0:00

They don't have money, so they got time to spend. So, okay.

0:03

The inverse is also true. People with money have less time, and you have to prove more value to them

0:09

for the time that they're committed. So we can just go to people with money and one person with enough money can make

0:15

up the difference of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views.

0:19

Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's session of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast, where we

0:23

do deep dives into creatives and creators on YouTube and talk to them about their

0:27

journey, their successes, their failures.

0:29

Have my friend Roberto Blake, one of the top YouTube educators on the podcast.

0:33

I do that about two or three times a year so we can catch up and talk about

0:36

things that are going on in this space. This one.

0:38

Got spicy. This one is really fun and a lot of things, you know, we talk about

0:42

a lot of things that I think are gonna be extremely valuable for you.

0:46

As far as sponsors, we don't have any on the show.

0:48

I just ask that you support me and what I'm doing.

0:50

I do offer one-on-one coaching for creators.

0:52

If you're looking to grow your YouTube channel and you're looking for a coach,

0:55

definitely check my services out. I do have a membership group called The Creators.

1:00

Corner, five bucks gets you in.

1:02

You get access to our Creator Monthly Mastermind calls that I host on Zoom.

1:06

You get to chat with other creators, you get to chat with past guests of the show.

1:09

It's a great place if you're looking to rub shoulders with other people doing

1:13

what you're doing, it can be lonely, and that group is great for that.

1:16

I have a email newsletter called The Entrepreneurs Minutes, and

1:20

that has really been growing. If you're looking for a weekly behind the scenes of what's going

1:23

on in my business and things that I'm doing and tools that I'm using,

1:26

definitely check that out as well.

1:29

Really appreciate everyone listening. Wherever you're listening, hit subscribe, so you're notified every

1:34

Friday morning and let's go ahead and jump into the conversation.

1:37

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the podcast.

1:41

Dusty here, as always joined by my friend and peer in the industry.

1:45

Roberto Blake, if you don't know who Roberto is, he's been on, I believe this

1:49

is his fourth appearance on the podcast.

1:52

I believe I had him on in one of the first 50 episodes and

1:55

I had him on about a year ago. I love to have Roberto on.

1:58

It's always some of the favorite episodes for my audience, and he

2:01

and I get to dive into things that are going on in the creator economy,

2:04

what's kind of going on in his personal world, what he thinks is important.

2:08

So if you wanna check Roberto out, I'll put all of his links down below.

2:11

He is a published author, uh, I believe I can say he possibly, uh, is, is

2:15

working on another book as well, and all of his links will be down below.

2:19

Roberto, how are you doing today? I am doing good, dusty, how about you?

2:23

Doing great. Uh, super excited about this conversation.

2:25

We've been trying to make this happen for about a month now. Your schedule is super hectic, as I know mine is as well.

2:31

So it's just great to connect and uh, and do this, uh, conversation.

2:34

So absolutely. Let's just go ahead and open with this.

2:37

You are doing, uh, I believe you're calling it on your channel

2:40

right now, YouTube workshop. You're doing 12 weeks of where you've basically scheduled live streams for 12

2:47

weeks and you're doing these live streams. You did one last night to the wee hours of the night.

2:51

Give me the thought process behind why you're doing this, the benefits that

2:55

you've seen, and would you do it again? Night school for content creators, um, especially those creators that

3:03

are working class content creators under 20,000 subscribers is what this

3:06

workshop is really geared toward. Um, what I love about this is, you know, in our space we see people

3:12

all the time who say, I. They are confused by all the information

3:15

in the YouTube education space. They don't know where to start.

3:19

They don't know who to trust. They feel left behind as absolute, absolute beginners.

3:23

They are like, I'm overwhelmed.

3:26

I just need a starting point. Because they're coming into, almost every YouTube educator worthwhile

3:33

has been doing this for over like three years, five years, eight

3:36

years, 10 years in some cases. Uh, I've been doing it for a very long time.

3:40

And the trick is at this point, there are so many things that a lot of

3:45

us would take for granted, um, and don't have the mindset of a beginner.

3:48

I. We haven't started a new channel again, et cetera, et cetera, gone

3:52

through those going pains of getting monetized again and everything like that.

3:55

I mean, I always secretly start a new channel from scratch, uh, every year just

4:00

to go through the signup process again. Um, and I help new creators all the time, so I spend a lot

4:05

of time with those beginners. So I feel like I'm not out of touch, but I wanted to do something where I could just

4:11

literally point to a complete definitive series that leaves kind of no stone

4:16

unturned for that absolute beginner and give them a formal education in YouTube.

4:22

Because if you were learning something and you took a community college course on it.

4:28

You usually go through a nine week course in community college, you usually

4:32

are doing, uh, a night school session where you're going one or two times a

4:36

week to that class, and the professor is giving you work and assignments and

4:42

lecture and teaching you principles and theory and giving you some materials.

4:46

So what I'm doing is I'm doing basically night school on Wednesdays, and every week

4:52

for these 12 weeks, we've been meeting focusing on that YouTube beginner under

4:56

a thousand, under 10,000, under 20,000.

4:59

So that we have kind of a range for begin.

5:02

So there are people who are stagnant, there are people who had a video

5:04

pop off and they got their thousand subscribers, but they don't know anything.

5:08

They just had a video pop off. So they need to know, well, what comes next?

5:11

So we've, we went through this process.

5:14

I make slide presentations for every single one of these streams.

5:20

And people can download it for free. They can go to Awesome Creator Academy and they can go to whatever week it is, and

5:25

then they download the slides for free. I give the slide presentation, and then beyond the slide presentation,

5:30

I do q and a. Just like if you were in night school, you could ask your

5:33

professor, you could raise your hand and say, Hey, I have a question.

5:35

I don't understand this. Can you talk about a little bit more?

5:38

And so I do that. They get some q and a.

5:40

And also there's practical things that I do hands on to demonstrate things to them.

5:45

Like a week ago, I literally did a live editing workflow session where I opened up

5:50

Premier Pro and I showed them in real time the AI tools in Premier Pro that cut all

5:55

of your pauses, your ums, and your filler words, like with a click with button

5:59

and the text-based editing workflow. I showed them the quick version of color correction.

6:05

I showed them my green screen workflow and why I built a preset for it so I

6:09

don't have to agonize over green screen when I wanna do it and how to do motion

6:13

graphics, background music, sound effects, transition timing, and uh, polishing

6:19

those finishing touches on your video. And so they were able to see a workflow where they don't have to spend 10

6:25

hours to edit a basic talking head video or four hours even to where, oh,

6:29

they could get this done in maybe 90 minutes or two hours tops, even if they

6:33

wanted to agonize over adding B-roll.

6:36

And I showed them how to do that, et cetera, et cetera.

6:38

So we did a practical hands-on demonstration that's very rarely been

6:42

done in a live stream where you get to see someone edit a video more or less,

6:46

and their workflow in a live stream and see how it can be efficient for you.

6:50

And then have someone also answer your questions about why they make

6:53

the editing decisions they do or where this feature or this menu.

6:57

So yeah, it's been a very fruitful experience.

7:00

The students have gotten a lot of it. Would I do it again?

7:02

Absolutely. It's been great for me Also. For the coaching side of my business, and it's not been a bunch of coaching

7:08

calls with people under a thousand. There are people watching the workshops that are monetized, are making some

7:13

money from their channel, could make their money back, and it's led to

7:17

some one-on-one, uh, coaching calls.

7:19

If I get even one, one-on-one, uh, coaching call from, um, a thousand

7:23

people watching the replay of this Dusty, it would literally mean that

7:26

I have a $300 RPM instead of worrying about AdSense just off of, um, one lead.

7:32

And that's within, and that usually happens within a couple of days of every

7:35

stream, if not outright on the stream.

7:38

Someone will sign up either to the awesome Creator Academy Pro group to

7:42

say, all right, I want more access to Roberta, what he's doing, or they'll

7:45

sign up for a one-on-one coaching call. Yeah, a lot there.

7:48

I kind of wanna unpack first, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about

7:53

the coaching side of your business and how you can think of it differently

7:57

because it's completely what I've done here since the partnership with

8:01

two Buddy ended here on the podcast and we were together for a decade.

8:05

Yep. Not gonna get into that whole mess, but I re, I realized that my coaching business

8:11

and you know, what I charge and, and the, and the things that I can do there.

8:15

We'll make it much more lucrative for me on, on a business side of things

8:20

when I'm producing these podcasts and having to ramble on about a company.

8:23

Now I do have some brands and partners that are, have approached

8:26

me and I'm working with them to hopefully bring them on the show

8:29

in the summer and into the fall. But you're right, when you look at it that way and you say with one stream,

8:34

if I can get a a coaching client, that may may not be just a one-off.

8:38

It may be something that is a relationship that brings you thousands of dollars

8:41

as a consultant, then the stream was worth it just for that one person, but

8:45

it could bring two or three clients and you just have to look at it differently.

8:49

And so I completely agree with that point. I did want to concur with you there.

8:52

And then secondly, I just wanted to talk to you about kind of getting

8:56

in the mindset of a new creator. I, with my coaching clients, have a lot of people with this frustration, so I

9:02

wanna toss you the ball and see if I'm kind of giving them some good advice.

9:06

They come to me and we may have a call or two and.

9:09

They upload a video and they don't see a dramatic increase instantly.

9:13

Right? It's just kind of a slow burn. It's a slow curve.

9:17

How do you encourage those people and how do you kind of walk them off the

9:22

ledge of, you know, hey, maybe you're not a beginner creator, maybe you are an

9:25

intermediate creator, but you are thinking to yourself it's time to quit because

9:29

I'm not really seeing that rapid or you know, quick growth that I should see.

9:33

What do you tell these people? I tell them that it's an investment and that it's like, do you want

9:38

to like have fun and go viral? 'cause that's gambling on crypto.

9:42

So it's like, do you wanna buy meme coins or do you wanna build an actual business?

9:45

And I remind them that real businesses are built slow because

9:48

trust is built slow and lost fast.

9:50

And so I tell them. You're asking strangers sight unseen to make you a priority in their life.

9:56

They have to watch your video for five or 10 minutes.

9:58

Instead play with their kid, you know, sit on the couch and kiss their

10:01

significant other, or work on their own ventures and everything like that, and

10:04

you're stealing that time from them.

10:06

How are you proving upfront and how difficult is the challenge of proving

10:10

upfront that five to 10 minutes is better spent with you than all the

10:14

people right in front of them and all the things that the world has to offer, let

10:18

alone all the other content that exist. It's like, do you think it should be easy?

10:22

Did you think it should be easy? Like so there's, when I give them that perspective, they go, you know,

10:26

I never thought of it that way. I'm like, you viewer has to contend with that.

10:29

Every day they think about what is and isn't a priority. Saying yes to something is saying no to something else.

10:34

And so the thing is, don't be so upset and frustrated that the answer is no.

10:38

Maybe for where that person is, it should be. What about all the people who did say yes?

10:42

Do they not matter? So you're sitting here getting frustrated about what you perceive as completely,

10:48

by the way, probably completely justified rejections of a commitment

10:52

of time, and you would appreciate the people who did make you a priority.

10:56

And how do you maximize that? Because I'm asking, what is the goal here?

10:59

Are you upset that you didn't get enough attention or is it.

11:02

That you are upset because the attention you feel is required to reach escape

11:07

velocity to make a certain amount of money is not there because I can fix the money.

11:12

Let's fix the money by making bigger, better offers.

11:15

Let's fix the money by partnering with companies and

11:18

brands and making UGC content. 'cause then UGC content doesn't require attention, it requires a good portfolio.

11:23

Honey, let's go ahead and do something with your portfolio if you're on the

11:26

entertainment side, and let's get you being the right face, the right model,

11:30

the right spokesperson for brands on their social media accounts, or

11:33

use your editing savvy to do that. If you're in the information broker business and you're, uh, a thought leader,

11:40

let's go ahead and get you some affiliate marketing or some SaaS businesses company,

11:45

or let's get you some speak engagements. Let's get you paid.

11:48

For your thoughts and your reputation and not the amount of attention you can get.

11:51

Let's go on higher value instead of higher volume.

11:55

When it comes to attention, if you're worried about not reaching

11:59

escape velocity by not getting views. So it's like, 'cause I asked them, is it the issue that you

12:03

want attention or you want money? And they go, well, I want both.

12:05

Or I feel I need attention to get money. It's like, oh, no, no, no. We can get less attention and more money because most if we get attention it's

12:11

gonna be people who don't have money. That's the biggest market of attention is broke.

12:14

People that don't have money. Let's be honest about that.

12:17

Those are the people that are watching the most. Right? People who had the time.

12:20

Yeah, they don't have money, so they got time to spend.

12:22

So, okay. So the inverse is also true.

12:25

People with money have less time. And you have to prove more value to them for the time that they're committing.

12:31

So we can just go to people with money and one person with enough money can make

12:36

up the difference of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views.

12:39

If you were a gaming channel and you got a hundred thousand

12:42

views, you're only gonna get $200. We could find one person that'll give us $200 if we create

12:48

enough value for them, you know? Yeah.

12:50

It really is about creating the value. I, I've, I've used a couple of tools before.

12:54

I've got on, gotten on the call with you. I did this a couple of weeks ago when I thought we were gonna hop on

12:57

the call, so I've had some time to kind of marinate it a little bit, and

13:00

I've curated a couple of questions.

13:02

That was one of them. And here's the second one that I get a ton, whether it be in, in my creator's

13:07

corner group or whatever it may be. The second question is.

13:10

How come I upload a video, Roberto, and it does well for maybe a few

13:15

hours, and I see that spike in the, in the graph on in my analytics, and

13:19

then YouTube just completely drops it. It looks like it completely gets removed from the algo.

13:24

What, what am I doing wrong? You're not necessarily doing anything wrong.

13:27

Lemme ask you when that happens. Are you making an evergreen video or are you making a topical video?

13:32

Yeah, that's exactly what I tell my clients.

13:35

I exactly, that que, I was just texting someone that yesterday, so go, let's,

13:39

let's flesh this out a little bit. Explain what you mean by that.

13:42

If you're making a video that pops off right away, like when I made a video

13:46

about the TikTok ban, it got, it was a one out of 10 video for like two or three

13:52

days and then it died because guess what? The attention died.

13:54

No one cared after two or three days when it was breaking news.

13:58

It got views when it was old news and people moved on and they had something

14:02

else they wanted to pay attention to. It was over and that was that.

14:05

And that's fair. Meanwhile.

14:08

A video that I made, like my green screen tutorial, or even more recently, my video

14:12

about how to use copyright music, my video about how to make use copyright music.

14:16

I don't know if it even got a thousand views.

14:19

Its first day that I uploaded it and now it's steadily

14:23

getting 150, 200 views per day.

14:27

Um. In fact, I think I can look at it here in analytics right now.

14:32

So the first day I uploaded this video, it's almost to 20,000 views right now.

14:37

The first day I uploaded it, I have 600,000 subscribers.

14:40

This video, people go, oh my God, how embarrassing for you.

14:42

It did 1500 views the first day I uploaded it.

14:45

But the thing is, it's been steadily getting between 100 to 200 new views

14:50

every single day since January.

14:53

It's now April, it is at about 19,000 views.

14:56

It's almost to 20,000 views. This will end up being clearly at a rate of 200 a day, and there's

15:02

no reason for it to slow down. There's no lack of people who don't want a video that tells them in

15:06

three minutes exactly how to use copyright music legally, and YouTube.

15:10

It's pretty much the shortest video of its kind without being a YouTube short.

15:14

It uses a Lincoln Park song the entire time through the video to

15:18

illustrate the point that it's making.

15:21

And it's done in green screen. So the quality is excellent and the audio is excellent.

15:25

I did everything as perfectly as possible for this video.

15:29

Um, it has great retention on it. It is ranked in, uh, Google search and YouTube search as the first result

15:36

to the point where Dusty, uh, 53% of its traffic is from YouTube search.

15:41

35% is external. That 35% is Google.

15:45

So literally 90% of all the traffic for this video is from search.

15:49

And the searches for this topic are not going away anytime soon.

15:53

I did the same thing with my green screen video that had 1600 views.

15:57

It's first day, 300,000 views today, two years later.

16:00

So what I know about this is if you are making Evergreen video,

16:04

an evergreen video for which there is a tension long tail, sure.

16:08

The initial surge of its views will probably be people familiar with you

16:13

and who are interested in the topic immediately, because YouTube has the

16:17

most opportunity for distribution at upload initially for those things.

16:23

Now then after that, it's a matter of is this something people are interested?

16:26

If it's a, if it's a, for example, a celebrity scandal, it can last longer

16:31

than the initial three day news cycle. If that celebrity keeps getting in the news and keeps getting things, or new

16:37

people keep because that celebrity has a target market, has an audience, has

16:42

a total addressable market of tens of millions of people around the world.

16:45

So there are gonna be people like, what happened to this? Or if it scrolls in their feed, they'll make it a priority.

16:49

There's familiarity bias and then there's all the, um, the intrigue behind it.

16:53

But if you're making videos that are informational, sorry, um, if

16:57

you're making videos that are either informational or you're making

17:00

something that's even more personal.

17:02

It has a much lower shelf life. If there's not something to add, energy and fuel and momentum to that thing.

17:10

For those of us who are thought leaders, we need to make content.

17:13

And it's not about optimizing for SEO, it's about optimizing for search intent.

17:18

It's about leading with a problem that is a priority for people and

17:23

understanding when it will be a priority, how long it can be a

17:26

priority, and why it's a priority.

17:29

And so all of this is down to human behavior and psychology.

17:32

Keep thinking algorithm, and everyone keeps sitting here trying to pander to

17:36

robots instead of anticipating real human beings needs, wants, desires, and knowing,

17:42

Hey, here are your preferences, here are your prejudices, here are your priorities,

17:46

and here are the problems that you have. And those things dictate how you watch content.

17:52

A bloody algorithm can give you all the exposure it wants, but you keep throwing

17:56

something in front of me 12 times doesn't mean I'll make it a priority.

18:01

Yeah, having to think like the viewer is, is important.

18:03

You're right. 'cause it is, it is humans at the end of the day.

18:05

Yeah. The algorithm is, is trying to curate it to whom it shows it to.

18:09

But as far as who clicks on the packaging, that's, that's the,

18:11

the person behind the screen. So understanding all the things that you just mentioned is certainly pivotal.

18:16

You and I may be in the YouTube educator space, may be the biggest proponents for

18:20

evergreen, uh, tent pole type content.

18:23

Um, you know, my YouTube channel think tutorial almost at 400,000 subscribers.

18:27

I do tech tutorials, have been doing them for over a decade now.

18:30

And my YouTube, you know, main YouTube channel has been

18:32

built upon that for years. And I've seen it ebb and flow and I've seen things change and something

18:37

cool that's happening where, you know, now, you know, a lot of my

18:40

traffic came from external, which was Google or a search engine.

18:43

You know, now a lot of that external is AI tools.

18:46

Now you can see, you know, open AI or chat GPT showing up of people who

18:50

are finding your videos that way. And I think we're gonna see a trend that direction as well with, with

18:55

that, you know, at the end of the day. What I always tell my clients is if they see that peak and then the the really

19:01

hard fall off, a lot of that is probably having to do with packaging as well.

19:05

Yeah. 'cause if your thumbnail or title is not good, if the visuals or the

19:09

cover to your book is just not what people are wanting, then it doesn't

19:13

matter if you have 5,000 impressions.

19:15

If it's not good, then they're not going to click into that.

19:19

Has anything changed in the way that you think about packaging?

19:24

In the past couple of years, as far as you and I have talked about this before, but

19:29

if you are a creator right now and you're thinking to yourself, oh, this is me.

19:32

This is me. I feel like I get a lot of impressions, but then no one clicks into it.

19:36

What are some things that these people could be doing differently

19:39

to help improve that problem? Right. That's a great, uh, question.

19:43

Everything is topic, title, thumbnail, and timing.

19:45

The packaging on the thumbnail side, for example, is, you know, there the

19:49

thumbnail inherently has to be visually attractive at a glance to begin with.

19:53

And most people struggle with that because they just lack the

19:56

technical ability and expertise. Some of it is taste.

19:58

Some people, they know what looks good 'cause they know what they would click on,

20:02

and most people, if they were honest with themselves, they would not click on that

20:06

video if it wasn't something that they, they would never click on a video with

20:09

the quality of thumbnail that they made.

20:12

And they're just limited by their abilities, which is why you see a

20:15

lot of people trying to figure out. Not how to even work with and manipulate and use AI tools as

20:21

like a foundation to help them overcome one aspect of that failure.

20:25

But they're trying to get it to do the whole bloody thing for them because

20:29

they just do not feel either one, that they can develop that school skill.

20:34

That's why I've done like my three hour Photoshop thumbnail workshops, like

20:39

on YouTube is like, no, there's some basic things, like a big one is most

20:42

people are terrible with typography.

20:45

If they have to put text in the thumbnail, they're gonna make the thumbnail worse

20:48

than it already is, and it was bad enough. They're terrible with it.

20:51

A lot of people, they don't bother. Their thumbnail is also an afterthought.

20:54

You know what people's problem is with packaging? Dusty.

20:57

Hmm. The problem is that I'll call big YouTubers out on this big

21:00

YouTubers, people with 10 million subscribers, they lie to the

21:03

creator community so badly dusty. And I'm really frankly disgusted by it.

21:06

I'm tired of hearing about luck. I'm tired of people who are rich telling everyone else that they are lucky or

21:13

got lucky because these same people who are rich and telling you they got lucky,

21:16

have dedicated photo shoots for their thumbnails because that was the thing

21:21

that was the difference between them. Like arbitrarily getting a hundred thousand views and

21:26

then getting a million views. You can literally watch the jump in people's thumbnail quality and

21:31

see when they stopped getting a hundred thousand views and upload

21:33

and start getting 2 million views and uploading, you can see it was the

21:35

difference in their thumbnail quality. Well, what'd they do?

21:37

They hired people like Di Toma. They've hired, uh, these great thumbnail artists and they also got

21:43

feedback from these thumbnail artists as creative directors that told

21:46

them, I can't, I'm not a magician.

21:48

Your photo sucks. Get our photo, do some lighting.

21:50

Your, the shadows under your eyes. Do this, do the, and the, and so they got instruction.

21:54

They got knowledge on how to give somebody what they need.

21:58

So they're not trying to turn lead into gold or polish a turd.

22:01

They're polishing an uncut gem and taking out the blemishes, which is fantastic.

22:07

It's the same thing with the video editing. A lot of people went from struggling to be consistent with content.

22:12

Uh, sorry if there's background noise. Uh, there's the lawn and care people.

22:16

I, I got the tie. They could pick. I picked the worst tie possible.

22:20

Try not to interrupt my thought here, but like, they, uh, go

22:23

and they got video editors. That, um, make their quality of content better so they

22:28

can focus on the production. So now they're, they, these people have focused teams.

22:32

These people are small media companies, and they're gonna tell a working class

22:36

content creator who has to do this all by themselves after working a 40, 50

22:40

hour week job and wrangling their kids when they come home and still finding

22:44

the energy to cook for themselves, let alone then find the little scraps of

22:47

energy and time left to now sit down, record a video, make a thumbnail after

22:52

the fact, and do all these things. They're gonna sit there and tell that person it's luck.

22:56

And that's stupid. And like, oh, what about when that person was small?

22:59

When that person was small, they were a 20 something year old YouTuber, or

23:01

a teenage YouTuber who didn't have a mortgage, didn't have kids, wasn't

23:05

married, and was able to obsess over YouTube in a way that you probably

23:09

can't if you're listening to them. So what I would say is when you make a thumbnail.

23:14

Yeah, like it shouldn't be an afterthought of, oh, I already shot and made the

23:17

video I wanted to make and now, ah, crap, I need to come up with a thumbnail.

23:20

I believe you should be coming up with the title and thumbnail

23:23

before you ever make the video. You should be going into the video thinking about the relationship

23:28

between, this is the thumbnail they're gonna click on, and then I'm

23:31

gonna deliver on that expectation. This is the title that they're gonna click on, and now the hook that I

23:35

deliver in the first five to eight seconds is gonna reinforce that title.

23:39

People are not nearly intentional enough, dusty, about the experience

23:43

they're creating for the viewer and how they create value for the viewer.

23:46

It's like, it's like rolling out of bed and then throwing on some clothes

23:51

and then showing up to the date like that instead of thinking, oh

23:54

my God, this person is so wonderful.

23:57

And you know what? They'd really love this scent on me.

23:59

When I go in for the hud, they're gonna smell the sandalwood and all

24:02

this stuff and everything like that. I'm gonna make sure that, um, I. You know, I'm energetic.

24:08

I'm gonna make sure that I got some rest. I'm gonna, um, take the day off before to prepare and get my mind right and

24:14

just get into a good mental health space. I'm not gonna come here exhausted after work to the date.

24:18

It's a first impression, right? Or a job interview.

24:21

Take it outta a date. Take it to a job interview. Oh, you're gonna roll out a bed and go to the job interview?

24:24

No, I'm going to make sure I picked exactly this outfit or this suit.

24:29

I'm gonna iron and everything, or I'm gonna send it to the dry

24:32

cleaners and everything like that. You know what, I'm not gonna leave anything the chance with traffic.

24:35

I'm gonna be in the area all of that day beforehand, and I'm gonna

24:39

make sure that it's this or that. I'm gonna bring a backup piece of clothing in case something goes wrong.

24:45

Like, you know, it would be the preparation. So the lack of preparation and thought into the packaging.

24:50

For most creators, they make the video they wanna make, then they scramble

24:53

for a thumbnail and title to justify the video when they should have started

24:58

with a great idea that the audience will like and enjoy or see value in.

25:04

They should have obsessed over packaging that idea and to make it as attractive as

25:09

possible and as interesting as possible.

25:12

At a glance scroll, oh, I gotta stop and pay attention to that.

25:16

And then they should have thought about, they go, I wanna do authentic content.

25:20

I don't wanna do outlines or script. I just wanna turn on the camera and be me.

25:24

And then you're sitting there struggling with your words, or you're rambling, or

25:26

you're yapping, you are disrespecting the person's time, intention, priorities,

25:32

and have all the people in the world.

25:34

They gave you a chance. And a lot of times people are just disappointed.

25:37

And, and that's the reason. It's a lack of intentionality.

25:40

It's a lack of forethought. It's a lack of preparedness.

25:43

If you're an entertainer, you should be preparing for a video

25:46

the way you'd prepare for a date. If you are a information broker, you're a thought leader, you should

25:50

be preparing for it the way you prepare for killing a pitch in the

25:53

boardroom or going to a job interview. Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more.

25:57

I, I wanna start calling you the king of analogies.

26:00

Uh, that's what, that's what I wanna, uh, start calling you. I feel like every time you come on this, uh, podcast, you

26:04

have some wonderful analogies. So thank you for, uh, for sharing that with, with the audience.

26:08

For sure. You mentioned at the end of that answer, uh, Roberto, about

26:12

the, the, the rise of this.

26:15

Thought that authent of where it's not overly edited, there's not as many

26:20

just jump cuts all over the place. Like what we used to see back in the early days of YouTube even,

26:26

you know, seven or eight years ago. What are your thoughts on this?

26:29

Because I feel, I like that I, I consume a good bit of that content where someone

26:34

just turns the camera on and they have a bulleted list of things they

26:37

wanna talk about, and it's like we're having a conversation between friends.

26:40

What are your thoughts on this and, and where do you see this going?

26:43

People are using the idea of authentic content as a euphemism for something

26:47

very different because you can, editing doesn't make you less authentic.

26:50

Mm-hmm. Planning and being thoughtful about your words.

26:53

Does it make you less authentic? They're using authentic as a euphemism due to probably just a

26:58

limited range of vocabulary because they're regurgitating YouTubers who

27:01

have a limited range of vocabulary. And what they're actually talking about is they're saying, I want

27:06

my content to feel more organic. I want my content to feel more unpolished.

27:11

I want my content to feel.

27:15

More straightforward, those would be the correct words.

27:18

Because here's the thing, dusty, when you decide to edit out dead space from a

27:24

podcast or filter the background noise, because Roberto's lawn care people

27:29

came early, is that less authentic? No.

27:32

It's just smart. It's just smart. It's just creating the best experience possible.

27:36

When you decide to go into something and you come up with at

27:41

least some bullet points so that you don't end up just rambling or

27:45

yapping and wasting people's time. Are you being inauthentic?

27:49

Are you saying things you don't believe? 'cause what is authenticity?

27:52

Authenticity is when you present yourself accurately.

27:55

Mm-hmm. It's when you present yourself truly.

27:59

Do people think that they're not being their true selves because they

28:02

have to edit or because they have to prepare or because they plan?

28:05

When you write a script, are you writing something you don't believe in?

28:09

Because what it says to me or suggest to me is that people think.

28:13

That they themselves or other people, that if they're not just saying every

28:19

unguarded thought in their head, that they're somehow being less authentic.

28:23

And I don't think that's true. I think being intentional and thoughtful can still be authentic.

28:27

And I think it's appropriate to have somewhat of a filter called

28:32

thoughtfulness or candor or care.

28:35

Me, you know, me, I'm transparent and I'm radically honest, almost to

28:38

a thought, uh, almost to a fault. I'm blunt as hell, but that doesn't mean that I just say every intrusive, random

28:47

thought that comes to my mind without thinking about the consequences or

28:50

thinking about who I'm speaking to, what their mind, space, or mental health is.

28:55

If I just wanna say whatever I wanna say in Yap, I'm not being authentic.

28:58

What I'm being is I'm being insensitive and I'm being careless, and I'm being

29:01

thoughtless, and I'm not respecting other people's time, other people's

29:04

space or other people's energy. If I do that, I'm not inauthentic when I decide not to curse

29:10

in front of my goddaughter. I'm being polite and respectful and thoughtful, and a responsible person.

29:17

Yeah, I think it's a bit of a facade because they see these creators

29:21

that are doing these what they think to be more authentic videos,

29:25

and it's really, like you said, they're just being more transparent.

29:28

But I think what people don't realize that behind the camera, they're being

29:31

very intentional with what they're doing.

29:33

The ones that these people are referring to.

29:35

Right. Uh, you know, like my favorite, one of my.

29:38

Favorite creators in the world has always been Peter McKinnon.

29:40

I, I love the way that he tells stories. I love the way his cinematography, I love the way that he's able to

29:46

take something so simple and so what seemingly would be unfun and make it fun.

29:50

His, his videos are very professional. They're very, you know, it seems like he's all over the place and like sometimes he's

29:55

just, you know, bouncing off the walls. But to me, I love that.

29:58

And then you have someone like, uh, Simon Sinek who people would point to and

30:01

say, oh, well this is what I wanna do. I wanna do these just, you know, turn on my phone and point it

30:05

at me in the car, and I'm just gonna go on these big monologues.

30:08

He's very intentional about the topics that he covers and the things

30:11

he knows his audience very well. So I would very much caution the people listening to this to don't

30:17

use this as an excuse to do less work or to make your stuff less good.

30:22

For me with what I wanna do on this podcast, I've always been very, like you

30:27

said, transparent and authentic to the fact that, listen, I wanna have creators

30:30

on this podcast who have almost, you know, 700,000 subscribers like you.

30:34

And I've had people on with three or four, 5 million subscribers,

30:37

but I've also had creators on with 10,000 or 8,000 subscribers because

30:41

it resonates and it, it's, it's real.

30:43

And I want people to understand that. And I just wanna transition now into this question is fun for me,

30:49

and I wanna ask you this question. Have you changed your mind?

30:52

On anything in the creator space or creator economy over the past few years

30:57

that you were really adamant about early on and now that you've kind of

31:02

learned more or gained more knowledge, you're like, okay, maybe I can pivot

31:05

on this and can change my opinion. Yes. Short form content.

31:08

I believe that short form content was, I still believe that most of it is.

31:13

I think my issue with short form content was how much of it was brain rock content?

31:17

And now I also understand that there's long form brain rock content too.

31:21

And there always has been. There always has been.

31:24

And so looking at it and then not romanticizing old YouTube, 'cause

31:29

I've also changed my mind about the romanticism of old YouTube, and

31:32

now I'm against that romanticism. I'm not saying it had no value, I'm not saying had its place.

31:37

But even with this concept that we just talked about with authentic

31:39

content, what people don't realize that they're saying is they want

31:43

less produced content because.

31:47

Texture feels real. This is a quote from Philip DeFranco that I can never unhear.

31:52

And he said something and I'll never forget, he said, feels real.

31:55

Polish feels fake. So that's why you see, um, a rebellion against beast ification, as we used to

32:05

call it, the Mr. Beast hyper editing style and over optimizing content.

32:09

You're seeing a longing and nostalgia for old YouTube that you and I came up with.

32:15

I'm older so I can't say I grew up with it. I was already in college, um, when YouTube started.

32:20

The thing is there's a longing for these days of random people.

32:26

Talking about the things they're passionate about and their lives with

32:29

very little technical ability, very little artistic ability, very little

32:33

creative ability frankly, and being able to get attention and go viral

32:38

and become famous and become rich, and oh, how nice a normal person won.

32:43

There's a nostalgia and longing for that. The reason it'll never come back is because the era in which that

32:48

happened in that first, let's say 10 years or so of YouTube is that

32:54

internet video in the hands of a normal person was a novelty item.

32:59

YouTube was a novelty gimmick website that the modern public did not understand.

33:04

It was not a household name and not ubiquitous, and not something

33:06

we all understand and was not something that people grew up with.

33:11

It is now cable television. It's basically now cable television.

33:14

It surpassed cable television in its attention and its reach.

33:17

It's beyond Netflix now. That, but when it started, all of those quirky weird creators.

33:24

Those esoteric creators who could do things off the beaten path that people

33:28

so desperately wanna do because they grew up loving those creators and

33:31

now they're angry that they can't be the next generation of that creator.

33:38

And they're forgetting that the conditions under which those people existed mm-hmm.

33:42

Were radically different than today. And so what was once a novelty is now the new normal.

33:48

So you can never recreate the magic no matter what you do of OG YouTube.

33:53

There was a point during the pandemic and the rise of TikTok, where TikTok

33:57

and short form and vertical video and the virality of that was a novelty item.

34:03

Also, we so heavily saturated that, that we sprinted in five years, I

34:09

would say, of the same experience that YouTube took 15 to accomplish.

34:14

We compressed it. So now if you do something else.

34:19

The span at which you would recreate the buzz of a TikTok

34:22

will be an even shorter lifespan. So, but you see what I'm saying?

34:27

The condensing of this keeps happening, so you can't recreate that novelty.

34:31

So something I pivoted on was my belief that one, that that can be recaptured.

34:38

I no longer believe that. I believe there'll be small cycles of it that will have outliers.

34:43

And you will have people like Sam Sellick, you will have people like that

34:48

come up, but they will be a minority.

34:51

There will not be a new wave. There will not be a new wave.

34:53

This will not be a trend, it will be a microcosm, okay?

34:57

Mm-hmm. And then my belief now on short form diluting the value of long form.

35:01

I no longer believe that. It's not that I felt that it algorithmically did it per se, it's

35:06

that I felt that it was conditioning people and attention spans.

35:09

I now see an inversion happening. And the other thing is I came to a conclusion that's

35:12

like, would any of us care? Which format on YouTube between short form and long form is getting us

35:18

views if they've all paid the same. Because every time I ask a creator, would you care about, oh, my shorts

35:24

are getting, I wish my long form videos were getting the views, my shorts were.

35:27

It's like, if they paid the same, would you care? No.

35:30

The answer to that is Every time. Every time, every time.

35:33

So I go, fantastic. So the answer is build a business outside of YouTube where your brand matters.

35:41

I'm gonna say something. Do you mind if I say something slightly polarizing and controversial?

35:44

No, not, not at all. I wish that every YouTuber had the marketing savvy of the most successful

35:52

creators on OnlyFans, even though I don't necessarily approve of OnlyFans or

35:55

the business model or the exploitation that happens at all in any way.

35:58

But the marketing, I kept the respect the hustle. If you make short form and you're doing that kind of content, all you're doing

36:04

is promoting a $9 a month subscription, basically as the business model, right?

36:08

That's right. If a YouTuber has a membership or a thing and every piece of short form,

36:12

they had got massive attention and views. Oh, but I don't make any, I don't make enough ad revenue off of it.

36:17

If the notoriety of knowing who you are was a pipeline and a funnel to a recurring

36:22

membership, that's $9 a month, $99 a year, you wouldn't be worried about what

36:26

Pennies you're not getting off of ads.

36:29

Yeah, because your, your RPM value and your lifetime revenue per customer

36:34

would just be so high that if every one in 1000 people, which is less than

36:38

a, like, it's a 0.1% conversion rate.

36:40

If every one in 1000 people was $99 a year, do you really care that Shortz

36:46

is not, is paying a 10th or a 100th of what regular long form videos

36:50

are when all it is is at the end?

36:52

Hey. Sign up for my membership. Hey, sign up for my membership at the end of every video.

36:56

They got everything they wanted in 55 seconds.

36:59

And then the last three seconds is sign up for my membership.

37:02

Oh, you have a membership. It's like, and they, it's just a funnel at that point.

37:06

Right? So why not?

37:08

And again, that's not an endorsement of holy fans today.

37:12

Yeah. It's just telling you guys, build a private membership website.

37:15

Use the saturation of short form and the reach of it to give exposure to a

37:20

brand where you can sell things direct to consumer, directly to the audience.

37:26

A subscription model is ideal because you get the longest tail value out of that,

37:30

and you just have all this opportunity.

37:32

It's like neutralize. Here's another idea, dusty.

37:37

If you get 10,000 views on a regular YouTube video.

37:40

But you make three YouTube shorts that all get a hundred thousand

37:44

and you upload three YouTube shorts that week and they all get a hundred

37:47

thousand views and you got one YouTube video and it got, um, 10,000 views.

37:51

Don't the three YouTube shorts basically add up to enough money to equal the

37:55

regular long form video at that point? Yeah.

37:59

And aren't the shorts theoretically easier to make and get out

38:02

than that long form video? So the ratio of short form videos that you can put out in a week compared to the

38:08

effort for the hours put in to a single long form video, it equals the same amount

38:13

of money if you're going that route. You really bring up a lot of great points.

38:19

The short form content is a hot topic for me because I think it's

38:22

something that I'm having to pivot on right now in the current day.

38:26

Um, think for me, and I'll just be honest with everyone listening, I look

38:29

at the consumption patterns of short form video and what it does to us as humans.

38:34

And you mentioned it at the beginning of your answer when you, you brain refer to

38:37

it as kind of brain rot content, right? Where it's honestly just junk food type content.

38:42

Right. People, they become zombies. Like you look at people I, I hate, and again, this is getting into stuff beyond

38:48

creator economy and I'm not gonna go there 'cause it's not what, what I'm gonna,

38:50

it's philosophical and I'm fine with it. I'm good with it. At the end of the day, I see what it does and I see what our

38:55

phones have done to us in that. I see it in my family, I see it with people directly related to me.

38:59

They'll be out in this beautiful place or at a beach and, and

39:02

they'll have their phones and, and they're just stuck to 'em instead of

39:05

enjoying what's going on around them. This vertical, and again, this can happen with long form, don't get me wrong.

39:10

Sure. But it's, it's, it's happening more frequently with vertical

39:13

short form content where people are just looking at their phones and

39:16

they're not even really consuming. Does that make sense to you?

39:18

Like what I'm saying, Roberta, like they're not consuming it, they're not learning anything.

39:21

Maybe they get a quick laugh out of it, but it's really just

39:24

time sucking is what it is.

39:26

So is that on the format or is that on the content?

39:30

'cause Dusty, 'cause I don't know. 'cause watch this dusty.

39:33

What if instead of short form all being sugary snacks, what if someone

39:38

was only consuming short form?

39:41

And all it is is vitamin supplements. Yeah. And all it is is ashwagandha and vitamin B12.

39:46

And what if it was, what if all of your short form was supplements?

39:49

What if you were on the beach and your, you've got your AirPods in, but instead

39:54

of it being like Tiger Belly or something like that, what if it's Andrew Huberman?

39:58

What if it's Tony Robbins? What if it's Roberto Blake?

40:01

What if it is an AI generated podcast of the collective curated

40:07

consciousness of Aristotle or Plato?

40:09

So, you know, the great thinkers.

40:12

What if you're listening to an AI generated contrast, sorry, an AI

40:15

generated podcast of a philosophical debate between Gary V and Karl Marx.

40:21

There's, there's, um, a. Way that we have to look at this of the fact is I

40:27

used to blame the format itself, right?

40:29

Instead of blaming the trend within the format.

40:31

'cause I no longer believe it's the format.

40:33

'cause I'm going to embrace short form in the sense that what if I literally

40:37

use short form and I proved my ability to be concise and speak in sound bites,

40:42

but sound bites that people value. And then people, they were introduced to me in that way and said, here's

40:47

somebody who's not selling sacred oil. Here's like, I did not think of a online business in that way.

40:52

I did not think of that when it came to marketing and selling t-shirts.

40:57

Oh my God, I should do that. Or I could go print on demand with that.

41:00

Oh my god, I did not know the utility of those FEV five websites.

41:04

Lemme watch this thing again. I need to watch this thing again and write down those FB websites because

41:08

those will add to my productivity and I can make money if I use those tools.

41:12

Property, oh my god. He just gave me the perfect chat GPT prompt, that's gonna make my

41:17

productivity and my life better. I had no idea I could use chat GPT to build an Eisenhower matrix

41:23

and prioritize my life by what's urgent, what's important, and

41:26

what's urgent, but not important. And what's important, but not urgent.

41:30

Oh my God, never have I known I needed something until I experienced it.

41:34

If I can deliver so much value in one to three minutes, which I'm capable of,

41:39

but do people get to see that from me? No.

41:41

'cause they can see me ramble for three hours. But if I could do that, that one, I'm creating real value.

41:46

I'm impacting their life in a pos, I might be the only thing in their short form

41:48

feed that day that's actually vegetables and vitamins to offset all the sugar.

41:53

So one I've done, I've done God's work at that point.

41:55

And then number two, if I am that and I condition that I'm more

42:00

human than everyone else that's extracting value from them.

42:04

If I'm giving, if I'm the only experience out of 20 shorts that

42:08

gave value instead of extracted and gave more value than I extracted.

42:12

If they encounter me enough times, there is something in human pattern recognition

42:17

that will recognize that and see me as value giving versus value extracting.

42:23

Then they're in my ecosystem and then they want to watch long form for me, or they

42:27

want to do a one-on-one coaching call for me, or they want to know more about me.

42:29

And then when they look me up, because I've curated my personal brand and my

42:33

reputation, they go, who is Roberto Blake? And they either ask an AI chatbot or ask, you know, grok, Chad GT or Claude

42:39

or whatever, who Roberto Blake is. They go into Google and they go Who Roberto Blake is.

42:42

And then my Google Knowledge panel pops out with, I think it says

42:45

American YouTuber and all those things. I've curated my personal brand to a point to where they'll realize

42:50

he has an author, he has a a book.

42:52

I can read his book, or I can listen to his book on Audible.

42:54

Or I could watch his YouTube channel. I could listen. Oh wow.

42:56

I like his long form. I like his lectures.

42:58

I put it on in the background. I do this, I do that. Oh, okay.

43:01

And then. They're in my ecosystem, but they have to have an experience

43:05

where I create value for them. And if I don't make short form, if I don't make YouTube shorts, if I don't make

43:09

Instagram reels, I'm invisible to them.

43:11

I draw the line at TikTok until America owns it.

43:14

Uh, the, see my point is I change my mindset that if the problem is that

43:19

there's brain rod in that ecosystem, don't I owe it to people to inject

43:23

some vitamins and some veggies in a place where only sugar exists?

43:26

What if I can make short form healthy again?

43:29

Yeah. I think that, uh, what, you know, exactly what I was gonna kind of

43:33

conclude with, with my point is that I. I've learned exactly what you just

43:37

said is that I know that this why I'm in the process right now, hiring a, a

43:41

vertical video editor for this podcast because I know the benefits, the ones

43:46

that I've uploaded myself, which as you said, I could create very high quality

43:50

shorts and edit them and I enjoy it. But I do have two kids.

43:53

I have other, I have other entities.

43:55

I'm married. I'm, I'm very heavily involved in other stuff outside of, of my business, and so

43:59

with that being the case, I want to bring in someone who can solely work on the

44:03

vertical video for my business for this podcast, and maybe they do see one of

44:07

those shorts and they've never listened to the podcast, and then they do, and

44:10

then they hire me to be their coach. Then you're kind of seeing where the long tail of this influential thing

44:16

of this vertical video, which I might think is just snacking, can turn into,

44:20

like you said, with a great analogy, the vegetables or the vitamins that

44:24

turn them into a fan of mine that then get them into the monetary side of my

44:29

business where I can monetize that.

44:31

Viewer or that, listen. So I completely agree with you, and I just wanna say that I believe

44:37

this conversation is important. I believe there could be a three hour long thing where we

44:41

really dive into every aspect. We don't have the time for that right now, because I do have

44:45

a question I wanna ask you. I got 10 50 more for you.

44:49

I do have a question that's very important that I wanted to get to today.

44:52

Okay. How is, and how do you foresee AI impacting, and we talked about

44:59

this last time, but I really want to ask you a condensed question of

45:03

what is AI going to do to YouTube?

45:07

Not nec, I mean, yes. What is it gonna do creator wise?

45:09

I mean, I already know how it's impacting my business. I mean, every day.

45:12

Uh uh, I was listening to Mac Break Weekly, and Alex Lindsay on that

45:15

podcast was talking about there's not an hour that goes by in his day

45:18

that he's not using some form of ai. He's not against it, but he's for regulation.

45:23

He's for all these things. You being as, as kind of the person who's.

45:28

Oftentimes, I've seen you ahead of other YouTube educators kind of ahead

45:32

of the game as far as certain topics. What would you say right now, people listening to this, you know, 20,

45:38

30,000 listeners, what would you say to those people about AI and how it's

45:42

gonna impact the creator economy? You need to be thoughtful about what your own ethics around a IR,

45:49

but they're not a reason to abstain from it or protest it outright

45:53

because you, you should be working toward countering whatever you fear.

45:57

And the thing is, you should do that from the place of embracing

45:59

this thing, understanding it, become very, very educated about it.

46:03

See the other side and see where people create value.

46:05

Steer people in a way of using it ethically.

46:08

So I think all the people that, for example, have real and legitimate fears,

46:11

concerns and things about AI and want regulation, number one, understand

46:15

that in general, regulation favors corporate sponsorship and corporatism

46:19

and cronyism there and political optics, very little of it trickles

46:24

down to favoring the little guy. And we have to figure out how to carve out our version of how we use it to

46:30

protect ourselves as the little guy. And so I think that that's very important to just acknowledge that

46:35

reality and not be some political idealist, because I think you need

46:39

to be a realist and an optimist. I'm not saying be cynical.

46:42

I'm not saying be bitter. I'm saying be realistic and optimistic and say, people are going to use this.

46:47

Let me make sure they're using it ethically and responsibly and that they

46:50

can get the results that they want by using it ethically and responsibly.

46:55

So I think it's for the the people to say, you know, Hey, we've

47:02

unleashed this power upon the world.

47:04

Let it not become a terror, and I won't rely on the powers that be

47:10

to take on that responsibility.

47:13

It does to be done at a cultural level, because regardless of what

47:15

they do in Washington, the truth is, and you can see this all around the

47:19

country, all around the world, is the truth is whatever becomes culturally

47:23

normal or acceptable is the reality, not what they dictate in Washington.

47:27

They will follow, even the people in Washington will follow what

47:31

enough of the masses advocate for and culturally normalize.

47:36

They're not really leaders. In many cases, they're followers.

47:38

They will follow the popular opinion or the money or both.

47:43

And if you just understand that and accept that, you realize you have to

47:46

become educated about ai and you have to educate people to use AI in a way that

47:51

is responsible, ethical, and appropriate.

47:53

Now, the other thing is for creators, and where I see it with the platform

47:58

and content creation, YouTube, is the platforms understand this

48:01

and they're making standards to embrace ai, and they're using it

48:04

to make all of our lives better. The fact that you can reach an audience no longer have a language barrier to them is

48:09

great for creators, and they'll get more audience, more views, more of a community.

48:12

It'll make the world smaller. Apple just decided that within two years you're gonna have real time AI audio

48:19

translation in the AirPods, in addition to all the accessibility things they

48:22

just would did with AI to make AirPods essentially affordable hearing aids

48:26

for people for the hearing impaired. That's a tremendous benefit for humanity.

48:31

And now we're gonna have Star Trek like technology, where we're all

48:34

gonna have real time translation in our ears within the next two years.

48:37

It's gonna suck that first two years, but it's gonna grade in five or 10.

48:41

It's gonna revolutionize humanity and make the world smaller and make us all

48:44

be able to understand each other better. And that's, there's nothing but good that comes from that for the most part.

48:50

And so we need to accept that those things are a reality.

48:52

Um, one of the things we're gonna see is imagine a world.

48:56

Is any YouTuber gonna complain when YouTube gives them an option?

49:00

I'm not saying YouTube is absolutely doing this.

49:02

Hint. Uh, but okay.

49:05

Is anyone gonna complain when YouTube decides that when you

49:08

upload a video, it'll have an option where, Hey, you know what?

49:11

Your audio's not perfect. You can toggle this button on, and we will AI enhance your audio for

49:16

you, and you'll get studio quality audio and it'll be at $0 cost to you.

49:20

Is anyone gonna complain when YouTube embraces AI and does that?

49:23

No, no, not a one. I don't think people are complaining that, oh my God, please YouTube don't

49:28

translate my audio, my transcription, my titles to languages where people can

49:33

enjoy my content all over the world. Oh, please don't do that for me.

49:36

So I don't think people are gonna complain about these things in the majority.

49:40

I think it's gonna be edge cases, and there's some of those edge cases are valid

49:43

with protecting intellectual property. You recently saw Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey advocating for

49:47

the end of copyright and ip. I'm like, oh, gee, I wonder why they would do that, and it's not for your benefit.

49:52

Um, the thing about it is I do want those things protected.

49:55

I think that we could look at things. I know that blockchain is a dirty word to some people, but you know what?

49:59

In a world where anyone could steal your stuff with ai, wouldn't it be nice if

50:02

everything you make has its own DNA?

50:05

It has its own social security number. It has its own chain of custody that can be publicly validated as a point of origin

50:10

and say, no, this is attributable to you.

50:13

And then if it's monetized in any way, shouldn't you get a cut?

50:16

That's what blockchain could look like in the future is

50:19

chain of custody and ownership. For anyone who creates intellectual property is that has its own DNA without

50:25

us having to file it with the government. It's just the technology layer itself.

50:28

You know, we used to do that with metadata, but metadata can be manipulated.

50:32

But if it's built into the thing at a DNA level of the, uh, thing that's created and

50:38

it's harder or impossible to manipulate and it ends up in the public register,

50:43

the public register could serve of a way of having the equivalent of copyright

50:48

protections in terms of chain of custody, proof of ownership, proof of origin,

50:52

without us involving governments at all. It would just be a way to say, I can prove this, and if I have to go to court, I have

50:58

proof because the filing of a copywriter or a trademark is just a way for the

51:03

government to say we can verify a claim.

51:07

But if the technology allows you to verify a claim, it's called digital forensics.

51:10

It is evidence in and of itself, it's tangible evidence.

51:13

So the thing is, we can then advocate for ourselves and we don't need the third

51:17

party of the government if we do that. Now, this is a great visionary thing for me, but it's, but the thing

51:22

is, it's a, it's an actual solution that could exist to the problem.

51:25

Just using material science we already have and using,

51:29

uh, systems and frameworks. It's just a matter of adoption.

51:32

But you know, it's like we adopt norms with technology all the time.

51:35

We say Photoshopping something now.

51:37

We used, we say Googling something now that there was no such thing

51:41

as doing that 25 years ago. So those were not normalized, regular people had no idea what

51:46

those things were 25 years ago, only as nerds on the internet.

51:49

Um, so when you look at the AI and the direction it's going, a lot of

51:53

people are concerned that you're gonna see nothing but AI slop on YouTube.

51:57

The AI slop argument is, you'll see it soon and now, but that's like, while

52:01

the technology is very, very bad.

52:04

Mm-hmm. This is the worst it's ever gonna be. We talked about this last time you were on, right.

52:07

This is the worst it's ever gonna be. So here's the thing.

52:12

Original human content on YouTube in 2005 through 2010 was god awful.

52:19

The AI slap is better than OG YouTube in many cases.

52:22

The exceptions are, you know what? Regular people, most people are not, uh, Freddie Wong.

52:27

They're not Harley with Epic mealtime. Even the early content from John and Hank Green, the Vlog Brothers,

52:32

was done in terrible quality. PewDiePie's first videos were done in terrible quality.

52:36

Even Mr. Beast first videos were done in terrible quality.

52:39

The majority of content on YouTube, even from the biggest YouTubers today, their

52:43

first 100 videos, as we say, their first 100 crappy videos were truly crappy.

52:47

And the thing is, average AI slop is a more enjoyable experience than most of

52:51

the original content of the first 100 uploads of the biggest OG YouTubers,

52:55

if we're being perfectly honest. And this is the worst the technology will ever be.

52:59

So in terms of a consumer. Product in terms of what consumers will tolerate.

53:04

We as artists might be offended, but the truth is consumers get to decide what

53:09

their preference is and what their things are and what their quality standards are.

53:13

And the thing is, the AI isn't doing bad quality audio right now.

53:18

The voices are becoming less monotone every day.

53:20

And regular human YouTubers who start out and aren't confident

53:23

start out with monotone and bad voice and bad audio all the time.

53:27

Oh geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, especially us, right?

53:30

The, so the thing is the AI can improve in five years more than most humans

53:36

will ever self-improve in five years. And that's what's scary to me.

53:39

That's what's scary to me. So what I believe though is proof of human will become a

53:44

priority for a lot of people. Maybe not everybody, but there will be people who, uh, value proof of human.

53:50

I think it's fine with the AI stuff when it goes to the entertainment

53:53

space because again, I. You're just choosing sugary snacks built by

53:58

machines instead of sugary snacks. As opposed to, yeah.

54:00

Cooked by humans and everything like that.

54:02

And you can say, well, the difference is, well, that was done with love.

54:06

Okay, great. So the shot of DI Diabetes straight into your veins was done with love.

54:12

Okay, cool. Like so you have that, I think for thought leaders and educators.

54:18

We will use AI not as a replacement or as a shortcut.

54:22

We will use it to enhance ourselves and become cyborgs, and we will just

54:25

become, just become cyborgs out here. We'll just become super soldiers.

54:28

We'll just use it to become super soldiers. We'll use it for efficiency.

54:31

We'll use it to shrink teams and scale outputs.

54:34

We'll use it to refine processes and give a better product to our

54:39

people while remaining human. By getting rid of all the things that annoy us, our humanity will

54:44

be enhanced because now we're focused in our zone of gene.

54:47

That's how we will use ai. There will be artists and entertainers who also follow suit

54:51

with this, but the majority of them are super, super young people.

54:54

So to be honest, they'll just use shortcuts and, but the market will

54:57

decide whether it values that or not. I think my own, my follow up there really is just, if you're a

55:03

creator listening to this, lean in. Don't lean out.

55:05

Don't, don't run away from this thing. Don't be afraid of it.

55:08

I understand that sometimes the technical jargon may feel like it's a big hurdle

55:11

to get over, but it's really not. Once you kind of start diving and learning and, and doing all these things.

55:16

I know for myself, I was scared of it a couple of years ago, but now I'm, I'm,

55:19

I'm loving it because like you said, it's kind of giving me some superpowers

55:22

behind the scenes that are allowing me to really, it's not cutting corners.

55:27

It's being more efficient. And I think that when you differentiate the two of yes, AI will allow some

55:33

people to cut corners, that will be AI slop and it will be crap forever

55:36

because that those people are just wanting sheets and shortcuts.

55:39

Lemme give you a heads up. They're, they, they've been wanting shortcuts way before ai.

55:43

Yeah. These are lazy people. These are people who don't have a work at, they don't care about really

55:46

what they're putting out there. But people like myself and Roberto and other people that you consume,

55:50

they're gonna utilize AI to only enhance what they're doing.

55:53

And so, I know I gotta let you go. So I wanna get to this last part here, which is the lightning round.

55:57

It's just some, some fun questions that I want you to give me.

55:59

Kind of, you know, maybe one, one sentence answers to those will

56:02

be perfect for YouTube shorts. Yeah, absolutely.

56:05

You know, trying to think about it. What is, uh, one of your favorite, uh, YouTube channels to consume right now?

56:10

Hmm. One of my favorite YouTube channels to consume right now.

56:14

Hmm. I really like Cleo, Abram a lot, and I love that she's reawaken some

56:19

of my intellectual curiosity for. Esoteric scientific things gets my brain going.

56:27

What is your current obsession outside of YouTube and work

56:31

outside of YouTube and work? What is my current obsession?

56:34

Cleaning like organization, cleaning, life optimization.

56:38

Also micro workouts. I've been doing these micro workouts where I've been doing weighted squats and I

56:42

try to do a hundred weighted squats a day when I can now and everything like that.

56:46

I've become obsessed with that. I've become obsessed with my pull up bar in my closet.

56:50

I'm just like, I'm walking by. It's like, you know what?

56:52

It's gonna take me less than two minutes to get a micro workout in.

56:55

Lemme just go and do the pull up bar for as many pull-ups as I can.

56:57

Just real quick, just get it in. I walk into a room, I leave weights in the rooms that I spend the most time in.

57:02

So it's like I walk by, I glance, I go. I'm not gonna walk by those ba weights and not pick them up.

57:07

It's like, let's getting a like 92nd micro workout.

57:10

I've been ahead of the game, I've been doing that for, for a long while.

57:12

My wife made, has made fun of me. I had the little pushup things that I have and I try to do a hundred a day.

57:16

Nice. Try to do the body squats. I've heard 'em called exercise snacks or micro workouts or

57:21

whatever you wanna call 'em. So yeah, it's micro workouts, why I call it.

57:23

That's really cool. If you weren't a YouTuber or a online educator like you are

57:26

right now, what would you do? Social media consultant, most likely.

57:30

Uh, 'cause that's what I was doing before I pivoted to content creators.

57:33

Um, I was a full-time freelancer, mostly in graphic design, all those things.

57:36

Um, doing branding, doing packaging, doing, um, the print design for,

57:43

you know, when you go to, um. Trade shows and conferences and you see people and they have the backdrop or they

57:48

have the table spread with their logo. I used to do that stuff for a living or the packaging for their products, book

57:53

cover design and everything like that. Um, so I used to do those things.

57:58

It evolved into consulting as my own social media grew.

58:01

Other people and small businesses worked with me and I managed their social media.

58:06

So right now, I would probably just be in the world of consulting or marketing

58:10

or I'd be working for a company, maybe Kajabi or something like that.

58:13

I even think sometimes of like if they would, if, if a company out there, if

58:17

like a nine, uh, figure, uh, 10 figure company wanted to just have me on

58:23

retainer and I don't have to do like actual clock in hours or any kind, but

58:29

I just need to be available to do some calls, I'd be open to doing, um, a like.

58:35

80 to $140,000 a year gig where I give up, uh, you know, 10, 20 hours a week to

58:43

do consulting for one company if they're willing to pay me 80 to $140,000 a year.

58:49

Um, to do that, to give up 10 to 20 hours a week, flex time.

58:52

But it's like, it's just about consulting or doing meetings

58:55

or solving some problems. I don't have to clock in in regular hours.

58:58

It's just me doing these micro calls with them or something like that over

59:02

the course of a week and giving my thoughts or reviewing a product feature

59:06

or meeting with some product managers.

59:08

Like I would be willing, I. To, uh, do that on top of everything else I do.

59:12

I mean, the money is good, but I also, I like the idea of

59:15

being involved in technology. So I would wanna do that for either like an AI company or an education company.

59:20

So if, so, if I'm willing to do that consulting, like part-time, flex

59:24

time, I would just do it consulting either with multiple clients.

59:26

Multiple clients where I do, I mean, similar to brand deals, right?

59:29

I would just basically consult with brands, if not be a spokesperson for

59:33

them and their presenter at events and be their wrangler, be their ringer,

59:37

be their, their guy that goes at events, gets charismatic and crushes

59:40

it like I did at NAB show, right? With Opus Clip.

59:42

I would just do things like that for companies and I would just say, yeah,

59:45

I'll do all these things for you. Um, you'll be category exclusive and I would just get three or five

59:50

companies to pay me, um, 60 to $120,000 a year each, three to five companies.

59:56

And I would just wanna make, you know, like, um, 250 to 300,

1:00:00

um, $60,000 a year doing that.

1:00:03

I working with, uh, brands and I would just do a combination

1:00:06

of consulting, uh, public seek speaking and, uh, some marketing

1:00:10

services for them on the backend. And that would be that. I love it.

1:00:13

I love it. Well, guys, if you can't tell, uh, Roberto and I could go on forever.

1:00:17

It's why I like bringing him on every six months or so, you can find

1:00:20

him over@awesomecreatoracademy.com.

1:00:23

Search Roberto Blake on YouTube or Google to find all of his

1:00:25

things that he has going on. I'm really excited about your new book.

1:00:28

You, you again are one of the great thought leaders in this space

1:00:33

and it's so fun to have you on. I get to have Nick Niman on multiple times a year as well.

1:00:37

And so through these friendships that I've kind of garnered through the years,

1:00:41

it's really valuable to my audience.

1:00:43

And so, Roberto, your time is so much appreciated.

1:00:46

And, uh, we'll talk to you next time. All right, take care.

1:00:49

That's it for this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast.

1:00:53

I hope you guys enjoyed that awesome conversation with Roberto as much as I did.

1:00:57

If you'd like to connect with me again, I offer one-on-one coaching.

1:01:01

I would love to connect with you and help you along your journey.

1:01:04

We have our membership group called The Creators Corner, where you get

1:01:07

exclusive access to the group of, you know, YouTube creators there, myself,

1:01:11

other past guests of the show, as well as an exclusive podcast episode

1:01:15

that I release there each and every week called The Creator's Corner.

1:01:18

It's about a six to 10 minute monologue from myself about a

1:01:21

topic that can hopefully help you move the needle in your business.

1:01:24

And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast as well as our email newsletter

1:01:27

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1:01:30

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