You're ONE Video Away transcript

This is embarrassing. You've probably seen the title and you're thinking like, "Gabe, it takes more than one video." And let me tell you it does. It takes more than one video to make a career on YouTube, but what I'm telling you is this, one video will be the thing that changes your life. I have worked with hundreds of creators, literally hundreds. I'll show you some people almost every [music] single success story that I know, including my own, one video.

That's what changes your entire >> [music] >> future. And there's generally something about this one video that will change your life that you weren't expecting. I want to show you a couple of videos first, then we'll break down what makes them successful so that you can have your first breakout video that will literally change your life. This is my friend Antonio, my boy, my fellow gray-haired young person. Anyways, these are his oldest videos that he has public, but before this he had another year plus of videos, I believe, that have all been taken down from his channel.

But he had one video that popped off and changed his life, and it was this, I survived on gas station food for 50 hours. He was doing self-improvement videos before that. And this one video changed the whole trajectory of his channel. It changed what type of content that he made. He He deleted all the other stuff. He was doing things like I tried Andrew Huberman's morning routine and like things like that, like productivity stuff.

And then he kept exploring. He was making high-quality videos. When he first contacted me, I was like, "Dude, the video quality is not the issue. You just need to find the right idea. You need to find this right fit." And he was at 2,000 subscribers, I think, when we first talked. And he continued to make content, make content that he was passionate about, that he was excited about. And the skills of YouTube are there, but then he eventually like kept exploring.

Anyways, he tried this challenge and it was the first challenge that he did. And then he just changed the whole trajectory of his channel. He just changed everything and adapted towards that one video that took off, and he used that as a sign and he followed that thing. And now he's doing the, you know, I survived, I slept, I tested, I survived, I lived, I tested, I tried, I lived, I lived. And you can see that he's found these formats that are proven to work and he's just adapted into that.

If we look at some of his top videos now, I stayed at the loneliest, I tried, I took America's worst train. I was actually in this I took America's worst train video, I took it with him, half of it anyways. But that is all from one video. If we look at mine, I had this video right here, Frugal Living for Early Retirement. This was the video that changed the trajectory of my channel. There's actually two. And so the general thing that you're going to see with everybody is that they try a bunch of things and then because they keep trying and they don't niche down too much at the beginning, as long as you try things that you're open to, when you have one click, you have to like follow it.

You're going to have one video that takes off. For me it was this one here, the Frugal Living for Early Retirement. This video took off and I changed everything about what I did, for the most part. I wasn't an expert back then, but I started changing, I started talking about frugal living more and then I became one of the top frugal living channels on YouTube and then you can see more frugal living content here, started doing some minimalism content and then I tried living like Matt D'Avella for a week.

Now this video right here was one of the first minimalism videos that I had done really, that was like an actual good video. And this one went viral at the time. And then through now having frugal living and minimalism, because of those two videos, those only two videos, I adapted my channel, I ditched talking about real estate, I ditched talking about debt and I only talked about frugal living and minimalism for the most part.

And now I have become one of the top people in both of those spaces simply by following through and continually trying new things but then sticking with the things that work. So the idea here is you're going to have a few topics that you're interested in. And by the way, I'm hosting a free masterclass on Saturday of exactly how to do this entire process, how to find your niche, how to make money right at the beginning, and avoid a lot of the mistakes that I did.

So, if you're interested, there's a link down below. It's free to join, and it is incredibly useful. It's probably better than most stuff you'd pay for. Anyways, I found those two like kind of light posts, and then I adapted my content, and I shifted almost everything towards that until I finally started to have some success in the minimalism space. The only reason I found that was because of one experimental video that I did of trying to live like Matt D'Avella.

So, the thing is, you need to keep taking shots. You need to keep trying new things that are outside of your space until something clicks. Hear that noise, and then follow that direction. So, another one that I tried was like I went vegan for a month. I tried these 30-day challenges, and none of them worked. But, if one of those had clicked, I could be the 30-day challenge guy. But, you don't know what your unique skill is, what the audience likes from you, and what the algorithm like.

You need to like find the combo of all of those things in order to have that first video take off. Or, it might be that the ideas are great, and you fit well with them, but your skill sucks. You just need to figure out what is wrong with that whole thing. Next up, we have the Frugal Rich. This is my boy JC. He's actually a really good friend of mine. When he started, he actually joined our 5-hour YouTuber program, and he was at 2,000 subscribers when he joined, and he was at 20,000 within 2 weeks.

Now, he's at 75,000, and a lot of that came through He He was making videos. Not many of them were really clicking. Not many of them were sticking. He had the good skills of making videos. He was actually a short-form creator on other platforms and stuff. He actually had another channel with half a million subscribers, but could not get long-form to stick. A lot of that cuz he wasn't doing it correctly. And then, through making a few small tweaks to his content, he finally had the first couple of videos pop off.

He had this one with 83,000. He had these ones right here with 130, uh and 100, and then another hundred. So, he had three hundred thousand plus videos back-to-back, and he started to find his niche. He started to find what his people connected with, what they resonated with. He started getting consistently 50, a hundred thousand views on a lot of content. It's not across the board, but he had a really good stretch here where he just really blew up his channel and found his own unique thing that worked for him.

And if you can see, even with the thumbnails of this, he was trying a bunch of different things with his thumbnails here. Some of these he's gone back and changed, actually looking at them. But, there's this thing that he found worked really well for his audience, and he actually kind of made popular, and that is this looking up holding something. And so, he started finding that. Again, once he had one thing that stuck, a lot of people, I see this so often in small creators, they will have something that's doing well, and then they don't want to repeat it, they don't want to copy it, they don't want to say the same thing twice, they don't want to have the same thumbnail like too much.

And he just found this exact format that worked for him of looking up, and it started working almost every time he used it. And you could see a lot of these he's just standing there looking up, and it kept working. And it kept working. So, as long as something is working, a format is working, a thumbnail style is working, a topic, a keyword, for me, minimalism, frugal living, literally every time I made a video about them, it would do well.

And so, as long as things are working, just keep using them. Just ride those out. Again, you only need one to show you the direction of title, thumbnail, style of video, and topic that your audience wants, and then just continue down that path while still taking shots outside of that. Just as another crazy example here, this is Noah, he was again one of my students. He also used to do self-improvement content, but he was doing things that he was interested in, trying a bunch of new things.

And he tried this cast iron skillet, cuz he was interested in cast iron skillets. I don't know, I think they're pretty cool. But, he had this one video that got half a million subscribers, but then he still kept trying to do his other stuff. Fidget items for grown men, I don't know, actually good and useful gifts people won't return. He was doing habit videos and things like that before that have been deleted since now.

But, some of the advice that we gave him was just like, "Hey, man. You had that thing that worked well. Double down on your top-performing one. Just go back to it. See what happens." And he tried it again. And so, from getting this one, it got half a million views. He had a couple of tanked because he was trying to stick with his niche. And so, then he just gave up on his niche and he adapted his channel. And he got 1.8 million views.

Next one got 100,000 views. And then even this one, 11,000, which isn't great, but it's way better than his stuff was before, right? And all of his content before was was like under 1,000 views, mostly. And then he just started adapting and now he's got another 600,000 view video. Not every single one's going to pop, but another 100,000 view video, another 400,000, 44,000, 23,000 in 2 days, 27,000 rather. And so, he's found this niche and uh he came into one of our group calls like a month ago, maybe.

And he was like, "Hey, I'm actually looking to leave my job soon through this channel." Which crazy. And kind of just like recommended everybody else just like, "Listen to game. You know, follow the proven stuff. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Just cuz you started one way doesn't mean your channel has to end that way." And so, I like I just really wanted to encourage you guys that it's only going to take one video.

And before that one video, you're getting better at the skills of making YouTube videos. You're experimenting. You just don't keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Just keep trying new things even if they're not exactly what you thought. Explore your interests. Explore a bunch of stuff. And then when you have something that clicks, adapt your channel to do that thing. And if you don't want to adapt your channel to do that thing, don't make a video about it.

Don't make a video about cold plunging if you not okay with doing cold plunging forever. Don't make a video about, you know, books if you don't want to review 100 books. Don't make something you wouldn't want to do a lot of, but as long as you're okay with that, continue exploring new things that you're passionate about, that you're interested in. Like even with frying pans, as as niche as that is, Noah had a $1,000 day just in AdSense, I believe, from frying pans.

And that's just like the tip of the iceberg. So, I just want to encourage you. You're literally one video away from your life completely changing. If you want to learn more, again, I am hosting a workshop on how to grow on YouTube and especially how to start monetizing a small channel. So, if you're interested, uh totally free, link down below.