Zero to 10k subscriber Masterclass (2026) transcript

If you're under 10,000 subscribers, this might be the video that saves you years of guessing. There's a few things that actually matter, and most creators, especially when they're starting, focus on the wrong things. So, in this video, I'm going to give literally the step-by-step breakdown of exactly how to grow your channel from [music] zero to 10K subs. I've done this multiple times and helped tons of other people do the same.

And the reason why all these different people get [music] spikes all over the place is not random luck. It is because they start focusing on the things that matter. So, let's start with where most channels get stuck. It's not even like the algorithm. It's actually earlier than that. And here's the thing that nobody's going to tell you. You don't know what is going to pop off. Like, you you watch some explainer videos like this where you're trying to figure out how to grow on YouTube.

I don't know what's going to pop off on your channel. Nobody else does, either. You can take educated guesses. You can improve your odds and stuff like that. But, each channel is going to be different, right? And the thing is like YouTube doesn't reward effort evenly, right? It's not some perfect thing where if you put in these exact inputs, you're going to get an exact a little bit random, and it also has a lot of variables inside of that.

Like, this video right here, I put in maybe uh 2 hours total start to finish on this video. And that video got a pretty decent amount of views for being the first video on a brand new channel with zero subscribers, [music] and it made, I think, over like $6,000 now, which is kind of crazy. But, I've also had videos where I have put in literally a a month worth of effort. I tried going vegan for a month, and I actually lost money on that video.

And so, like, this can mess with your head cuz you're like, "Oh, if I just work harder, if I just put in more effort, my videos will do better." And sometimes that's true. Sometimes it isn't. And this can like mess with your head, especially when you're a newer creator. You think that like the the solution's always work harder, but a lot of times, working harder and the effort of the video itself are not the things that are holding you back, necessarily.

Sometimes it's a little bit random. Sometimes it's the packaging. And just so many people put so much effort into the video that sometimes more effort is is the answer, and you need to actually dial it back a little bit and focus on some of the other things which are much more important. And so, what you actually need to do is talk about things that you are interested in. You need to yap about them. You need to experiment with different styles.

You need to experiment in different formats, slightly different niches. You don't have to have this perfectly dialed in mathematical thing from day one. Some people can do that, but that's probably going to be about 5% of creators. But, especially when you're in an education space or you're building a personal brand, then you're going to be talking about a few different pillars is what we call them inside of there. So, like my pillars on my main channel are going to be minimalism, finance, and lifestyle.

So, that leaves me a lot of possibilities to talk about, and I don't have to just pick one thing. I'm not like this perfect in laser I just got to get only finance videos that have to do with bank accounts. You can go that approach, but you probably won't grow your channel all that much or you unless you're like a unicorn. But, I like to have multiple different pillars so that I know that I can talk about these multiple things, and if one of those takes off for a while, then we'll go down that route more.

Like, I had probably an entire year, maybe 2 years where minimalism and decluttering videos were doing really well. And ultimately, as creators, especially non-entertainment creators, right? Even entertainment as well, I guess. But, for me, I more focus on teaching something you're building a personal brand, you're giving some type of value. Then, what we should be focusing on is what our audience needs. We are serving our audience.

This isn't some selfish I want to make this, so I'm going to make it cuz my goals are to do this. If you go in with that approach, you're most likely going to fail. But, if you actually go in with an open mind, you you talk about the things that you're interested in, that is awesome. But, you experiment and you make noise and you listen for that signal. You listen back from from your audience, and you see this video did well.

Why did that video do well? Well, well, well, the people liked maybe the way you delivered it. Maybe they liked the packaging of it. Maybe they liked the topic that you were talking about or the stories that you told inside. So, you have to break down why a video did well. But, until you have a video that pops, and everybody's going to have one video that pops if you make enough videos. And pop might be you're averaging 50 views a video, you get one that's got 500 views, that's one that pops.

Could be, you know, different scales, but you're making noise for all these different areas and then you're going to hear one that does well. I heard that minimalism and decluttering and clutter-free home videos were doing extremely well a couple years ago. And so, for an entire year, I made almost nothing but that and I just went down that road cuz that's what the audience wanted. They they were craving that from me and it wasn't exactly what I was most passionate about.

I I enjoyed it, but it wasn't all of me, right? I have so many different sides of me. I have a business side, I have a girl how to grow on YouTube side, but even the reason why I started this channel right here is because on my main channel, my audience does not want to hear about how to grow on YouTube. I'm passionate about it. I love it, but when I make videos on my main channel, they tank. They do 10 out of 10 almost every time.

And so, I listened to that feedback and I decided to break off my channel and start a new channel rather than force-feeding what I'm interested in to my audience cuz I I'm here to serve my audience. I'm here to like you're my audience right now, you specifically sitting there, but you I'm trying to help you grow on YouTube. That's what I'm making these videos for. I'm passionate about it. I like talking about it, but I want to help you get over 10k subs, make over $10,000 a month.

I know it's possible. I've done it. I've helped tons of other people do it. You can absolutely do this. And so, I'm not for this channel going to talk about how to organize your house cuz that is not why you were here. You found me to grow on YouTube, most likely. You have to realize why did people find you? Why did they watch you? Even though you're the same person, you can have multiple interests, but are you serving the people who are watching you?

This is all about service. This is all about listening to what people want and connecting with them. So, I want to show a few quick examples of this kind of noise here. Tonio, when I met him, he had 2,000 subscribers. He was making random videos about self-improvement. He had one challenge video that kind of popped off and now he only makes challenge videos. He was interested in self-improvement. His audience was interested in challenge videos.

Deleted all the self-improvement ones and went that direction. He's going to pass me soon. Same thing with Noah. He he also used to make self-improvement videos until his frying pans took off and now he has a frying pan channel. Natasha did this where she did minimalism, decluttering, a bunch of like random stuff, and then she found floor living as her niche. All of these happened by listening to what the audience wanted and then totally pivoting your channel to serve those needs.

And sometimes that can get away from you, so never make a video you're not interested in making a bunch of videos about, but that's ultimately what it comes down to is serving and not trying to force what you're interested in in the audience. Sometimes like with a channel, you have one video that takes off on a day in the life vlog or something, and now whenever you post your normal videos that you've been making for a year and then you make one day in the life vlog, that one pops off.

Now you go back to your normal videos, they're all going to tank cuz all the new people that came in are interested in day in the life vlogs and they don't care about the other stuff. You either have to choose, am I going to fight the algorithm now or am I going to go with what was working and just start up pivoting my channel even though it was just like a one-off thing. And a lot of times that I like I can't tell you how many times that have happened to different students and stuff where they'll have one or two videos take off and then they're going trying to stick with what they've always been doing and and it's really about on YouTube listening to what people want and then adapting to match.

We are yapping, boy. I'm talking to you, Gary. All right, so second thing is most small channels are making videos about topics. The channels that grow a lot of times are making them about promises. These are not the topic and a promise not the same thing. So if we look at like productivity tips for example, that would be a topic. But if we look at like how I get more done in two hours than anybody else does in eight, that is a promise.

So what we're really looking for is a promise to solve somebody's problem that they came with you on. A lot of times we think of our videos as topics. Like, "Oh, I got to make a productivity video." But what is the promise that you are making to these people? Why would they click on your video about productivity, about a book review, about sewing, about cooking, about whatever? What is the promise you are making to them of value and you need to remember that reason why somebody is clicking on the video like the entire time.

So you might want to make a video about productivity, for example, but inside of that, that's the that's the topic that you want to talk about, but inside of that, what is the promise you're going to make? Title, thumbnail. How to five habits that saved me 20 hours a week is a very like popular one that's done very well on YouTube, and that is because that is a promise of I'm going to give you the five habits that saved me 20 hours a week.

And then inside of that video, generally in the first few seconds, you're going to see people saying like, I used to be crazy and all over the place, and then I found these simple habits that saved me tons of time, and that is the promise. They're reassuring you after the title and thumbnail hooked you in with a value offer, then inside of the first few seconds, whether this is a vlog or anything else, like this applies to everything, it's just different formatting.

Then you're saying, I am I am promising you again that I am going to give you the thing that you clicked on the video for. So, I'm promising you that you didn't just get clickbaited, I'm going to deliver this value, and so watch through to the end of the video to get the desired outcome that I promised you would have. And so, if your videos are feeling generic, people aren't connecting with them, it could be because you're not you're not being honest with them, you're trying to go on topic, but you're not trying to do like, hey, this worked for me, and I I think it can work for you.

You're not making some type of a promise to the viewer of exchange of value, or your promise isn't good enough. And so, I kind of like to look at it as like a person on a journey, right? So, I am the person who has gone out, I've read, you know, over a hundred, probably two hundred now, jeez, it's been a while, personal finance and self-improvement books, right? I've read all of them. So, that is me going out and doing a thing in the real world.

This could be sewing, gardening, whatever. Going out and doing a thing in the real world, figuring out how this applies to me. I've built some six-figure businesses in a weekend, and I now report back on how to do that. They're all YouTube channels, spoiler alert, got a bunch of them. I have taken something in the real world, applied it to myself, and then in these videos, I am sharing the things that have physically worked for me.

A lot of another reason why a lot of smaller channels, especially, struggle is because they just read this, and then they regurgitate it without applying it to their own lives, so they have real-life examples, and that's where that exchange of value comes in, That's where the trust comes in. And a lot of monetizing on on YouTube, there's there generally two approaches that you're going to take. One of them is going to be by trust building.

And so, by the fact that I have actually read this book, I implemented all of it, and then I actually started businesses, gives me some type of credibility and makes me a better video than most other people who are going to review this book. And it's also the reason why a lot of people connect on my main channel is cuz I went through the decluttering my house. I went through minimalism. I went through the financial struggles.

I became financially free outside of YouTube, and then I shared outside of YouTube, in the real world, I did this thing, and I want to share this with you, and that helped scale my YouTube channel cuz I actually did the things. I didn't just talk to people. So, one example I like to go to is like instead of like how to save money, it would be how I saved 100K by 25. That takes it from telling you to giving myself credit credibility and making a promise to share that.

So, that's generally one way, and then another way is going to be by being more transactional. So, if you're doing search-based videos about like product reviews, that's more transactional versus trust. But, either way, you want to make sure that every video you are promising something to your audience, right? You're promising to entertain them, to educate them, to help them with a problem, and then you deliver on that promise every video, so that people never feel like they're clickbaited.

Then eventually you get to this point where people click on your videos because you've built trust with them, and they see your face, and they know it's going to be high quality. They know it's not going to waste your time. They know you know what you're talking about. And that is something that compounds. And a lot of people expect that at the beginning. They expect things that work for big channels to work for them at the beginning.

But, as you get bigger, you get this unfair advantage because you have built trust with your audience, right? I did a video last week actually about like uh it was called I have to be honest with you. I put that on my main channel, or I haven't been honest with you. I don't know. I changed the title. And it got 50,000 views within a couple days, which is amazing cuz it was literally had no value add whatsoever. But, I've built up so much trust and community with my audience 7 or 8 years now.

The original title was I think, you know, like self-improvement ruined my life, but they actually cared more about like me being honest with them and sharing and being open. Now, if I did that as a small channel, maybe if you did that, it would probably tank for you. So, as you get bigger, you actually structure your videos different. You actually have some unfair advantages that other people don't have. That is so funny.

I mentioned Tony earlier and he is calling me. So, I'm going to answer this. Dude, what's up? >> No way, he answered. >> Yeah, we connected. Dude, I'm I'm literally filming and I just mentioned you on the second channel. >> No way, I called. >> Uh yeah, no, yeah, I just mentioned you like a minute ago. That's funny. So, it's an hour and 8 minutes later, but we're back. But going back to the promise, the promise really starts with the title and thumbnail.

Before anybody ever hears the first sentence that you say, they look at the title and thumbnail and decide if your promise is good enough. And so, Riley, who's on my team, spends most of his week literally thinking about this exact thing. So, I wanted him to share this next part. Taking it from here. >> Awesome. So, my job on these channels is the click. Now, that sounds simple enough until you realize that people are not clicking on the best video, they're clicking the clearest promise that's relevant to them in that moment.

Now, real quick on how we actually do this, every channel we work on has a thumbnail board. So, this is what you can see on screen right now. It's basically a running wall of thumbnails within the niche sorted by what's getting clicks right now. So, we never design on a blank canvas. We always have something to work on or something in terms of inspiration to look at and design from and switch pretty much one variable per thumbnail or multiple just to get the best one is.

Okay, I'm going to run you guys through the basics and not the whole thing because if I had to do that, we'd be here for about 3 hours and we do not want that. And when we talk about the thumbnail board, what we want to be specifically focusing on here is the research stage of this. And in order to do this, we want to be using the incognito mode on your browser. The reason for this is because if you're logged into your home page on YouTube and you're doing the research, YouTube is already tailored to what the content that you like.

So, it's not necessarily the content that would do well within your space. It's more so the content that you just enjoy watching. And this is not the data we want to be looking for. We want to be looking at the cleanest data that is getting the majority of the clicks from overall on YouTube. So, this is why we want to be using the incognito mode. Okay, so once you type in your title, look through the thumbnails that are performing currently within this topic within that space and then you what you're going to want to do is screenshot them and then place them within this board and you start to notice a couple patterns from what you're seeing through the research, but we'll get to that in a bit.

What you see on the right side of this board are inspiration thumbnails from outline niches or adjacent niches that have nothing to do with this actual title. So, I do suggest grabbing these or having a file where you save the thumbnails that you actually like or enjoy or that you save thumbnails that are currently becoming outliers or have a high viewership that you notice. And you want to collect those thumbnails and place them within this board just like how we've done.

As you can see, we have different niches here in the latest thumbnail outliers. So, money habits, phones, wealth, cameras. It really doesn't matter what niche you put here. You're just noting down thumbnail styles. And then once you have this, you have pretty much a full batch of style guides and inspiration and ideas to go off of to then build your thumbnails for your other videos. Also, just to add, you want to be taking notes down and actually writing down your findings when you're looking through your competition and all these outlier thumbnails that you're viewing and screenshotting.

For example, like we've done here with this board. We've written down that this isn't normal text needs to be added. So, this is something we noticed within these thumbnails. The highest performing thumbnail here had the text this isn't normal and so this is something we definitely want to include within our thumbnail. And just a note on the gray specific color. So, this is some research done finding out that the gray color does really well, specifically the news, lifestyle, and AI categories.

As you can see on the screen, this is the current research. And again, this works really well with your face included. So, if you want to test this out for yourself, definitely test it out and and try out your face included with the yellow text. Okay, so now that we're done with the research phase and again, the research phase is the most important part of this whole process. So, you want to be spending most of your time here.

But moving on for the sake of this video, we're going to be going over to the framing guide. And the framing guide is pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. These are all the notes and research and shots and frames that you got from the research phase. And these are pretty much your top picks, what you noticed in terms of patterns. And again, you want to be noting things down. So, for this one, this is pretty much the general note for this.

These are shots that are currently top performing, the patterns that your audience is already clicking on and double down. So, definitely want to be doing this. And then from this, this is when you're going to want to start actually dialing in those thumbnails and creating concepts. So these were the concepts that we've gotten down for Gabe specifically for this video. So we got six thumbnails down and as you can see here, all taking down from the inspiration from our research and our framing guide, we finally have a top six thumbnails.

So we can see here, we've got the wild card. This is that board inspiration thumbnail we got. And then from this, this is a normal style thumbnail we got from his previous outlier which is really cool. And then again, the split screen here we got from this split screen outlier from an adjacent niche. And again, there's so many ways to do this. It's so cool. You can honestly come up with so many angles specific to the outliers that you find and then obviously the competition research that you do.

And then once you have this, you're pretty much all good to go and set. From this, we got a winner on this video specific. Again, we changed the title for this video to the buy nothing rebellion as we found out that the original title wasn't actually getting enough viewership or as much viewership as we usually get. And so this is another thing you want to do in testing thumbnails. And the only way we got this thumbnail was from a previous outlier that did well for us using this method.

Quickly moving over, I just want to show you the results of this thumbnail board and what's possible. So this was another idea that we developed for Gabe, things that are no longer worth your money. And using the same principles that we had talked about, we ended up with a one out of 10 and close to a million viewed video, which is awesome. So if you guys want this full system run down or a template of this, we do have it linked below.

If you guys want to join the inner circle. Now, that's the packaging side at a basic level. I'm going to let Gabe take away monetization. >> Yeah, so coming back, this is the thing that I wish somebody had told me when I had zero subs. And that is that 10,000 subscribers is worthless if you don't have a way to make money. Everybody focuses on I got to get monetized, I got to get to 1,000 subscribers, 10,000. You have this mythical number that happens to be round in your head.

I have this too. Once I hit a million subscribers on the main channel, like it literally does not matter. When you hit that, you're not going to feel anything. When you hit 100,000, you get your plaque. It'll be cool for like 3 days and then you won't feel anything. You won't make more money because of any of those things, okay? For me, I am not about just connection. I'm not about just being a creator. I'm am about just making this for the fun of it.

If that is you, that's totally fine. I want to change my family's bloodline. And I've already done that to a certain extent, but I want to like really change it. I want to be like that meme of like, "You're telling me nobody in my family ever locked in and like whatever like my bloodline?" I want that to be me. I want to be able to retire my family members, my parents, pay off their house. That is my type of goal. It doesn't have to be for you.

You might just want to make $500 a month. 10,000 subscribers will probably not do that for you. 100,000 like if you want to get $1,000 a month, that might be doable. But if you want to create real wealth, you want to build income streams that can start at 500, go to 1,000, go to $10,000 a month, which is very doable, then you need to be thinking about making money right from the get-go. Not just this other stuff about the videos, about packaging, whatever.

You need to structure your whole channel in a way that you don't have to get 100,000 views a video in order to make a profit. Which like if we look at my main channel, I was literally just talking to Tony about this. This video right here, it got 50,000 views, which would be crazy, right? You might think that's going to do well. Well, that made $400 in AdSense. 50,000 views. That means you're making $400 a week, you're making what? 1,500, 2,000 dollars a month maybe.

I pay my team more than that. So, I would literally be losing money if AdSense was my way I made money. That would be stupid. So, like you literally you have to make 100,000 views per video average to run a profit if you're paying editors. AdSense, trying to get monetized, literally don't even look at it unless your goal is to get 100,000 plus per video. That is not my goal. I don't super care how many views that I get.

I care about making money. And so, that's why I make money on channel with 1,000 subscribers. It's made tens of thousands of dollars. This channel does well. My main channel does well as long as I don't make money from AdSense. So, never look at the views, never look at the AdSense. Structure it in a way to make money. So, how do we do that? Well, first of all, it is thinking about YouTube in the correct way. Again, this video is about how we can go from zero to 10K, which is awesome.

As a byproduct of you making quality videos, making income streams, building digital assets, I tend to look at each video that I make, right? All right, so I make a video. This video right here is a digital asset. So, my idea, it's going to get views for a long time, right? Ideally. And then those views would convert into dollars, which is again, not going to be through AdSense. That's going to be a 50 cents a day, 10 cents a day.

It's not going to be that. Do I have some way of making money off of this video for the next 3 years? I haven't posted on my sauna and cold plunge review channel in 6 or 7 months. I still make between 300 and over $1,000 a month on that channel. I haven't posted in 6 months. It's cuz it's a digital asset that is out there and it has a way to make money behind it. For that channel specifically, it's affiliate links. For my Facebook funnel, it's email that leads to affiliates.

My main channel is even affiliates and products and things like that. Every channel is going to have a different strategy. Some of them are coaching offer, some of them are a digital product, you know, some of them are affiliates. Whatever it is, you need to make it so that each video is out there and it's just stacking so that you can get this video is making money. This video is making money. Now suddenly, you're putting in less and less effort and you're making more and more money and they're not even getting a ton of views.

They're just all have a chance to make money. So, when you're structuring your channel, does it have a chance to make money? The first video, is there a way for you to collect an email? Is there a a link somebody can click on? What do you have in the first video that has you this chance to make money? Like for instance, on my main channel, if I don't have a sponsor or something like that, I'm always going to have either a lead magnet mention or affiliate product.

So, like maybe it'll be check out a high interest savings account. There's a bank account down below. I'll leave a list of them. Just check out the page. If you don't click on anything, whatever. And in that, there's going to be different bank accounts, okay? If you sign up for one of those, I could make anywhere from like a hundred to three hundred dollars. Look at this, I'm not I I don't have to sell you anything, right?

If you check out that page, there's no you don't have to pay any money for that. In fact, some of them I think like Barclay I just looked at, if you deposit a a certain amount, I think it's 25k I think, they will give you a $200 bonus and you can earn like 3. whatever percentage is at the time of making this on your money. So, if you have an emergency fund somewhere, you should have that somewhere that's earning interest and therefore, you should check that out.

You can get a free bonus, you can earn a really good percentage on your money and it helps support the channel. So, this is like something where all of my affiliate links are going to be like I'm helping you solve a real problem that you have where you have money, it's sitting in a bank account, it's earning like 0.1% and instead, it can earn 20 times higher than that, you can earn, you know, over 3% on your money from literally doing nothing.

So, if you have an emergency fund, you have investments, you should have a high yield savings account. And so, that makes it really easy for me to plug on my main channel. All my affiliate links are going to be like how to save on car insurance. I I can list them on this channel. I don't believe I've ever done that. It could be, you know, check out life insurance. It could be pet food. It can be, you know, like saunas and cold plunges.

But, each of those things, the person on YouTube has a problem and my affiliate is solving that problem for them. Some of them don't cost anything. Some of them actually do cost stuff. But, either way, I'm just this middleman, not really even selling anything, just more giving recommendations on what have worked for me. Like again, one of the reasons high yield savings accounts have done so well for me cuz I've had one for like 10 years.

They're just like a no-brainer. I love them and I've only started promoting them recently, but it's because it's something that really naturally fits in my audience. Now, on this channel, you're never going to see me mention a high yield savings account besides this one time because it just doesn't fit with this channel. So, each channel's going to have this different way to make money, whether it be affiliate, whether it be sponsorships, whether it be offer or whatever, but each channel's going to be different and how you build it's going to be different.

If you want to get sponsorship money, which most people want, then you have to be, you know, kind of niche, you have to have a decent amount of views to make decent money or be very niched. And so, for me, the general recommendation is don't look at AdSense money, don't even worry too much about sponsorship money, instead, work on something like affiliate or your own offer and start collecting emails. That's generally the best base for most people to build and then some of those things can be byproducts.

The sponsorships, the AdSense, those can be kind of the byproducts of having a successful channel. But you can start making money from day one with your own products or affiliates. And so if you're waiting till you think you deserve to be monetized or you deserve that you like oh yeah now I can get like I'm I'm averaging a thousand views a video now. I I can get a sponsorship. You can again make money with just a few thousand views.

You could be making money with some of these other ways and not wait for brands to gift you money. This is something I I break down for like an hour on my live masterclass. If you're interested in joining that, there's a link down below. It's totally free and I I dive really deep in just the monetization section and all like the the rest of it on there. But none of this honestly matters if people don't watch the video long enough to build a connection with you or to click on your offer, which is another team member of mine Gurri's like whole world.

So we'll let him take this. >> Appreciate it Gabe. So my job is what happens after the click. And the reframe that I would give anyone that is editing under 10k subs is this. You're not editing the footage, you're editing viewers experience. The first 15 to 30 seconds is not always a hook problem, it's also a proof and a context problem. Because the title of the video made a promise. If a viewer clicks on a video and they don't understand what the video is about and what they're getting out of this, they're most likely going to click off.

So I'm going to play two clips quickly so you can get a better understanding between a good example and a bad example. >> Cheap stuff is not even worth it anymore. I know that probably doesn't make a ton of sense. But is it just me or is like the cheap stuff that we used to get would at least last a little bit of time, but now it's just terrible. I feel like if you get anything from the dollar store, it breaks faster than it used to. >> So as you can see, as soon as you play the video, you're immediately understanding what the video is about because Gabe is giving immediately the context.

Because he talks about a very relatable topic in today's society. And then we have the bureaus to showcase those products which help maintain the story. Now let's go ahead and play the other clip. >> Alrighty. No. >> [music] >> That's better. So, um I know New Year's is coming up soon um and a lot of people like to make New Year's resolutions to go out and better themselves, be better in 2018, 2019, whatever it happens to be. >> So, as you can see, we're already almost at the first minute.

The build-up of the hook and the overall video is really slow. It's taking a bit of time until we get to the point to what the video is actually about. And as soon as the video starts, we're prompted with a lot of text on screen, which if you were to do it in your videos, especially in today's content, it wouldn't really work because nobody cares about oh, the reason of this channel, etc. They just care about the value and what the video is going to be providing to the viewer.

The very first 30 seconds of the video are really important for you to give the context to what the video is about and just get people hooked in. And then tease a bit of a solution or what's about to come until you reveal and you continue with the flow of the video. Now, of course, this is one of the first videos that Gabe has done and it's not perfect, but it's important to show you guys and just kind of see the development so you learn from it as well.

Here's what we're going to do. Open your last video and jump straight to your retention graphic. And then what you want to do is find the big drop at your first minute. Now, go watch and see what's on your screen exactly in that second. Nine out of 10 is the moment where you actually stopped paying off the promise and started explaining stuff that nobody asked for. So, cut that, re-upload it, and remember it for the next video.

That single habit will help you tremendously make better videos every time because then you're constantly learning and improving through previous videos that you've been making. The second thing would be b-rolls. Overall, they're more like decorations added to the video. Answers the question or compresses the explanation to build up the storytelling. If it's just pretty or you've just put it in there for the sake of putting a b-roll, then just cut it.

You want to place B-roll strategically and actually help with the flow of the story. And lastly, what I like to call it the cherry on top is the audio and the sound design. It's one of the most important aspects when it comes to the videos that I've seen a lot of small creators miss. Even if you don't have the best quality camera, if the audio sounds bad and the sound effects are all over the place, you know, like not placed strategically or being overused, then the viewer is just going to get annoyed and most likely they're going to click off.

It's super important to keep a clean audio. Use sound effects to also help build the story. It makes slower moments intentional, makes the transitions feel alive, and just overall the empty space is more controlled. If you know how to place them right. So, yeah, that's pretty much retention at the basic level. Gabe, back to you. >> All right, so the single biggest thing that I think most channels get completely wrong, and that is treating every video like it is their breakthrough.

A general rule that I have seen after posting through like what, 600, 700 long-form YouTube videos, it is going to go like this, okay? You are going to have 10 videos right here. You're going to have about five of those to six of those be average or underperform. So, you're going to get a six out of 10, eight out of 10, three 10 out of 10s in a row. I don't even know how that happens. It just happens, okay? And then you're going to get one to two videos that are just going to like, bam, not even comparable to everything else.

They're going to do really well. You'll get a couple that do like average or like, you know, above average. So, now you have two that do well. These are the ones that are literally going to make you all the money or most of the money. They're going to change the direction of your channel. Everything is going to happen right here. And you're going to the rest of these are just going to be average, okay? The problem is is that people, they're always going for that one out of 10.

They're always going for that next big breakthrough. And a healthy channel that has longevity doesn't just always seek out outliers for a couple of reasons. First of all, it takes a lot of work, right? If you're doing everything yourself, if you follow the 5-hour YouTuber blueprint, you can do everything from idea to posting a video in under 5 hours a week. That is 100% possible. But if you're always going for these mega outlier videos that take tons of work, you're going to be stressed.

It's going to be a lot of work. You're going to put in a lot of time. You're always going to be disappointed cuz you put so much into a stinking video and it just doesn't perform. And so what I kind of teach here is to have a mix of this, right? You're going to chase some of those. Yeah, a couple a month maybe, one to three a month. You're going to be chasing those outliers, but you're also going to have other ones mixed in where you're doing an update, you're doing a calmer one, you're doing something more search based.

You have a variety so that you have some videos that are quicker, easier to film, some that build connections so that you can keep that base level going where it's average you know, 50 views per video. You want to keep connecting with those people, not just always searching out new people, but how can you serve these ones so that you can grow this reoccurring audience, grow a relationship with them. And that generally doesn't actually happen in the outlier videos cuz you actually design the whole structure of those videos differently for outliers than you would for a connection building, than you would for a making money video, than you would for an evergreen video.

Like they're all structured differently. And the problem is most people only focus on what they think will grow their channel and that's why they don't make much money and that's why they don't have a good connection with their audience. It's because they're only focused on growth as opposed to like health. And so I also like to look at a format that is easy to to be sustainable with and this is also going to change per channel.

If we look at we'll go back to Tonio. That dude posts I think he takes like a month off, maybe two months off and then he'll have like a streak of he's got three that are coming out right now, maybe four and then he'll be off for another month or two. And so he has like these kind of posting maybe 25 videos a year, maybe 20 videos a year, something like that. And that's what works for him, helps him grow. For me, I post one to two times per week per channel and that's just a good cadence for me because I have really have the systematized.

It takes me like two hours per video. That's a good cadence, right? I can sustain that with still having a bunch of free time, still having a good life and and that's a good cadence for me. Some people post every single day. And the reason why everybody has a different cadence is first of all, you're going to have to see what works for you, right? Some people like if they're posting every day, they're going to have probably do a walk and talk or just like a very simple video.

Just sit down, talk to the camera, not think about it too much, just ramble a little bit. And that is a whole style. That's a type of person. I can't do that. I can't even talk for that long. Like this video is probably going to be the longest video I've ever made. Some people like Tonio, if you're putting the amount of effort he puts into his videos, he'll take a week. Like we literally traveled from New York to LA via Austria.

We were on the plane for like 70 something hours together. But he'll put in that much effort into a video. You can't post that every week. You have to do it like monthly. Mine are kind of a mid where I can do once a week. It's a good cadence for me. And then, you know, other people have different ones. So you have to find what are you naturally good at? Do you like these hyper dedicated videos kind of like Tonio's? Do you like the more sit-down style where you're teaching something and it takes some effort but not crazy amount?

Or do you just yap and you're naturally gifted at that and you can just talk and post every day? Those are all different styles. They can all work, but you have to find what what is right for you, what's right for your audience. And a lot of that comes again through testing and seeing can you just sit down and talk and make a good video? Do you have to move around the house more? Do you have to do skits and stuff? Do you have to travel?

Like what what makes a good video for you and for your audience? What connects with your audience? And what is going to actually fit your life? If you have a job right now, but like some things are just going to be like, "Okay, that's not possible for me." And so you have to figure out what works in your lifestyle. For me, even if I'm filming at night versus during the day, I'm going to film a different style of video.

I'm going to structure my channel differently if I had a day job because I know I would only have so much time, only so much energy, the light would be different. So like what do I how do I film things differently depending on your own lifestyle? And that's something you have to find for yourself. Just cuz you have this idea of what you would like to make, doesn't mean that's going to fit your actual life. All right, so I would say if you got this far into the video, you probably care about YouTube more than like 90% of people, to be honest.

And if you were serious about turning this into a full-time income, I'm going to be opening our year-long version of the 5-Hour YouTuber, calling it the inner circle. We've only opened it up to a small group at this point. And this is going to be a year-long of monthly live calls with me besides everything else where I'm teaching, I am sharing, I'm doing things live in front of you, filming videos live in front, reviewing channels, building a personal connection with you.

And then also, I have like eight different modules of everything to do with making money on YouTube, structuring your videos, editing, literally every step of the process to do with YouTube and building a profitable business out of it. We teach all of that. And then the problem most people have is consistency, it's sticking with it for a long time. And so that's why we're opening up this year-long version where it's accountability and support and a community for an entire year.

And I'm personally in there trying to help you do literally anything you need to help you succeed within the next year. So if you're interested in that, the waitlist is down below. We'll be opening the doors for the first time coming up. We've already had a small group in there that's already seen a lot of success. So we're opening this up to everybody else for a short time. So if you're interested, feel free to check that out.

This is the same program that helped JC go from 4,000 subscribers to 20,000 subscribers within 2 weeks of joining. We also had Carrie go from 0 to 10,000 subscribers inside of 6 months, literally starting with absolutely nothing, just as a normal person. Now she's made thousands and thousands of dollars. This is all like not guesswork, this is proven stuff that I've done, I've helped other people do. We've had over 600 creators go through this so far.

And now we've just made it bigger and and better in almost every single way. So again, if you're interested, there's a link down below. Hopefully you enjoyed this video, you got some value.