gets 2% click through rate, right? Great.

Go with the holiday by yourself. Right? And so for every video, we always split test a thumbnail and we split test the title to see, I like both. It's not about what I like is about what works. And so they'll run the split test until you have an answer to say, no, go with this one. It's better. Now, sorry, this might be a dumb question. But the way that, like, I haven't done any tests for YouTube like officially.

So do they actually go live? Like when you do the test, is it actually like two videos that go live and like you split the audience 50-50? No. So it's the same video. So here's what I would do if I was you. One, use your community tab. There's a community tab on YouTube where you can poll your audience that most people never use. So for every video we put up, we go to our community tab and say, hey, I've got this interview with Evan Carmichael and we talk about these kinds of things.

What should we call it? And then you give them two options. whatever option they like the most, you lead with that as the primary option. That's what we're going to call the video. One week later, I'm going to go to TubeBuddy and then split test the other option that I also liked. And what TubeBuddy is going to do is take that same video and every day change the title. So you're not releasing two different videos. It's this interview right here.

So you keep the views and everything. Yeah. So like Thursday is going to be the first title and Friday's going to be the second title. and Saturday is going to be the first title and Sunday is going to be the second title. And it just keeps testing them every day until it gets enough data to say this one is better than this one. Yeah. What other things can you? So aside from headline thumbnail, is there anything else that you can split test?

Those are the two main things. You can split test description. You can split test tags. Test it. It's like, hey, don't listen to me. Go split test your tags. Yeah. And I would love to see somebody's data to say by split testing tags, we blew up our.

video, I've never seen it, but I would love it because that means I made a mistake on 6,000 videos and I can go back and start crushing those old ones. Yeah, totally. So let's talk about the time, like the amount of time that we should shoot our video. I know that you're a proponent of like 10 minute videos. Is there a reason why you think 10 minutes is a sweet spot? A couple things. One, short videos don't do well in the thought leadership category.

YouTube wants audience retention. They want people sticking on YouTube as long as possible. Go to your own, just go to YouTube.com. Anybody listening and watching, go to your own YouTube.com and see what's being recommended. The only things that will be sub five minutes are going to be music videos because you refresh them and you listen to that same song many times. No matter how good your thought leadership video is, they're not listening to it 20 times and like smashing the refresh button or some crazy viral video like a Star Wars trailer or some like thing that's really popping. everything else is going to be 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 20 minutes long. So you want to play in that range.

We look for 10 at a minimum, one because longer is typically better as long as it's good. Like don't have an 8 minute video that then you stretch the 10 and fill with crap. Yeah. But if you're an expert, just take me deeper. Yeah. If Hall is talking about some topic in person development she's passionate about, you have a deep well of knowledge. Just tell me more.

Tell me another story. Tell me who you've helped. Tell me how you got out of it. You can always tell more that brings value. That's not just fluff. Totally. So that's an asset that a thought leader brings where if you're doing a song or something, how do you stretch a four-minute song into a 10-minute song?

It's really rough. It's not how most songs are done. Also, when you have a 10-minute video, 10 minutes and one second or more, you can add mid-roll ads to the video. So if monetizing the video is important, YouTube pays you, guys. LinkedIn's not paying. you. Twitter's not paying you to make content. Instagram's not paying you to make content. Google has thousands of employees who are in charge of selling YouTube ads and they take a cut for every ad

they sell against your video. So you can get paid to make content as well as build your brand and sell your coaching and whatever else you're trying to do. So if it's over 10 minutes, you can add a midrull ad that pays you a lot more. So 10 minutes itself, you're not getting a middle ad. 10 minutes in one second or more, you're getting midrille ads. And so This is, you know, an hour long or so interview. There might be three or four different mid-roll ads, depending on browser history, that will make you a lot more money than if you're just putting out a seven-minute video. So a question on YouTube advertising, actually, and this comes from the audience from

Anat Nurula. She's asking if you have any hacks for YouTube advertising growth. So, yes, 10-minute videos plus. Consistent content, at least once a week, I'd love for you to be three, times a week or daily, but at least once a week to start building it up. I would look at if making money through advertising is super important to you. And great. Like, hey, if you start making money doing your thing, you can scale up and keep it going. And it's really hard to keep going when you're making zero. So it's important to make money. Money is not number one, but it's not number 100 either.

It's got to be in your top five. Use a Google keyword planner tool. Just go to Google and type in Google Keyword Planner tool. And what it will do is show you across the entire Google platform for different keywords, how much they pay. So I've done a couple videos explaining this and I have it more in depth in my course, but you can just go do this yourself and check it out. I looked at something like recipes and recipes itself would only pay 20 cents for every thousand views. But then if you talked about Martha Stewart recipes, it pays like 800% more.

Now, you may not have anything to say about Martha Stewart. recipes. Maybe you hate Martha Stewart. I never want to give her any promotion. I don't know. But do you have something that you could say? And if you can, can you make a video on it? If you did, you'd get paid more. I had a guy in my course who messaged me about his wife's YouTube channel and she does makeup tutorials and eyelash extension and all that kind of stuff. And so we just put in eyelashes and it paid okay. But if we looked at, what's the, does the beauty brand that starts with C? I mean, it's probably times. It doesn't really matter. But these guys are spending tons of money right now on YouTube ads.

So I said, hey, if you make a video about this product or using it and put it in the title and mention it, you can get paid like 10 times more money than if you just talked about eyelashes. Now, again, does she use that product? Does she like, you have to have something authentic to say about it. Don't just do it because it pays well, right? But either a good review or a bad review, you'll get paid a lot more. And not just a little bit more, like 10 times more.

times more, 500 times more, right? Huge gaps. That's crazy. And it's free. Just go to Google keyword planning tool and type in whatever you're talking about and it'll show you the differences. So I know that we're like running up on time. I want to be respectful of your time. We have about three minutes left. I have so much more to ask you. I wanted to talk to you about time management and stuff, but we don't have time. So let me ask you this question. It's a question I ask all of my guests. What is your secret to profiting in life? Figuring out. a way to mix what you love doing with what brings value to other people. If you love doing something, but it brings no value to other people, then you have a hobby. Like if you love talking to a

microphone, but nobody ever watched, you have a hobby. And it's like, it could be a really fulfilling hobby, but it's just a hobby. If you're just chasing down an opportunity, but you don't care about it, you're going to lose. If you're making a podcast, but you don't care about podcasts and you're just doing it because 2020 hot opportunity, you're going to lose. because people who love podcasting are going to destroy you because they love it and you don't. So it's that intersection of what you love doing, back to loving the process of that we talked about earlier, with what brings value to other people. You're solving a problem so you can get paid to it.

That's where you can shine and have ultimate success. That's awesome. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? So, I mean, if you want the books, you can go to Amazon, easiest place to find it. If you want some of my content or to connect, any of the social media channels, type in Evan Carmichael. You'll find me. Yeah, he's awesome. Check out his YouTube. Check out his website and follow him on LinkedIn if you're here.

So thanks all for tuning in to another episode of Young Improfiting Podcast. Thanks so much, Evan. It was such a pleasure.