Walk me through how you would approach from scratch YouTube growth. First step, you create what I always call a YouTube master plan. Look at how much content is already out there and how much need for content is there.
Kevin John is an entrepreneur who specializes in growing YouTube channels from zero, helping his clients get millions of views.
He manages a thriving portfolio of YouTube channels, as well as helping large traditional media businesses build channels of their own. First video got half a million views. The third one got one million views- Wow...
right out of the gate. You sold one channel for 93.7 thousand euros. Creator economy is, you know, growing like crazy, and I think right now, the greatest opportunity we have in media is YouTube channels.
What are the most important metrics you're tracking as you're trying to grow these channels? The key thing that w- you wanna look out for is- Walk me through how you would approach from scratch YouTube growth.
Let's say, for example's sake, give me an industry or niche of a channel you've done this in recently. When talking about YouTube growth, obviously it's always very important, what's your final goal?
So when we talk to media companies or we talk to, like, super small businesses, they usually have completely different goals. Sometimes you want to just generate leads through YouTube- Mm-hmm...
and turn these leads into sales for whatever product or service you're selling on the back end. Sometimes you want to actually build a media business, right?
So the monetization is going to come out of the ads, sponsorships, and all of that stuff. And most of the time when we, when, when I talk to anyone- Mm-hmm...
um, oh, this has changed over the years, but in the past couple of months when I talk to someone, they want to generate sales for their- Hmm... YouTube channel.
And I think this is something, like, that we can talk about later because I massively changed my mind and also my business model- [laughs]... on, like, on this.
You know, I was building channels, like, in order to build channels and then make money with YouTube AdSense, and I drastically changed my business model because I realized, um, there's something else that you can actually make much more money with and that is much more beneficial to what I want to build- Hmm...
uh, as an end goal. But long story short, so you ask yourself what do you wanna do, and I can give you an example of, uh, we did this in the, um, in the sauna industry- Mm-hmm... uh, for example recently.
So, uh, super cool industry, right? Let's say you are a business. You, uh, build saunas and you sell saunas online. Um- Like, these...
You're talking about the ones where it's like, oh, get this one, put it in your backyard or, like, with the infrared, put it in a room in your house, these, these kind of saunas. Exactly. Mm-hmm.
And now, you know, everybody wants to live, uh, forever, right? We have Bryan Johnson propagating, uh, don't die and stuff like that. Yeah. So everybody wants to have a freaking sauna.
You need to have a sauna, otherwise- I wish I had one. [laughs]... who the hell are you even without a sauna, right? So let's say you have a sauna business. You wanna, like...
Obviously, your goal with the YouTube channel would be you want more, you wanna sell more s- freaking saunas, right? Mm-hmm.
So what you, what you do is, as a very first step, you create what I always call a YouTube master plan. So you, you go in there and you analyze what sub niches do you have in the sauna space- Hmm...
that are not occupied. And by sub niches, what I mean is there's basically, uh, two axis that you have when you look at the YouTube sub niche space. You can, uh, you can sub niche by, uh, choosing a format.
So for example, documentaries, video essays, interviews, talk shows, whatever. Mm-hmm. Right? Uh, street interviews. So you can do all these kind of things, and then you can sub niche by topic.
So if we're talking about saunas, okay, this is already a reasonably kind of narrow niche, but you could go even deeper, right? You could only talk about infrared saunas, for example. Hmm.
Or only about outdoor saunas or whatever, right? And then your goal should be, as someone who wants to do this, is to really analyze what's out there.
In this case, in the sauna space, there's really just a few players there, uh, who specialize on only talking about, [laughs] you know, saunas. Um, so there's a lot of potential there. You could do interviews.
You could do, uh, you know, cool case studies, walkthroughs, whatever. Um, you choose, uh, a format along these two axis, and that will give you a reasonably clear positioning in the space that you- Hmm...
can double down on. And what you wanna do there is you wanna pay attention to demand and supply, um, dynamics i- in the sense that you look at how much content is already out there and how much need for content is there.
So for example, we started, uh, already two years ago, we started a channel about the, about biker gangs. Ah, yes. Now, I have no personal affiliation with- [laughs]...
uh, Hells Angels or whatever, so please don't come hunt me here in Warsaw.
This, this channel was just something that we did because we saw there are a lot of, there's a lot of search volume for, you know, gangs or groups- Mm-hmm... like Bandidos, Hells Angels, and so on, on Google.
There's a lot of literature, so it helps to look at books and what's out there. There's a lot of literature, uh, f- movies and so on, but there's not the equivalent, um, of YouTube channel content- Hmm...
or YouTube video content.Um, out there. And so we realized, okay, there's probably an opportunity there. We went in there, and first video got half a million views, and the third one got 1 million views- Wow...
right out of the gate. And so first one is master plan, then look at how do you position yourself along these two axes, uh, with your content.
Um, and, uh, well, then design the whole, uh, the whole content production process around it. Um, if we, uh, like, if we build YouTube channels, sometimes we assemble small teams.
Sometimes it's with a media company, then they already have a team. They don't want us to, you know, bring our team, so we do a coaching model where we help them, you know, basically.
For example, coach script writers or coach video editors on- Mm-hmm... how retention-based editing works on YouTube. Um, and that's how we, uh, operate then. Okay, real quick, I wanna...
[chuckles] There's a lot I wanna get into here. So number one, the, let's say the motorcycle gang example. When you discovered that this is opport- an opportunity, like, how did you come across that?
You're telling me how, you know, you're looking at the-the search volume on Google. You're looking at how there is, like, a high volume of, uh, of other media, books and such, uh, but not on YouTube.
How are you identifying this? Are you just, like, going out there and you have, like, a certain amount of hours you spend each week or month, like, looking for these opportunities? What tools are you using to find these?
Yeah.
So there's a bunch of tools that you can use in order to, uh, analyze the YouTube space, and in essence, with all of them, like, the key thing that w- you wanna look out for is the relationship between, uh, how old the channel is and how many, uh, subscribers the channel has and how many views the channel is generating.
So to give an example, what, what you would be looking for is a channel that is, let's say, you know, it's just three months old,
and it has 500 subscribers, but the past four videos had 100,000 views on average. Mm-hmm. Now, that tells us
th- uh, this channel is probably doing something extremely right, and this niche that this channel is operating in is probably massively under- undersaturated.
So unless you're, you know, really, um, inexperienced and you make, make a lot of mistakes, if you go into this niche, probably you will be, uh, you will have success.
I can give a shout-out to, uh, a friend, uh, who's, like, working in this space building YouTube channels, uh, Noah Morris. He has a tool called NextLev, for example, 'cause you asked for tools.
That, that's a tool s- they call it a niche finder that analyzes the whole YouTube space and then, you know, looks at these supply, uh, demand imbalances. Mm-hmm.
So this motorcycle example, you said the first video got, I think, half a million views, and then the third one got a million. What were the resources you guys put in to produce this?
Like, how many people working on this? How many hours? What investment monetarily? What did it take to, to... What did you have to put in to get that output? Yeah. So we-- Let's go back a little bit, right? Mm-hmm.
Like, I started building these, uh, YouTube channels, um, because I had one YouTube channel myself, this MegaLoMedia channel- Mm-hmm...
where I noticed I can actually outsource a lot of these things, and I can take myself out of the equation, right? And then we started-- I was like, "Okay, nice.
Like, I can build one channel, and maybe I can build 100," right? "And, uh, then I can be next whatever, Rupert Murdoch" [both laughing] or something like that, you know? They're like, "Let's do it."
Uh, then obviously a lot of kind of problems that I didn't foresee happened, but, uh, to go back to this point, yeah, you can outsource a lot of the things.
So if we-- W- when we started channels, uh, back then, when we went all in on basically channel building for our own portfolio, typically we had one channel manager. Mm-hmm.
And sometimes this channel manager was also good enough to do script writing. That's, that's my favorite. Um, if not, then you have a separate script writer.
Then you have a video editor, and you have a thumbnail designer. Um, ideally, in terms of, you know, hiring a channel manager, that was always a little bit difficult.
Usually what happens is you get a really good script writer, and at some point you promote them to channel manager 'cause they're just, you know, so familiar at this point with the topics, uh, and so on.
Now, sometimes if, you know, we had one more sophisticated channel, um, there you have, you know, sound designers or people who are just, uh, responsible for motion graphics, but that's, you know, the basic setup that I just told you.
And if I remember for this, uh, for this, uh, biker channel, the investment, uh, that we had was, like, we were break even essentially within the first month. Mm-hmm.
Um, so immediately we got the monetization for the channel, and immediately we were break even because we probably spent, like, $1,500 to produce these four videos, so- And then the break even is purely from AdSense.
Exactly. And then break even is purely from AdSense because nobody at the beginning, no, no sponsor is [chuckles] going to trust you or is going to put anything on this.
Um, and you als- we also didn't have, we didn't think super long term. Like, you know, are we going to build a media company or something? Mm-hmm.
We were like, "Okay, let's just get the views and get the AdSense back."So, okay, we should talk about Megalomedia. So I'll, I'll explain what I know about it. As of right now, as, as we chat, it has 199,000 subscribers.
The description is, "Megalomedia takes you behind closed doors to expose the secrets of the finance and business elite." There are 315 videos on the channel.
The oldest are from five years ago, and for the first maybe year or two, uh, it's you in the thumbnail, and the videos are all about being a consultant, investment banking, finance career advice.
Basically, what you were coming out of right then before you- Yeah... swung back into this media career.
Uh, and then about two and a half years ago, the thumbnails change, and it's all these documentaries about billionaires and investors and, and, like, these kind of narrative stories about finance.
Not the like, here's how to get a job in finance kind of thing, but like here is, you know, here's a, a 20-minute documentary about George Soros or something like that.
Um, and you're not in the video anymore, but you are the narrator. So tell me, tell me about what that was. You...
Like, even further back, we don't have to get into this right now, but you were a teenage YouTuber, and then you spent this career in business, and then what brings you back to YouTube?
Well, as you said, I've been doing YouTube on the side essentially all my working life, and at some point, after I, uh, e- essentially after I came out of China, I've been living in China, and I said, "Okay, now I want to, you know, do something new.
I wanna start something new." I decided why not try doing YouTube full time?
You know, it was always like this thing that, you know, also s- people in the finance industry, when you tell them you have a YouTube channel, they're like, "Huh. Okay. That's cute." Right? Peanuts.
Um, yeah, so it never felt like something you can do full time, but then I, you know, I looked at the numbers and creator economy's, you know, growing like crazy.
I saw, okay, like, probably you can build a YouTube channel that, you know, generates more revenue than some partner's salary at Goldman Sachs. So I was like, you know, maybe let me try, just go all in on that. Yeah.
And, um, and, and that's what I did, and then, um, I basically turned this, uh, channel that was about my personal career in management consulting, um, I turned it more into a channel where we talked about, you know, finance and business.
The initial tagline was that the... Like, Megalomedia is for megalomaniacs. [chuckles] For people, for the 0.01% that is crazy enough to believe that at some point they can become billionaires, you know- Like you...
and they can... Like me. [laughs] You know? And so I was like, okay, if I have these megalomaniac goals, I shall analyze people who actually made it, right?
And that was literally the beginning of Megalomedia, where I said, "Okay, let me look at Bill Ackman, and let me-" Mm. "... analyze how did the guy get started," right? How did he do it? Um, and then I realized,
damn, [laughs] this is a lot of work, right? [laughs] Like, I'm doing my VC job. At that point, I was working in VC. I was investing in, like, Chinese startups- Mm-hmm...
helping them, uh, helping startups get into China and so on.
And at, at, at that point, you know, I was doing this job, and then on the side, on the weekends and in the nights, I was scripting these videos, and I'm like, damn, this is really a lot of work. Yeah.
And that's when I s- when I f- I said, "Okay, let me see if I can find some script writers, uh, some video editors. For sure, they cannot replace my genius script writing-" [laughs] "... and video editing skills," right?
[laughs] But of course, I was wrong, right? [laughs] Like, there's, there's massive- Yeah... amounts of very skilled people. Mm-hmm.
At the beginning, everybody starts searching on Upwork, and then they realize, okay, this is not the best, uh, source of people.
Um, now if, uh, I w- if I'm looking for people, I'm looking on in Discord channels actually- Mm. Uh-huh... so very specialized Discord channels, or on Twitter, like Twitter or X.
Such a treasure trove of really great media talent. Yeah. Shout out to Producer Tom producing this podcast. That's where, that's where I found him, on Twitter. Absolute legend. Yes. Um, okay. The...
So the most recent video, you're, you're still very active here.
It was 11 days ago, already has 90,000 views, The Bedroom Trader Who Humiliated Every Banker in Japan, um, which I just bring up to ask, you're still producing this. Um, it's still clearly, like, important to you.
What, what does, what does, what does the channel mean to you now, now that you're doing so much else? You've got the agency, you've got Deus Media, um, but you're still doing this.
It clearly is, like, something you care about and enjoy. Yeah. For me, uh, I'll be very honest. Like, I could tell you that I'm so passionate about telling the stories of these media titans or whatever.
For me, this is a long-term game. Um, it... because if you look at what we do as a whole- Mm-hmm...
we make money with our agency, um, services, so, you know, building channels and shows for small companies, but also for bigger media companies like national television in Germany.
And we take these profits and funnel them into our own assets- Mm-hmm... because I don't want to be a service provider my whole life. I am really passionate about building my own media assets.
And I think right now, the greatest opportunity we have in media is YouTube channels.
It's so easy to start a channel and get it to, you know, a certain threshold of views to, let's say, you know, 200,000, 300,000 views for 30 days and then go from there, you know?
Um-funnel these people into a newsletter or whatever, because the audience that you build on YouTube is the stickiest compared to anything else. Mm-hmm. So that's our overall strategy, right?
Like take the money from the agency, put it into our own network. And, um, this, uh, Megalomania channel is part of the long-term strategy to have our own, uh, channel assets.
Now, at this point, it's like, you know, we're continuing the production. Uh, I have literally like, let's say two hours of work per month with this, which is recording the voiceover.
Um, and I have a, a brilliant team, two channel managers actually there. Mm. Um, and, uh, we're totally running this channel at a loss. [laughs] So this is not profitable. Um, but I- It's a calling card though. Yeah.
And I really think that we can turn this into a niche media company. So my goal here is to turn this into something bigger where we- Mm-hmm... do finance journalism, but in our style, you know? Um, and, uh,
and that's why I wanna keep this asset. Let's be real. AI is everywhere, and it's cranking out content nonstop. Most of it is forgettable, and at best it's kinda weird.
But the best creators are doing something different. They're building brands AI can't replace by focusing on their community, their content, and their unique voice.
The best creators are also going to the Creator Summit, a free three-day online event from June 24th through 26th.
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So if you're tired of chasing trends and ready to build something that matters, this is the event for you. You can get your free ticket to the Creator Summit at live.mightynetworks.com. Okay.
So you mentioned that, um, your ch- that Megalomania is operating at a loss. Where do the profits come from in your business right now? Yeah. So essentially, after I started building...
You know, I went all in on this idea, okay, I can build just a massive network of YouTube channels and, um, and, you know, have 1,000 channels at some point and, you know, basically, um, be king of YouTube.
Obviously, it's not as easy. Um, these channels, um, take a lot of work, and I was still operationally quite involved on the strategic level, you know?
So I needed to give inputs on topics and titles, for example. Mm-hmm. And I realized, okay, in order to scale this, what I would need to have is strategists for who can take on three or four channels at a time.
But these strategists, if you want them to be really good, which they need to be, you're gonna pay five, eight, 10K per month for them. Mm-hmm.
Which then would kind of make the whole thing unprofitable again on a channel per channel basis. So I thought, okay, why don't I just build YouTube channels for companies?
Isn't it easier to convince one company to pay me, let's say 5K, 10K per month for me to build them a nice channel than to build up a channel to the point where it makes five or 10K with AdSense? Mm-hmm.
And the answer is, yes, that's much easier. So during that time when I was building YouTube channels, I already started doing consulting gigs.
I, you know, started getting inbound requests from companies to do all kinds of things, and that was super complicated because some of these things were... Yeah, like some of these...
Like for example, I, I remember we hired videographers for some shoot, um, like street interviews somewhere in the US, and I'm not even based in the US, but I was taking on these projects because people were giving me money, and I was like, "Okay, they're giving me money.
I, I do the job," right? Yeah. And then at some point I realized, okay, let me, let me productize that a little bit more.
And so now if we wanna talk about the profitable side of the business, there's two things that we do.
The first one is we build YouTube channels for, um, agencies, consultants, SMEs, with the goal of building, uh, assets, channel assets for them that just generate leads- Mm-hmm... every month for them.
So I believe every company should have a YouTube channel, and through this YouTube channel, you can generate leads and ultimately sales very well. And we make sure we build these channels for these companies.
They have zero work with this. Um, and we take care of literally everything, the ideation, the scripting, the editing, and so on.
I guess that's more like the boring part, but it's the part that makes, uh, good m- good money- Yeah... and is also in high demand 'cause m- more and more companies are starting to get onto YouTube.
The second thing that we do is we work with media companies because there's extremely high confusion in the media world on how to operate on YouTube. Mm.
So what we do, um, is we talk with, uh, for example, we're working with national television in Germany. There's, uh, players like ARD and ZDF that probably nobody on this podcast will know- [laughs]...
but every German that listens to this knows them. Um, and, uh, they realize, all of these players realize that linear TV is just going down, right? Nobody's watching that.
Um, in Germany, the average age is, you know, somewhere in the 60s. You know, literally the viewers are dying.
So these-The, yeah, these companies or these, uh, uh, media companies, they are trying to get onto streamers, onto YouTube, and so on. Um, and we, uh, we help them to do that. So for example, we produce one channel.
Uh, it's called High Performer Henning. Mm-hmm. It's a channel about finance and business in the broadest sense, but told in a humorous way,
and it is at this point, I guess the second-largest, uh, business and finance channel in Germany. Um, and, uh, and we have more examples where we do similar things, you know?
Sometimes we will finance this by teaming up with a company. So for example now, we're working on a very secret project, but I c- I can give a sneak peek.
We're working with a, um, let's call it a, um, a nutrition company, supplement company, and we will have a, uh, like a villa with lots of, uh, creators in there, and there will be challenges, and this will be streamed on,
you know... We're talking to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and all the other players right now. Oh, it's like a Love Island, but, but- Kind of, yeah... I don't know. It's like a, it's like a sh- like a real show. Mm-hmm.
And then you have a company in the background who have, you know, products that fit the show that, uh, uh, that finance this whole thing. Mm-hmm.
Um, and, and those are the kind of things that we do right now with this, uh, production company.
Um, I'm curious about working with some of these actual traditional media companies versus some of the companies that wanna be on YouTube but don't traditionally work within media.
Um, I'm always interested in, like, what creators can learn from traditional media versus what can be kind of thrown out.
Uh, are there, are there things about working with some of these companies that, that you really enjoy, something that they bring to the table, um, that, that you've learned from them even, these traditional media companies?
Yeah, 100%. Um, I think when we started working with television, the biggest revelation that we had was how diligent they are in their research, and how they do journalism, you know?
And, um, for every new, like, scriptwriter that we onboard from the YouTube world, and then we're like, "Okay, you're gonna work on this television channel," uh, it's always a shock for them because they need to have two sources for each, for everything that they, you know- Reclaim...
claim. Mm-hmm. Right?
Um, they need to r- really be diligent in doing their research, and I think that's something that, uh, you know, the whole YouTube world can learn a lot from because in the end we want to have the truth out there.
Mm-hmm.
We don't just wanna make some claims and pretend like this is the truth, but we really wanna do, uh, deep research, and I think, uh, that's something we can learn from this old world which, like, we take for granted and that if we, you know, switch on the TV, these things are fact-checked.
Mm-hmm. And obviously there's, like, discussions about, oh, that some of them are skewed towards- Inevitably biased... the left or right or whatever. Mm-hmm. But, you know, in the end,
they have this ambition to, you know, have it all fact-checked, and I think that's something that I really enjoyed learning about. Mm-hmm. Um, what about, like, how they are measuring success?
Are there, is it, is it something that they're ta- Is it just pure, like, audience numbers? Um, is it outpacing their viewership, uh, from traditional linear television?
How are traditional media companies you're working with measuring success on YouTube? Yeah, great question. So what they have is they have archetypes, and for these different archetypes, they have a lot of,
you know, specific names. Mm-hmm. Um, and the archetype... And then for some archetypes, they reach them very well. You know? Mm-hmm.
Like let's say, you know, senior people that, you know, sit at home and have nothing to do, and they had, like, a great career and what...
And so there's, like, these d- different archetypes and then one of the archetypes is young, ambitious, urban, um, you know, mid-20 to mid-30 year olds.
Uh, y- and then they go as deep as basically telling you what kind of brands they wear. Mm-hmm. Patagonia or whatever, you know? And what kind of TV shows they like, what kind of movies, music they like.
And so this, um, young, ambitious, 25, 20, uh, 35, that's one of the archetypes that we, uh, focus on, and then the KPI of these media companies is literally to just reach these people.
So in the first moment, they, like, some of them are not looking at profitability or something. They just have the goal to reach them. But that's different from company to company.
Like, when we work with these big, uh, national television companies, they are funded by the state. Mm-hmm. So their mission is to reach everyone in the whole, um, population.
That's why they don't really care if, you know, they, they run this at a profit or not. They are tax-funded anyways. They just need- Mm-hmm... to reach everyone with their content. To distribute information. Mm-hmm.
Exactly, to distribute information and, uh, education evenly.
Now, if we, uh, work with, we work with a couple of smaller, uh, privately owned media companies, for them it's, you know, obviously heavily skewed towards being break, even being profitable. Mm-hmm. And, um, they're,
to be honest, it's, it's not like we, like they, y- you realize that they don't have a lot of money, and it's a, it's a tough business, and they really need to make the calculations.
They need to look at, "Okay, uh, can we afford this?"
And then it helps if-Some of them have great products in the back end, like, you know, memberships that work extremely well or other value-added, uh, services that they can sell through their distribution. Mm-hmm.
Um, uh, s- remaining on the topic of metrics, for the channels that you own, that you are standing up, like that, that motorcycle gang channel, for example, what are the most important metrics you're tracking as you're trying to grow these channels, and then as you're sustaining them once they've actually reached a, a certain level of growth?
So what we've always tracked is very simply just the subscribers and the views. But I'll tell you honestly what we do
right or what we'll do in the future is we want to look at how this converts to something at the back end. Mm-hmm. Because I realized I don't want to build, um, YouTube channels or niche media companies.
So let's say a YouTube channel plus a newsletter plus, you know, short form on TikTok, Instagram, whatever.
Um, I don't want to build this just with the, with the goal to monetize it, uh, through, uh, through ads and sponsorships. I don't think that's a great strategy.
Um, so what, what we are tracking is how this converts to whatever offer we're selling in the back end.
Um, and then it becomes something that is, um, much easier to finance and something that is much closer to what we're doing right now with our clients already, right? Mm-hmm.
Like, for our clients, we're not building channels so that they have a fancy channel and they get famous, right? What they want is sales.
And so, uh, this is, this is super cool because I'm doing something that is helping us build up cash flow, and at the same time, it's, yeah, I'm doing exactly what I will do with my own portfolio, which is then convert these views into cash flow- Mm...
with a nice offer in the back end. And so one more thing that we started doing with some of these channels is to offer lead magnets to basically turn these views, these YouTube views, into email subscribers.
Um, and that for us is a pretty important metric to see, okay, how many people do actually sign up as a percentage of the views? 'Cause that tells us, okay, we're up to something.
If this lead magnet works, then probably we can offer a, a product in this direction. Mm-hmm.
Um, you've, you've brought this up a couple times now, how you've evolved from, like, being focused on building the channel and AdSense revenue into now this, this more diversified business.
You've started talking about newsletters, other platforms.
Um, tell me about what your ambition is in terms of the structure of the business you're trying to build over whatever time span makes sense to you, maybe, like, over the next five years, what your ideal business structure is-
Yeah... for everything you're doing. Um, it's, it's very straightforward. So I think we'll always do, uh, agency services.
And for these agency services, building, you know, building YouTube channels, helping media companies build YouTube channels, um, I want this to be the biggest YouTube agency in the world. Mm.
I think we have so much potential there. There's so much need for this, and YouTube is just going to keep growing, and I want us as a company to be focused on YouTube solely and be extremely good with that.
And then be, like, focus on making money for people through YouTube, not just focus on building cool channels or whatever- Mm... right? Like, it's, it's very performance driven. So that's for the agency side of things.
And then the ambition, uh, on the, on the, you know, channel side of things is to build niche media companies.
And, um, I think what's, what's realistic is that starting from next year, we can build one niche media company per month with the, uh, you know, based on the YouTube channels that we are starting to build in this portfolio.
Mm-hmm. Now, what is a niche media company?
Again, it's, you ha- you start, at least we start, with a YouTube channel, and then we funnel this traffic into something else to diversify, so for example, into a newsletter, and then we start monetizing that through paid communities- Mm...
micro SaaS applications or whatever. Yeah. Um, how many channels are you involved in right now, both with it, both that, that, that, that Deus, your holding company, owns and then client channels?
Um, two separate numbers, I guess. Yeah. Um, so the channels that we build ourselves, we... At the, at the peak, we had 14 channels.
And then, uh, you know, with, with this move where we realized, okay, like, it's really hard to run 14 channels at the same time if you don't want to, like, spend the additional money to get strategists on board. Mm-hmm.
And so how, right now we're- Wait, I'll, I'll stop you for a second. How, at that peak, how many, um, employees did you have as well? Um, I think it must...
So employees, not many, because back then I hired, uh, I almost hired nobody. So now we have- Mm... more employees than back then, but we had probably 40 or 50 freelancers. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which is w- which is crazy.
Like, and back then [laughs] I was literally the guy talking with each person, you know? And obviously we had channel managers who help, right? But I was still extremely involved. So- Mm...
pretty close to burnout, I think. Um, [laughs] and then we, uh, then we cut that downUm, through, um, I think there, you know, through basically either selling, so we sold two channels. Mm.
Um, just channels dying because- Mm... you know, channels don't run forever, right?
If, if you go into some of these niches, they are very hot for some short time, but if you don't increase the production quality steadily over the next months- Mm...
and years, at some point you are out-competed, so the channel just dies. Um, so some of them just died. Um, and the other ones we still have, and we just run them or we have actual plans for, uh, expanding them.
Um- And it's-- You're-- How many is it now? Six. Oh, six. Okay. Wow. From 14 to six. Yeah. Yeah. Um- Uh, you-- Some of these sales, you did-- You had this post from late 2023 on LinkedIn where you say you- Yeah...
sold one channel for 93.7 thousand euros. Um, that- Yeah... I was impressed by that. Ha-have you... How many of those did you sell versus died, uh, from the, the, the gap of eight from the peak to now? Yeah.
Uh, so as I said, we sold, um, we sold two channels that were, you know, like, basically similar price. We sold a very small one, but that was more like a, you know... That was super small. Yeah.
Um, and basically a friend from, from Twitter who's going to build something cool with it. Um, and, um, yeah. Uh, so far we alway- like, we always used Flippa- Mm...
which I think is a platform that definitely could use a lot of improvement i-in the YouTube channel, uh, space. Uh, but I guess it's still the best one out there. Mm-hmm.
How do you-- How, how are you pricing a channel like this? Like that 93.7K number. You don't have to give the specific numbers for this deal, but, like, how-- what factors go into this deal besides, like, audience size?
Okay. So there's like, there's... I mean, there's a lot of factors when it comes to valuation.
If you just look at it from a financial perspective, I would say there's numbers being thrown around from five to 11 EBITDA TTM- Mm-hmm... so trailing 12 months. Um,
uh, that's like purely financially, right? If you look at the EBITDA. Um, from a kind of...
If you do a little bit of qualitative analysis, what I would look at for these channels is what's the long-term potential to turn this into, you know, an actual media company? Because- Mm...
I think what you want to avoid is to just have a channel that can just be a channel, you know?
You want to turn this into something bigger, and luckily, YouTube gives you that possibility and, you know, in many, many cases if you do it cleverly. So then if you have a channel that can...
You know, right now it's just a channel with funny video essays, but maybe in the future you can add, you can introduce a host, you know- Mm... and you can build a little bit more of this audience connection.
And then maybe you can introduce a second format, which is like a daily show or whatever, right? Um, then suddenly this channel could be worth, uh, much more. Yeah. Okay.
Um, I want to bring up something I learned from another interview I recently did. This one is not out as we're speaking, but by, by the time this episode is out, it will be out.
Uh, this YouTube strategist named Haley Rose. She spent a decade within Google and YouTube, and then now for the past year and a few months, she's been working as a YouTube strategist.
She specializes in helping people who might have already large audiences on other platforms grow on YouTube, or if they have, you know, already a few hundred thousand on YouTube, really accelerating them.
Um, and at the core of it, she shared her five-step anatomy of an upload system, and I wanted to ask. Um, I'll read it out. But I wanted to ask if this resonates with how y-you guys, um, approach YouTube.
So the five steps. Number one is idea. Is it actually worth making? Is it viable for YouTube? Number two, uh, pre-production.
Can you draft the title, the thumbnail, the script before you shoot and get that all squared away? Number three, shoot day.
Can you make sure you're really batching, you're really efficient with film days, make it sustainable? Number four, editing.
Can you really be, uh, efficient and, you know, ruthless about how you're killing your darlings and, and turning this into, like, a quality product? Number five, the upload, um, and the post upload, right?
Do you have a plan B if the video flops in the first few hours? Do you have, do you have, uh, uh, you know, additional thumbnails ready to deploy and experiment with? So that's it.
Does that map roughly with how you guys approach YouTube production? Or what would the differences be? Um, I would say we spend more time at the front to create this master plan- Mm-hmm...
that already gives us a lot of the answers later on.
So when we create our master plan for a new channel, whether it's for a client or it's for ourselves, we already ask ourselves, "How can we make the production, for example, these shoot days, how, how do we can...
How can we find a content format that doesn't require us to, for example, you know, go out and have film days, right?" Yeah.
"So how can we build formats that are, um, as simple as possible with the most effect, uh, as possible?" Um, and, uh, and all of that goes kind of into a master plan that we create at the beginning.
Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. AI makes it easier than ever to churn out content. So easy, most of it gets ignored. That's why you should check out the Creator Summit, a free three-day virtual event happening June 24th through 26th.
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Uh, one other thing I just remembered, speaking of people I've spoken to [chuckles] on this podcast before, this guy Alex Emery, who I had on back in September or October, and he works currently with this big YouTuber, John Nellis.
He's helped him grow. He's a, a footballer YouTube account in the UK.
Uh, but before Alex, who I spoke to, was, was working with John, he was at Sky Sports, you know, the, the major UK sports broadcaster, and he played a key part in growing their YouTube presence.
So obviously I'm thinking of your work, uh, working with the German television broadcasters.
Um, and what he did was, like, basically taking their portfolio of hosts and their, like, obviously massive portfolio of content that they're producing on a week-to-week basis as well as their, their archive and, you know, doing things like, "Here's, like, how we can kind of jump on this YouTube format and cut up existing content into a five-minute video for this," or, you know, eventually they started making YouTube for a series.
Um, but yeah, I wanted to ask, like, what you're doing to help these broadcasters translate their existing content into YouTube content. Yeah.
So most broadcasters when we talk to them, they already kind of have a rough idea of where they want to go and who they want to reach. And then in most cases, um, you also have some kind of specialization there.
You have existing, um, IP, you have existing, let's say, connections, actors or whatever that you might want to repurpose, and we try to build upon that.
And then what we do is we take our knowledge, being, you know, people YouTube-first and, um,
basically having grown up with this platform and many of my, my team members, they're like 20, 22, 25, whatever, so, uh, young people that consider YouTube their life.
Um, and we come up with ideas and concepts and formats that fit these preexisting conditions, assets, IP, and so on. Mm-hmm.
Um, and I will say that in most of the cases, you, um, you need to, you know,
do this YouTube-first, so you don't try too hard to kind of take existing stuff and then cut it up or whatever and put it on YouTube. That usually doesn't work because- Not these days... YouTube is such a...
Yeah, it's such a specific platform, and only going YouTube-first will give you the desired results. Mm-hmm. Uh, so you mentioned growing up with YouTube.
I think it's time to talk about your history as a teenage YouTuber.
You mentioned this when we first met, um, but we didn't get so deep into it, so I would love, like, in as much as this leads to what you do now, I would love for you to tell me about how you got into YouTube as a teenager, what you were doing.
If it was, like, as intentional and strategic as you are with it now, what were you doing? Why were you doing it? Yeah.
I think this was, uh, I need to look it up because I keep getting asked about it, and I don't know the exact age, but I think it was either 15 or 16 when I started my first YouTube channel, and it was about men's beauty.
So this was something that, you know, preoccupied my puberty mind at this point, so I needed to figure out, you know, how to get rid of pimples and how to style my hair and stuff like that.
So I started a YouTube channel about that, and as a man, obviously that was a... Like, that was quite a phenomenon back then, which led to me becoming YouTube partner super quickly.
Back then, being YouTube partner was, like, this big thing, right?
It was still a manual appuc- application process and, uh, none of this algorithmic process that we have right now, right, where basically you just become YouTube partner once you meet the threshold.
It was more like, "Yeah, now I guess you're ready to apply, and let's hope for the best, you know? Uh, maybe it's too early." Um, and, um, and that grew quite nicely. Um, at some point I, uh...
And, you know, you get a lot of attention with that, um, uh, some positive, some negative. At some point it didn't align with my interest, so I said, "Okay, let me just stop."
Now, looking back, if I would've kept going, who knows what would've happened, right? Um, but back then my mindset was, "I wanna build a super big company.
I need to, you know, go into, like, do business studies, work for a company, ideally, you know, some strategy consulting firm or some investment bank, and then, you know, launch my super serious
company, right, that's going to be taken seriously. It cannot be YouTube," right? And then [chuckles]... And then kind of YouTube stuck with me, right? It was always this thing that I was doing on the side.
I had so, [chuckles] so many different channels over these past years and, um, had reasonable success with it. And then at some point I said, "Look, like, I should just probably do that full time."
And, uh, I have never been happier.
It's, uh, it's amazing, you know, that I can just build stuff on YouTube, um, and I can work with other people who are passionate about YouTube and media and talk to guys like you, you know- Mm-hmm... uh, for a living.
Yeah. No, I mean, it's amazing.
So one thing I'm, I'm picking up here that I didn't necessarily know, you, even, even while you were working as a consultant and building this career, like a decade you spent in business, you were always kind of tinkering on the side or with just various channels?Yeah.
Like, um, s-some successful, some not successful. So I went through the phase that, like, [laughs] uh, some guys I guess went also through, where I had, like, a motivational channel.
[laughs] Um, at some point, I think when I was, like, 17 or 18, um, I was... I started another channel about, uh, you know, topics, uh, like how to get a girlfriend. Yeah.
Even though I didn't have a single girlfriend in my whole life at this point. [laughs] At that point back then, right? But I was good enough to give advice on it [laughs] apparently. Yeah.
Um, I had a channel about, um, my life as a consultant- Mm... and I think I can... I think this is the podcast where I'll take credit for this.
I think I kicked off an entire industry, a YouTube industry, of people talking about their consulting or investment banking job bec-because I swear to God, when I started talking about my kind of typical day as a management consultant and what's better, management consulting or investment banking, back then there was nothing out there.
And now if you look on YouTube, it's flooded with people from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, big four- Mm... KPMG, PWC, whatever, talking about their typical days.
And I tend to believe that I kicked this off, [laughs] you know? [laughs] At some point I stopped, because I'll be honest,
uh, this also, uh, you know, led to quite some scrutiny from my employ- em- from my employer back then, you know? Oh. Uh, because nobody was doing that on YouTube.
It was a very novel thing, and here's this guy talking very transparently about his job and what he likes about it, but also what he di-doesn't like about it.
So, um, uh, yeah, I kind of stopped at some point, but, um, this, uh, this kept growing, you know. More people got onto YouTube, started talking- Mm... about these jobs, um, until now.
Well, you know, I, I only have one source here, speaking of the rigor of traditional media, but, but we can, we can call it for now you're the original consultant YouTuber.
[laughs] Only have one source, but, uh- [laughs] An-another thing I wanted to ask about, um, and I don't know if there's anything here, so, so let me know. But, um, you spent many years living in Shanghai.
Uh, you helped many businesses, as you, as you mentioned briefly earlier, startups kind of enter the Chinese market. Um, I'm really interested in, in as much as, like, that,
that cross-cultural experience of, like, coming from Europe and then, like, helping businesses break into the Chinese market has taught you anything about the way you operate even today, and, like, making sure that, you know, the, the work you're doing for YouTube with these companies, like, can translate to broader markets, et cetera.
Um, and again, I don't, I don't know.
Maybe I, maybe I'm looking for, reaching for straws here, but I'm really curious if there's something from that experience that you can take away in regards to h- your work in the creator economy. Yeah. So three things.
Um, s-a certain, like, scrappiness, secondly speed, and thirdly results orientation. So for the first one,
um, Chinese people are extremely, what I would say, like, scrappy. The goal is to get things done. In Germany, for example, we sometimes, you know, we
have the, all of these rules and bureaucracy, and this needs to be done that way. Chinese people sometimes are much more creative in how they approach things, and they just, you know, they just find a way, basically.
And I try to apply that both to what I do with my own channels as well as, um, more importantly, what we do with, uh, client channels. The second thing is speed.
Um, China just operates at a speed that is, uh, I would say five times as fast as, uh, as Europe, and, uh, you know, feels like two times as fast as the US.
Um, so when you're, when you come back from China to, to Europe, you feel like, damn, you know? Like, nothing's moving here. Um, so I try to take these, t-I try to take this mindset of
w-we, we don't need to, like, create this thing in... Like, it, it doesn't need to take us two months to create this series, for example. Like, let's try to do it in three weeks. Why not? Right?
Um, so, so speed is the second thing. And then the third thing is, um, results orientation.
When I was working in China and we were, um, for example, working with bil- big, um, state-owned enterprises, um, but also with private corporations and, you know, matching them with startups and stuff like that, it doesn't matter.
But the point is, when we worked with these companies, what I always saw is there was not a lot of talk about, yeah, you know, we... Like, all of these soft factors.
Like, these people asked me directly, "What is the ROI?" You know? Like, "How much money are we going to get out of this? And if you can't make us more money than you're costing, then we're not going to work with you."
And they were surprisingly direct about this given that, you know, the Chinese culture is a culture of indirectness. And, um, and I really like this results orientation and try to, uh, apply it to my own business too.
Nice. Yeah. That's... Do you think, then, you were saying how, like, you came back to Europe and it's like everything moves so slow. You think it gave you an advantage, uh, in how you operate?Spending that time in China.
Uh, 100%, yeah. Gives you a different mindset. Um, but you need refreshers because- Mm... you get used to Europe, you know? So you need to go back to China for, like, a month and, like, soak it all in [laughs] Yeah...
and then, uh, return again. [laughs] Like a cold, like a cold plunge if we're going back to saunas. Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Um, how much, how much time do you spend working each week, and, like, how is this broken down?
Seems like you do a lot, but that a lot of what you do is done very efficiently. So how much time do you actually spend working each week, and how does that break down? Right now, my life is literally work and workouts.
[laughs] And I, I'll, I'll be very vulnerable here. For the first time in my life, I realize that that's not ideal, you know? Mm.
Like, for the past years it was, it was great for me because I love my work, and I consider working out, and I do a lot of... I did a lot of martial arts- Mm...
up until last year, where I had my last fight, um, to be a great balance for that.
But, um, now for the past couple of months I thought, "Okay, I think I need to, uh, I, you know, if I want to build a family, and, uh, that's something I definitely want to do, I need at least a little bit of balance there."
I will probably still work much more than, you know, the average human being in the, in the population, but, uh, I, I need to have a l- a, a tiny little bit more balance there. I think I'm, uh, I'm generally,
I'm trying to be as efficient as possible, so for whatever task that I do, I have the habit of asking myself, first of all, "Can I outsource it?"
And then if I outsource it, "Can I outsource it forever so that I, you know, brief this person now and then never again?"
And that's helped me a lot when working with freelancers, because if you need to brief these people again and again, it's, it's a nightmare. Um, and I try to create SOPs wherever I go.
So whoever worked at, uh, one of my holding companies ever knows that I love, uh, recording, uh, screen recordings, and I'll just record them on my, uh, on my phone, you know?
Whenever I review something or someone sends me something, wants feedback, I immediately do a screen recording, I give my feedback, and then I load, uh, upload it into, you know, either it's a knowledge base or it's, uh, some kind of SOP so that this mistake or this process does not need to be repeated again.
And you don't need to communicate it to them again. Um, okay, just a couple more questions.
Regarding YouTube, what is one trend you're most bullish on and one thing you are most bearish on regarding YouTube specifically? So what I'm extremely bullish on right now is, um, the trend of building in public
on YouTube. So a lot of founders hopping on this, and I guess people like Daniel Dellen are trailblazers who started this.
Um, but I think there's much more potential there, and I think we'll see not only these, you know, 20-something-year-old, you know, billionaires [laughs] or millionaires.
Sometimes, sometimes feels like every 16 year old is making millions each month. Um, I don't think we'll see only them, but we'll see more and more, you know,
older, like, CEOs, managing directors, whatever, uh, on the platform building their personal brand.
And if I may, one thing that I would suggest for everyone who wants to do that is, uh, another trend that I'm extremely bullish on right now is vulnerability.
Just as I told you right now that, you know, I feel like I'm not doing everything right here with my work-life balance, I think if you can be vulnerable on YouTube in your building-in-public format, that works extremely well.
'Cause people are so tired of seeing all these, like, private jets and- Mm-hmm... Rolexes and whatever, and, "Oh, I have the perfect life. I have it all figured out." And we all know it's not true. Yeah.
We all have so many problems. We have so many challenges, and it feels like every year we get older, there's only more question marks in our lives, you know?
[laughs] And, and here we are pretending we have it all figured out, right? So vulnerability works to anyone who wants to try it. Mm-hmm. Um, what am I bearish on?
I think I'm bearish on the whole YouTube, uh, automation, low-quality- Mm... content space, which I was a part of too, right?
Like, when we started building channels, we really went hard on content that can be produced for as cheap as possible and can get as many clicks as possible.
You would never get a sponsor for this kind of content because it's, they, they would look at it and they're like, "What the fuck is this," right? But you get AdSense revenue for this.
And I think I'm, I'm bearish on that. There's two sides of the coin here. I think the, uh, the thing to be aware of is that YouTube doesn't like that kind of content, right? Because
it just decreases the quality of the platform if you have, like, weird videos that are, you know, AI-generated and basically, like, clickbait you into watching something that then after watching this for 10 minutes you feel like you br- lost some brain cells.
Um, and on the other side though, I think for people that approach it cleverly,
if they are able to upgrade their content and their production quality-And now we are at this interesting point in time where we, like AI is getting better and better, and we can generate entire sequences of video essays, for example, you know, with the snap of a finger within minute, uh, within seconds through, uh, AI.
Um, so some people who play it cleverly and who are big right now in this YouTube automation and faceless space, they might actually be able to drive down their production cost massively within the next, you know, twelve to twenty-four months.
And then, um, if they then also drive up the production value, then they are onto something, I think. Yeah.
I, I, I, I agree with you where it's like as the ability to produce quantity increases, quality only becomes more valuable, kind of what you're saying. Yeah, one hundred percent. Um, I guess we can kind of stop it here.
We've been talking for a long time. This has been a great conversation. But I do wanna give you the chance to, to, to plug whatever you want.
I don't know if you're looking for more clients right now, but, uh, this is your time to plug. I think I'm always interested in connecting with people from the media space. I'm genuinely passionate about it, right?
So anyone who, who hears this and, uh, resonates with something I said, feel free to reach out.
Um, my agency, Channel Craft, is always there to help build you a YouTube channel that generates leads every month with very little effort.
So if you have been looking at YouTube and you're like, "Oh, you know, it's hours and hours of work, and is it going to work out, and it's complicated," then well, we can make that very easy for you, and, uh, we're happy to help.
But in general, I'm happy to connect with people from the space, um, share knowledge, and, uh, build, you know, personal relationships because in the end that's what makes our lives more interesting.
That's what it's all about. He's on LinkedIn, people. Hit him up. Kevin, thank you for coming on. This was a blast. Thank you so much, man. All right. Listener, see you next week.
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