Sean Cannell (SC): My passion is to help people build their influence, income, and impact with online video and YouTube. This actually started all the way back in 2003. I was volunteering at my local church in a small town, an hour north of Seattle. The youth pastor handed me a video camera and said, “Hey, start making some video announcements!” And Jen… I do not want you or anybody to ever see those videos from 2003. Maybe people reading this can relate: your first videos are never your best videos. Those are fun to go back and watch your cringe moments, right? But that’s what I started almost 15 years ago. I started just doing videos, and one of the things that was interesting was I would do them weekly. I would do these weekly video announcements, and YouTube hadn’t even started yet.

I was learning the discipline of creating consistent content really before social media started.

That was so helpful for me. Eventually, the senior pastor was like, “Hey, can you make these on Sundays as well?” So, I was making 52 videos a year; once a week. Then, it was 104 videos a year; twice a week. It was a great learning period. Fast forward to 2009, I started a media business called Clear Vision Media. I did some commercials and videos for small businesses and some YouTube consulting and coaching.

I was really on the back side of things. Then, a few years later, I stepped into the forefront, whether being on camera interviewing people, or shooting video, editing video. I really started to help people get massive results with video.

I really believe video taken over.
I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has stated that by 2019, Facebook is going to be mostly video. Cisco’s said, by 2019, 80 percent of the Internet is going to be video. So, people really need to learn how to share their message, build their brand, and build their influence with video. It’s my passion to help them grow faster and further to do that.

Jen Casey (JC): I love it. So I loved what you said about doing 52 videos a week, and then bumping it up to 100. What does that level of immersion do for you as a creative?

SC: I mean, it’s the same level of immersion in any field.  For example, someone could be awesome at yoga today. But, day one, they probably couldn’t touch their toes. But, immersion is where you begin to develop mastery and you start doing more advanced poses. All it takes is to just put in the time.

It actually really doesn’t matter if you have talent.
I think talent is so overrated.

Sure, it can help, but anyone who ever achieved greatness is because they put time in. You know Michael Jordan. It’s not like he never had practice time in the gym. So, that level of immersion absolutely in video completely helped me learn a lot of things.

People say, “How did you get so confident on camera?”

I wasn’t initially confident on camera. You just do it so many times that your confidence builds.
I would like to encourage people to immerse themselves.

We want everything to be right before we start.
But, if that was the case, we would never start.
So I encourage people start before you’re ready.
Just dive in. 

JC: Absolutely.

SC: I think that training is good, and we should always be learning, and listening to shows. But, doing the actual work is where you get the greatest lessons and learning.

JC: Amen to that. I love it. So when you first started, what year did you start on YouTube?

SC: 2007 was when I started managing my church’s YouTube channel. So, I started to learn basics like thumbnails, titles, videos.

I wasn’t doing it right. But at least I was doing it.

2009 I think is when my Sean Cannell channel started, just as a side project. Again, I was able to just dabble on that channel. Probably, a lot of your audience has a side hustle, and maybe not doing it full time yet. That’s how YouTube was for me for a while, and we could talk about how we monetize that.

Even as early as 2010, I started to experiment on YouTube in doing affiliate marketing. My wife and I started to be like, “Whoa, we can grow our influence here.”

But when we started, we would just try to make five bucks a month. Not much. But then it was $50 a month. Then it was $250. Then fast forward… eventually built a full time income.
We’ve been doing it for a while. 

JC: I just want to highlight that consistency. A lot of people come into stuff like this going, “Well, I only made $5,” but then there is $50 and then $100. And then… six figures. On the other side of that, with that level of consistency, it took seven years to get to this place. You’ve got so many videos out there, so many systems developed, and then you really got into that level of mastery on YouTube.

SC: Yeah. I totally agree 100%. One of my passions is that I would never want to promise somebody overnight success. Like, “Hey you could do something and just overnight it could happen.” But what I really believe is that you get wisdom and you get strategies. You get somebody to coach you, but a lot of times we had to pioneer ourselves. You’re trying to blaze a trail.

What I really believe is that, when you learn, it gives you a shortcut.
So it doesn’t have to be seven years. Maybe it’s only two!
We’re seeing people get results in six months, 12 months.

But, you’ve still got to put in the work. You still definitely have to put in the hustle.

JC: Absolutely. With that, how much strategy do you think is needed in 2017 to really “make it” on YouTube?

SC: I think that strategy is needed on all platforms, including YouTube. In 2010, I think it was OK if you were playing checkers on YouTube, which takes some strategy but it’s not the most strategic game. So, if you’re just good at it, and better than the other person, you do a few things right. You can win at checkers. Whereas, in chess, that’s not the case. I think that the difference in 2017 is that I still feel there’s just as much opportunity as there ever has been.

It still really is the golden era of this massive “digital real estate.”

There’s still plenty of space for people to plant their flag, build their brand, really establish themselves and create a legacy of business on YouTube.
But you’ve got to be playing chess.

You need more dimensions of strategy. Some people used to say, “Hey, just be consistent, have some energy in your videos, and just go for it.” That was the level of strategy. Now, it’s a little more nuanced, but if you can just wrap your head around a few key things, I think that it’s just as wide open to breakthrough right now.

JC: I remember the first time I saw you speak on stage. You had said that, unlike other platforms, YouTube is the one place where just because you build it, it doesn’t mean that people are going to come. It’s more nuanced now. There’s more specifics to really being able to stand out. I know a lot of people are intimidated that there is so much more work. But because you need to be playing chess, do you think that actually opens up the space for only people who are seriously ready to play?

SC: It does. That’s a great question. I think number one, it seems like there’s less competition on YouTube. Sure there’s competition on YouTube, but one of the reasons why it seems like there’s less compared to, like blogging. To get a blog post on the first page of Google? Talk about a challenge. Not to say that one is harder than the other, because they’re totally different. One is the writing discipline, the other’s a video discipline. But because video encompasses having to get on camera, throwing on light, set up a camera, take a shower that day. There is more moving parts. So actually, that means that more people don’t do it.

And yes, it means that for those who are willing to put in that work, there is great opportunity.

But, I don’t know if it’s so much more work; you just have to do more smart work.
It’s not necessarily that you have to be working a lot harder, but that your efforts need to be smarter. I was just on a coaching call earlier today, and one of the things I was helping the person with was video ideas. Let’s say you had a personal development channel. So, you want to put a video out on how to stay motivated. Every personal development teacher would have some content to share on that. So, How to Stay Motivated would be a good video title, but pretty crowded and pretty saturated. One just tweak that could help people listening for crushing it on YouTube is that instead of like doing a video called, “How to Stay Motivated,” you might do a video like, “How to Stay Motivated as a Working Single Mom.” And that added layer of distinction means that, in an ocean that is pretty crowded, you’re getting a little more specific.

You’re not going to get tens of thousands of views.  BUT, you’re going to get a very specific person that could find that video; that’s also hopefully connected to your ideal audience your brand.

So, just smart moves like that . It’s not a shotgun approach that’s just throwing it out there and hoping it works. It’s being more intentional, even if you don’t have to put out a ton of content or anything like that. Over time, you can build up significant influence. That really is about narrowing down the net in the people that you’re speaking to on YouTube.

JC: So we can kind of jump into that a little bit. What does it really take for somebody to identify their niche on YouTube, and why is that important?

SC: If someone’s curious about what is their niche is for anything online, they need to consider what they are passionate about. But also, not necessarily. So sometimes, that’s a myth too. Sometimes you might just see a window of opportunity and you’re so stuck on like, “Oh, I’m not that passionate about it.” But, if you really see it and you’ve got the skill to do it, maybe it’s just a project for two years that really helps you generate some income. Maybe once you build some influence, you pivot later. But ideally, it’s the thing you love. But that’s not enough. You want to add on top of passion: proficiency. What are you also skilled at? I can say that I love music and I actually enjoy singing, but as soon as we step into the proficiency arena, I just fall right off the cliff. No one’s subscribing to Sean’s channel of doing guitar covers. My wife tells me I’m tone deaf.

Again: don’t get paralyzed here. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest expert.

All you have to do is be one step in front of people you can help.
If you’re helping me with my business tips, you don’t have to have built a billion dollar company with a hundred employees. Maybe you just figured out how to set up a landing page and how to use an email autoresponder. Now there’s people who don’t know how to do that. So, you could help people one step behind you in whatever your niche industry. So, your passion and your proficiency, but even those two things are also not enough.

If you want this to be a business, that third level is profitability. That’s just determining if there is an interested market. And, in this case, is there an interested market on YouTube? One of the first things I would do is I would go to YouTube and I’d start typing in the top questions that people would ask in your niche. You can use tools like Google keyword planner to see how much search volume, like how many people a month are curious about tips for working moms. Get a little bit of data, and then you know there’s a market for it.

So, I really say that it’s in the convergence of your passion, proficiency and profitability.
You can find the center point of that, and that is what you want to start on YouTube.

JC: Absolutely. And I think that what you’ve created on YouTube. You’ve got multiple different channels that kind of touch on different things. I’m curious. You have content that’s primarily around teaching video for income, influence, and impact. Those are the things that you’re most passionate about. But then you also have a lot of review videos that you’ve done. So are those more side income generators versus like the primary passion?

SC: You know it might surprise people to say that my ultimate passion is not even actually video. Now, I really love video and I’m very passionate about video. I also still understand that video itself, while I love cameras and I love the process, is also just a medium of getting a message across to people. What I realized, and this was kind of an “A-ha!” moment and maybe will be an “a-ha!” for somebody else. Video was my biggest proficiency over the years.

I’d worked as staff at a church and I’d done my media business. I’d waited tables and I’d done speaking. I did a lot of leadership stuff. But one of the things I noticed was, what are things that people look to me for? I thought, even as a pastor and working in the church arena, I thought maybe people will be hitting me up for like relationship advice but no one ever did. Maybe our relationship is terrible. I thought maybe people would hit me up for fitness advice but nobody did. But what I did notice was that people were always hitting me up for video advice.

So part of my transition a couple of years ago was just realizing that if you try to reach everybody you end up reaching nobody.

Clarity has power on the Internet.

When my Twitter bio used to say like 15 different things, I realized that actually can confuse people. If you’re going in 15 different directions, even though it might make sense for your story, how can people follow you if they don’t know where you’re going with the what your Twitter bio says? Now it just says, “I help people build their influence with online video.”

When I made that shift with my whole brand, that’s actually when things began to exponentially grow. When someone lands on one of your social media pages, they’re trying to make sense of you.

What I’ve realized though is, like an onion, everybody has multiple passions.

One of my mentors, Chalene Johnson, talks about this.  Her company has just launched a brand new diet. They also teach business and marketing. They teach lifestyle design with smart success. So what I realized was that, even if you have multiple passions, you don’t want that to lead. You can’t just unleash everything on the Internet.

There should be a starting point with everybody listening. They start with you somewhere, and then there’s a journey with you that maybe reveals other things.

JC: I love this.  This is exactly what I’m always trying to preach. You want to have a clear sign outside your door. If you’re an Italian restaurant and you set up a sign that’s going to say “Manhattan’s Best Pizza,” it’s not going to give the entire menu on the outside of the door. That’s what gets people to walk in, because they want delicious food and then once they are in, maybe they’ll buy some spaghetti with that and then have some ice cream at the end. So I think that’s really that’s such a good point. I really love the way that you just explained that.

SC: And that was a great illustration for that same point.

JC: Yes. Love it. So what do you love about YouTube specifically? What makes YouTube different, unlike any other social media platforms?

SC: Oh. You’ve got me fired up now. YouTube is my absolute favorite for a very practical reason. And the main reason is this:

YouTube is a search engine.

This is a huge difference from other social media platforms. It’s a great opportunity for us for discoverability. Because it’s a search engine, that means that people are going to YouTube asking questions. They’re asking, “How can I lose belly fat fast without dieting?” “How can I grow my business with Instagram?” They are going for a million other questions. I’m sure people can relate to this one: if you had your dishwasher break, you go to YouTube to type in your dishwasher model to see if you can fix it. It is a search engine.

Therefore, if you create content that shows up on the other side of people’s searches, then you can get “views while you snooze.”
I’ve referred to some of the other social media platforms as the ‘social media hamster wheel.’ No hate, no shade. We all use them.  We’re all doing Facebook lives, we’re on Instagram, we have strategies on all platforms. But, even this week, I my goal was to post a photo a day on Instagram. Jen, I have not posted one in the last four days. I have guilt and shame, because I know that demand of content. You’ve GOT to keep posting. That’s the name of the game, especially if you want to be in this industry. But YouTube is so different. If I go to my real time analytics right now, it is pretty crazy. I’ve got 70K views in the last 48 hours. Here’s the crazy thing: if I don’t post any new videos this week or next week, it will range between 60 to 80K views every two days for the next three months. That won’t even go down, and it might not go down for a year or two.

Of course, it took a long time to build that. None of this stuff happens overnight. But, because I was putting out these videos that go on the other side of 100 different questions.  I just keep putting those out. We call them ‘ranked videos’ and we keep putting those out to the world. It builds up this momentum of views (quite literally) why you snooze.

People have this dream of passive income.
This is passive lead generation.
This is passive audience development.
Every video is like an employee that you only have to pay once, but then works for you for free for weeks, months, and years to come. 

It makes me think of like, if I was to go door-to-door in my neighborhood. Like old school, if you wanted to get your brand out in network marketing. You just knock on doors and talk to multiple people.

YouTube is like going door to door, except it’s people coming to YOUR door.  
They come to your door at their exact time of need. That exact moment when they’re having that question, they typed it in and then they find you. And it begins the journey. So potentially 70K people every two days have a chance to enter my world because of leveraging this platform. There’s unique strategies everywhere, but that is why I love YouTube the most.

JC: Yes. I’m so glad you’re saying this, because there are so many entrepreneurs who are in that heavy state of burnout. They’re really wondering how they can sustain being on social media without completely living on their phone. Instagram is the perfect example of where you post one thing, you’re excited about it, and then within the next 20 minutes, it’s already buried in the feed. no one cares about it. So yeah, this is such good stuff. So for you, how frequently do you post videos?

SC: I actually have a new training video coming out soon, where I kind of share my story. I want to tell you about two “seasons”. In the “now” season, we’re doing about two videos a week on each channel (Think Media and Video Influencers). So, that’s four videos a week. Then, we’re trying to do about two live streams. YouTube Lives, by the way, count as another video. So, that bumped it up to about six videos a week. That’s a lot, but I’ve got a team working with me. Benji and I work on Video Influencers. We have another person that helps us edit and shoot those videos. So we’re in entirely different stage.

I liken it to, say, Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s somebody I follow online, and he’s putting out insane amounts of content everywhere. But, he has 15 full time people being paid to just work on his personal brand.
But, comparison is the thief of joy.
Comparison will rob your motivation and kill your joy faster than everything else.
So never compare yourself to anybody for any reason. The only person you should ever compare yourself with is the person in the mirror and the person you were yesterday. That’s my competition. I just want to live up to my potential and go get 1% better than yesterday.

So saying that, if I go back to my “side hustle” season, which is when I was just doing YouTube on the side: I made it my goal to post one video a week. I probably only posted about 32 videos a year, and that was enough to get noticed and build momentum. Sometimes, I might put out two during the week, but sometimes I get busy. What’s cool is, if you’re doing it right, you’re creating leverage. Your past videos will work for you even when you’re not working.

Here’s a case study.

Heather Tora, who’s actually on my team, she started a homeschool channel called “Homeschool Mom” She and her husband Isaiah are an awesome couple that live here in Vegas, homeschooling two kids.

They’re posting videos, probably for about nine months now.
They already have over 5000 subscribers and are already making a little bit of money with YouTube ads and affiliate marketing.
But, she has already landed some brand deals!

She has a brand deal with the curriculum company of the home school content that they wanted to teach that year. Normally, that would cost them $12K. They got it for free. They also got about $4K to do just weekly, monthly updates. Just to check in and say “This month, we did the math chapter “X”; to give an update about their use of the curriculum. Then, in the description, there is an affiliate link. If anyone buys a curriculum, she earns 10% commissions on $1200. That’s $120 right?

So, as a relatively small channel, she hasn’t been doing once a week. She’s missed up to a month at a time. But, because she was putting out ranked videos – a day in the life of home school, curriculum reviews, best home school books, home school Q and A ,home school versus public school. By the way, she is not a formal expert on homeschooling. She has developed her expertise, but nobody knighted her. She just felt empowered by this and said, “I’m just going to do it.”

And this may be a helpful tactic for the person that may be saying, “But how do you get confidence to be on camera?”

Heather didn’t have video confidence. She didn’t want to do video. So what she did was: she actually committed to not just being on Snapchat, but to telling an actual story every day for about three to five months. A full story; meaning she would have a beginning, middle, and end. She would challenge herself to share some tips every day.

She wasn’t trying to grow her Snapchat.
Regardless if five people were watching or nobody was watching, the point of these videos was to get comfortable talking to the lens.

Then, she launched her YouTube channel after she got the edge off. It revolutionized.
Day one, she was probably frustrated; “is that what I sound like??” Because that’s how we all feel, right? But then, week two, she’s getting momentum. She’s like, “OK, let me now flip on the camera and start sharing some YouTube content.”
So, that’s a very practical way to put a daily discipline for growing your camera confidence. And the other key is just to be as consistent as possible. It would be much better to start today and build up momentum, even just slowly over time, with quality content. Then maybe you have a jump off point when you can go full time or go all in.

JC: Love it!! If you could break down quickly, what is a ranked video? Some people who are engaged in this might not know what that means.

SC: Yeah. So, a ranked video is pretty simple. If someone types in any search into YouTube right now, there are videos that show up first. Those are the ranked videos. They rank number one or number two. So, if someone searches “Best Green Smoothie Recipe”, whatever the first search result video is that shows up is the number one ranked video.

I would say that the goal of everybody listening, if they want to do YouTube videos, is to get on that first page.

Then, even better is to be in those top three or four posts. A small business owner would know that actually even on Yelp or Google or even on Amazon, you want to rank everywhere that there’s the opportunity to rank.

Most people on social platforms try to grow through very good strategies. Sharing an e-mail list, one to one on social media, a friend tells a friend.

But, what happens is, once you serve that content to your current audience, it plateaus. It gets 100 views, a thousand views, or gets 10 views. But then, it never grows past there, because it doesn’t rank in search leverage.

The power of a ranked video is that I’ve got videos that will get three views an hour, or 30 views an hour. And, some of those videos are six months old, 2 years old, 5 years old.

And when I first saw this, I had so much energy. I didn’t care how hard it seemed or what I had to learn.  If I had to drink a Red Bull and try to stay up and shoot videos, I didn’t care. If I put out ten videos and nine of them don’t rank, but one does… that is extremely appealing to me.

It’s the ultimate passive income dream.

If you monetize the back end of that, you are creating truly passive growth and exposure. It’s powerful!

JC: I love this. I’m getting so excited. So, you’ve got the passive leads coming in. How do you start to monetize that? You’ve got some really fun strategies and such a unique way of doing everything that you can with one video to really maximize the potential.

SC: Yeah.  I mean, one of the cool things about YouTube is that it actually is (at this point) one of the only social media platforms that actually has a revenue sharing program. So, anybody that wants to start on YouTube and are just getting views, you can start making money. Now, I actually don’t really recommend this for a couple of reasons. Number one: if you started a YouTube channel, you could turn on ads. I think these days, once you get your first 10000 views, you can now turn on ads on your videos. The problem is that you just don’t make that much. YouTube just gives you pennies. And so, if you’re not getting significant views, it’s just really not worth it.

What I like to say, especially to entrepreneurs. Is that if you put that interruption (the ad) in between you and your message, it is probably hurting you more than it’s helping you. There’s so many better ways to monetize!

For instance, if you do have an e-book or you have something that you want to drive people to, you can earn a lot more off of that sale than you would on YouTube ads. But what’s cool about that is, it’s something that you can do to get started earning money almost immediately.

The second thing – and this is actually how I originally built a full time income and beyond six figures –  was affiliate marketing.

A good example: if you go to YouTube, type in “best personal development books”, I think if you go check, I’m right there. I talk about seven of the best personal development books. And in the YouTube description box, there are links to those books that are connected to the Amazon Associate program. So that’s affiliate marketing. You make four to 10 percent on those sales, and this could start out as just a few bucks a month. But, when you start getting big traffic and big views, it can really begin to stack and generate a lot of income. Another example is, let’s say the health space. There are, of course, so many opportunities for health products and a lot of times, a lot of margin there. I have some videos that are on different affiliate programs where you can earn 30 percent commissions, 40 percent commissions and even reoccurring if somebody else subscribes to something. So, we put out a video a while ago. It’s actually about two years old now.

That one video generates $300 a month on autopilot.

We made it once, set it and forget it. When people type in the search, they find that video and a certain people are like, “I want to check out that product.” Then that just generates income through affiliate marketing. So, I talk about the product and the link is in the description.

JC: Yes. And you give people that “call to action.” If anyone goes and watches any of Sean’s videos, check out the personal development one. Also, if you type in, “Best YouTube camera,” you’re like the first five things that rank for that! So, if you guys want to see the actual execution of what Sean is talking about right now, go and stalk him on YouTube!

SC: Yeah. Absolutely!

JC: What is the best place on YouTube for them to see?  Is there one particular video that you think just kind of nails this?

SC: I mean, you could check out “best camera for YouTube,” but I think the other thing I really recommend people do is type in “Sean Cannell” and you’ll find my entire channel. Go to the videos, and there’s a little bar that says “view videos by date.” Go to the oldest video on Sean Cannell’s channel and watch that video. After that, you can watch those new ones.
You will get some of that context.

Because, again, you never want to compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle. It could be disempowering.

But, the cool thing is that you’ve just got to start. If it wasn’t for that first video, which is pretty funny; you might not even think it’s the same person. But that’s where I started.

I’m so glad I posted that first video, and the video after it, and the next 50 terrible videos, because I was learning as I was going.

Some of those in the journey did pretty well. Some were even earning like $5 or $10 a month with some affiliate marketing. But, yeah, that first video is a must watch for some humor and some encouragement, wherever you are around the world.

JC: Everyone go and do it! So obviously, your whole strategy behind filming videos has improved. You’ve gotten nicer equipment over the years, and you’ve gotten more comfortable on camera. So for you today, what really goes into making a YouTube video? I think that a lot of people get really tripped up with feeling like they need all the fancy stuff before they start. But, I love that your message is to just do it now. So, what are some simple things that people can start implementing from conception to pressing publish?

SC: That is a great point you make.

One of the things that we say is: content value is exponentially more important than production value.

And people DO always get hung up on the production value. Do they have the right camera, do have the right microphone… I would want to tell people that, while it can be important, it is so much less important than your content. Think about how you can share your story. You’ve overcame challenges, so you’ve got content to share with people. Content that’s meaningful, powerful, valuable: that should be your obsession first. It’s 90% content, and 10% how to deliver the content.  

For the actual video itself, think about A.V.L.
That’s your audio, video, and your lighting.

This smartphone is good enough. If you don’t any fancy lighting, you can sit in front of a window and have some good natural light shine on you. Prop your phone up right in front of a shoe box and get that good light. Just the microphone on your phone is probably good enough; just don’t shoot videos next to an airport tarmac or, like, a train station.

Eliminate background noise and avoid echoey spaces, like in an opera hall. Just find a small, regular room; those acoustics should be fine.
But really: iPhone audio and video, and natural light. There’s your production value. Like, you can get started TODAY to shoot the content. But, what’s the content value?

I spend most of my time doing what would probably surprise a lot of people: research and content development.
Here’s a typical week on my calendar. On Monday, I will basically spend the entire day just sitting in front of Google Docs and my computer. I’m planning the new ideas, reading YouTube comments to find people’s questions, doing research in some of the things that we’re talking about. I’m looking at what people are searching, or what are the terms they’re looking for. Then, thinking about how I can turn that into really good content.

Put yourself in the shoes of the viewer.
They’re not sitting there thinking,
“Man, that’s good lighting.”
They’re in some pain in that moment, and if you’ve got some answers, they just need to be able to see and hear you. 

So what is the content? There’s a few powerful content strategies. I think that numbers are good. If it’s teaching content, even in the title if you say, “5 Steps To….” Because there’s a couple of psychological things that happen there. Number one, it gives me a reason to stay. If it’s just this endless loop of content, I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it. Also, a lot of people need to get to number three. Right. It gives a sense of completion or something to look forward to. And then, it just structures your content in a way that adds value and really gives a framework.

Same thing like if you’re doing cooking videos. Recipes have steps, so you can just take it step by step. Maybe there’s 20 steps, but you’re walking people through. Cooking is a huge space and I’m sure there’s competition, but so many opportunities for recipes that people are interested in. They just want the answer. Why are they typing that in for the content?

I’ve seen videos with 100K or a million views that were shot on a phone.
But the reason people love it is because, when it was over, they had a delicious smoothie that tastes good.

Another strategy that could really help people is batch production.

You would just block some time on your calendar to sit down and actually shoot all four videos in one setting.
Pick out four different outfits, or for me just a couple of different shirts, and that way even if you release one video a week, you can have a month’s worth of content just from one shoot day a month.

JC: Amazing. I know people are taking some serious notes right now. I want to rewind just a little bit and talk about YouTube Live.  This is a new-ish thing that they’ve launched out. How is this different or the same as Facebook Live and then traditional YouTube videos?

SC: So YouTube Live is unique, and it is a good opportunity right now. The reason it’s different is for what I’ve already stated: YouTube still is a search engine. It still is a place for evergreen content. What is evergreen? Well, an evergreen tree is a tree that’s green year round. So, the content is potentially valuable, and indefinitely. So, if you think about the lifespan of content on Facebook, it’s like 10 minutes.
Who goes back two years ago to watch a Facebook Live? Nobody.

Facebook is your place to grow your audience.

People also are maybe discouraged, because on Facebook Live they get 500 views and on YouTube they get 10. So, because Facebook is the place for the quick reach, they’ve built the 2 billion users in this shareable network. So everybody should be using Facebook. It’s a chance to meet people and connect with them.
YouTube is a content library.
You might go reference certain parts at certain times of a video. It’s a much better place to even find stuff.  You’ve got the search bar. Things can be organized in playlists. So, the difference in a Facebook and a YouTube Live that I do? I do acknowledge the live viewers, but I very much speak with language for evergreen content. In the video, the first thing I would say after I hit “Go Live” is,  “In this video, I’m sharing five tips on how to collaborate with other YouTubers and get interviews with influencers. That’s coming up. But hey, if we’re just meeting, my name is Sean and this training is going to be a little bit different. We’re live, so if you’re here live, thanks for being here! But if you’re on the rebroadcast, and then I might acknowledge people, and then get into the content. I try to land the plane, but I very much am thinking people are mostly going to be watching this on the rebroadcast. Just like any other video, I want it to rank as well.

The difference on Facebook is that I spend more time saying,
“Hey guys! Smash that “like” button and hit the “heart”.  Or, if you’re watching this right now, can you smash that “wow” face because that’s my favorite one. And in a comment, below tag somebody.”
It’s a different language that you can’t do on YouTube. So it is knowing the platform and some of the language.

It also is absolutely creating the live with the intentionality of it lasting.

But here’s the other cool thing: you can go live, and you can delete it. You can go live and you can make it unlisted, and just put it into a member’s area. You could actually just leave it unlisted and just maybe communicate with a private membership group or something.

YouTube is a very powerful platform with practical tools like that.
Recently, I just did a YouTube Live as more of a test, but I made the video unlisted and I just Tweeted it. So only seven people came, but we were able to hang out and there was a depth there that was obviously cool.

The biggest differences:
Number one, YouTube Live can be evergreen.
Number two, knowing the nuances are different.
You can ask people to subscribe and you have a YouTube description that you can link to resources ahead of time.
So, those small tweaks can make it different from other live platforms.

JC: Yeah. Do you have a favorite video that you’ve done over all these years on YouTube?

SC: You know, what’s funny is that my favorite videos are typically not the most viewed videos. But, on my Sean Cannell channel, I’ve got one that I did for my wife on our 10th anniversary. I did an edit of our wedding video. I had all the old DV tapes, so that one was fun. Honestly, the most creative and my favorite ones are ones that never did that well.

What usually does well on YouTube is very, very practical.

If that makes sense?  It’s meeting people at a practical need. For instance, maybe you want to teach business strategy. But, if you’re really going to teach business strategy, you should do that on a webinar.  That should be further down the menu of your funnel. Whereas, on YouTube, you might want to just do a “How to Install a WordPress Plugin to Capture Email” video. People in online marketing have that pain point, and that’s such a great way to meet them.

Maybe some of those videos could get like hundreds of thousands of views. And, in the video, you’re able to say,

“I hope you enjoyed this video! By the way, my passion is helping millennial entrepreneur women 10x their businesses. So if you’re interested in going deeper, let’s connect.”

And again, you’ve met them at this practical pain point. But then, you can go into more advanced, deeper level conversations. Definitely incorporate that into your thinking and strategy.

JC: That’s great. That is really thinking about the long game of YouTube, because those are the videos that are going to grow over time. So, what do you see for yourself right now? And just for the landscape of YouTube in the future?  Most people think six months ahead, or two years ahead. But you’re thinking 40, 60…great great grandchildren in the real estate of the online space! What do you see for yourself happening in this world of YouTube?

SC: I like that question. And it’s weird how real this is to me.

My wife and I don’t have kids yet. We have two Chihuahuas, but no kids. But, even before that phase of our life, I am motivated by a conversation that I imagine myself having with my grandkids. I imagine sitting down with little Sarah and her talking to me about her history class. They studied this time – 2017, 2018. They studied the social media revolution and the beginning of the Internet.Here’s what motivates me about that conversation.

What I don’t want little Sarah to say is, “Grandpa, why didn’t you go ALL IN  back when there was so much opportunity?”

Like, now she’s on her iPhone 30X, and she’s trying to post videos. But it’s so hard to breakthrough now because the space is so noisy. “But Grandpa, you were living through one of the greatest times of human history…”
Maybe that’s weird, but that’s literally what drives me.

I don’t think we all realize how good it is right now.
How much opportunity there is right now to grow your influence, particularly with live video.

Greatness takes work, and greatness takes sacrifice, and you have to put in work to beat the competition. Learn the stuff, put in the time, and that’s one of the things that 100% drives me. I see that right now because I’m so close to this.
My team is always looking at video ideas. We want to start like 10 businesses a day. We stay focused, because we’ll see the “white space” or uncrowded topics that someone could just go in and dominate.

I really feel like in the next 12-24 months, this land grab will be particularly on YouTube. I don’t know if it’s going to be here 36 months from now, but I know it’s here right now.

One of the things I’m also very passionate about is being a player-coach.

Some people do real estate. They crush it a little bit, but then they just leave completely and just teach real estate. It’s very lucrative to do that; no hate to you if that’s what you do. But I’m obsessed with being a player-coach. I live in the trenches.  I’m a YouTuber, and I help people get results with that.

I’m scheduling shoot days and I’m still doing videos. I know this land grab is real, and I’m not teaching on something that worked four or five years ago. It’s working right now, and I’m still working. And I want to help other people do the same.

JC: Oh my God you are lighting a fire! It’s so true. I’m seeing more and more frustrations of online entrepreneurs who are experiencing a shift in their income because of the saturation of Instagram and Facebook. I am so on board with what you’re saying. There IS going to be a land grab. People are realizing that they’ve got to start thinking of a long game strategy. And, I think YouTube really is that opportunity for so many people. I think some people are jumping into podcasts and trying to establish themselves on a website more. But, there is so much untapped land on YouTube.

SC: I’ve never shared this anywhere before, and I think this will be immense value. Thinking about evaluating competition: I like to encourage people.

When it comes to YouTube, you may get discouraged because somebody else is already doing what you’re doing.

But what I like to say is: no one’s ever going to teach it like YOU.

Tony Robbins is awesome, but maybe not everybody resonates with him. There’s a lot of other personal development coaches. Maybe somebody wants to learn from a female instead of a male. So, everybody should always be tapping into their uniqueness.

Encouraging people to think: if, at some point, there’s an exact person teaching the exact content that is your exact age and your exact background… then you might want to pivot.
Example: I teach YouTube. I have 30 competitors, and I could tell you their names right now. They happen to be my friends, too, which is unique in this space. But it’s interesting, because there’s girls, there’s guys with different ethnicities or different backgrounds, with different ages.
What’s happening is that I’m seeing how abundant the world is.
They’re ALL prospering. They’re all doing it in their own way. So, just evaluating that space to think about just 10xing your uniqueness. Consider your brand style, how you communicate, your ethnicity, your background, your gender. and maximize those things. Sometimes, the opportunity is where you’re going to be this particular type of person in a niche that maybe is already very saturated.

JC: Yes. And I love what you said. I want to highlight that – you are good friends with so many people who are your “competition.” Do you find that YouTube is a little bit unique in that it’s focused more around community?

SC: YouTube is very focused around community. Also, maybe just by a little bit of serendipity, that particular group is just super cool and we all get along. Because, it doesn’t happen everywhere. That’s for sure. And who knows, behind the scenes sometimes I look at them and think, “Shoot man, they got half a million views on that. What’s the deal?” But again, it just shows me another encouraging thing. For those of us who really think about competition, the world is so much bigger than any of us can ever imagine. Susan, the CEO of YouTube, announced that it’s getting 1.5 billion unique users watching content per month on mobile devices; they are consuming over an hour of content per day. 1.5 BILLION. If you only need 100 people to maybe be part of a program that you have… there’s so many people!
The key is: you do want to find that unique niche. That’s why I shared some of those distinctions to really position yourself.
Sally Hogshead, the author of Fascinate, said,
“Different is better than better.”

The key is not to try to be better than somebody else. The key is actually to figure out your difference, and really connect with your tribe in your pocket in the market.
Figure out what your positioning is, and then own it and run with it.

JC: Oh man. You are just dropping knowledge bombs all day. I know you said before, part of your strategy is obviously reading through a lot of the YouTube comments to get inspiration for the new ideas. I’m curious, because I feel like this is another thing that prevents a lot of people from getting super visible: they are afraid of trolls. Do you have a favorite troll comment?

SC: A LOT of people would critique my hair..?
I can’t think of a favorite troll comment off the top of my head. I would say that social media in general just requires you to have thick skin but a soft heart. I think a problem is that sometimes social media can harden you and it can hurt you. That’s why I say keep a soft heart; to really always try to empathize with the person on the other side. If something’s Anonymous, then who cares about anonymous comments? They aren’t able to own who they are. The only comments I pay attention to and read is if it has a profile picture of your face. if you can say whatever you want to me but your picture is the Twitter egg, your comment has no weight and no value. That’s cowardice.
But also, critics will come your way and it’s a very real thing. I think one of the best things to encourage people is to prepare for it and to know that it is going to come. Probably the second thing is, the most powerful person in the world, at any given time, is hated by one out of two people. Maybe more than that.

It means that the greater your influence, the greater the amount of critics and hate that you’re going to get.
I just encourage people that haters and trolls are a sign of success.

Make sure to drop by Sean Cannell’s Think Media Channel for more YouTube-crushing tips!