12 Years, 5000 Videos – Lessons That Built A YouTube Empire with Nathan Graham

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down 12 years, 5 ,000 videos, lessons that built a YouTube empire. And to drop these value bombs, I brought to Nathan Graham and the EO Fire Studios. Nathan is a YouTuber veteran with 13 years of experience. And today, we'll be talking about how much money you can make from content creation, how to get started, how to actually come up with great video ideas and oh, so much more. And the big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Nathan and our sponsors.

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1:19Visit Franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y dot com. Nathan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Disagree with is a crazy thing to start with. I would say a lot of people disagree with the fact that you can make a large amount of money online with social media. That's at least how it was when I started. I know now a lot of people are probably aware that you can make a lot of money with social media. But when I started, no one believed it. They thought I was crazy. My first paycheck from YouTube was 156 bucks.

2:07And from there, it obviously kept going up as my channels grew. And growing indeed, Fire Nation, as we talk about 12 years, 5 ,000 videos, lessons that built a YouTube empire. And I'm speaking to one of the very few people in the world that's been doing this as long as me, which is now 13 years, and that actually has more videos than I have shows. I'm at 4 ,862. You are over 5 ,000 videos, Nathan, and you continue to produce, brother. So congrats on that. I commend you. And let's break it down. For all of us who want to be content creators or continue to be content creators or become better content creators, how much money can we make with content creation?

2:53Let's be real. Well, I would say it's kind of endless. If you want, I could share some statistics with you. I love stats. Break it down, brother. Okay. So one of my channels that I'm looking at right now, this is actually our smallest channel that we have. And the last 28 days got 16 and a half million views. And we're sitting at 78 ,000 revenue. So that's for one channel getting 16 and a half thousand views without getting as specific as you don't want to. Like what's the basic genre? Is this sports? Is this comedy? Is this health? Is this wellness? What are we looking at? So a lot of my videos are focused on a younger audience and I would say they're just purely entertainment.

3:43We've done crazy things like hunt tornadoes. One of our biggest videos last year was we bought a fully functioning house on Amazon. and that video actually went really viral on the news and a bunch of different outlets. But I would say our videos are very creative-based. They're crazy. They're over the top. Every episode is very, very different. Did Jeff Bezos show up at the ribbon-cutting ceremony? I really wish he did.

4:15Speaking of viral, that would have done pretty well. But I want to talk about specifically, how does making content impact our business? How does it impact our brand? So in my opinion, making content is one of the best marketing pillars because when you're making content, that means pretty much all of your views are 100 % organic, which means people are choosing to watch you. So that also means that people are going to begin to trust you. They begin to look up to you and I mean today mainstream media is completely shifting and people don't want to follow brands anymore like Tim Cook for example the CEO of Apple has more followers than the Apple accounts and it just goes to show that people want to follow people simple as that on top of that paid advertising is only gonna get more expensive it's only gonna go up but organic content like the content that you produce is free unless obviously you decide to spend money on the content but my first thousand videos that I produced on my channel were basically 100 % free because it was just me filming them in my bedroom with a computer so let's talk about specifically the brand side of things like how does it impact brand for an individual content creator I mean I think it builds, I mean, you're building a large following of people that love you.

5:50That's basically what you're doing. And that can build brand around your strengths of what you're good at. So for example, if I'm a technology creator, right, I can build a very large fan base of people that love technology around my strength as a tech creator. And those people are going to trust me. They're going to look up to me. They're going to, you know, depend on my reviews if I review the latest iPhone that comes out. And that can lead to a ton of, obviously, sponsorships and opportunities and so many things that can come down the line and maybe even your own product, right? Right. There's tons of companies being built.

6:33And a lot of people listening to this podcast probably know, but there's tons of massive products being launched and going viral just through a TikTok video that are getting, you know, not just millions of views, but making millions of dollars. Now, what if we're on the beginner side of things? Because there might be some people listening right now who have never become a content creator, but they actually are listening to this right now because they saw the title. They know the content. They want to learn how to become a content creator. How do you recommend those individuals get started today?

7:08Yeah, that's a really good question. So that's kind of actually what I'm pivoting towards because I've been a creator for so long. I've built massive YouTube channels, but now I'm starting to give back to the younger creators and I'm really helping them solve their problems and their issues. And that's something that's kind of like my new focus, which is a company called Blueprint. And the way we explain it in Blueprint is we explain it like a tree is how you start a YouTube channel or a social media page. Think about when you plant the seed of a tree. It starts in the ground and that is your category of content.

7:51So your category of content would be something like technology or gaming or news or whatever. But your category of content doesn't change. So you have to pick one that you love, you enjoy, and you also know a little bit about. And then once your tree starts to grow, you develop what we call a niche, which, you know, a lot of people know the word niche, but a niche is inside your category. So for example, if I pick the category of gaming, then my niche might be Call of Duty. And then you really want to focus on that niche. A lot of creators, they go all over the place and they jump to a bunch of different video games or a bunch of different things.

8:37And they don't grow their channel because they're spread too thin off of all these other videos. Because you've got to think if you're growing a channel, you're growing an audience. and that audience wants to see repetitive things, right? There's a reason that Chick-fil-A still sells the same chicken that they've been selling for the past 30, 40 years. People want repetitiveness. But on top of that, once you expand your tree, you start to grow these branches. And this is where all the video ideas come from. And we have a bunch of different ways that we brainstorm viral video ideas. And then from the branches, you also have your leaves.

9:15and those are the trends. And you can really take advantage of trends to grow your channel. And the reason we call them Leafs is because they're also seasons and they come and go and they die and they get replaced. But you have to learn how to take advantage of those seasons when they're in their prime time. Well, I wanna dive into both of those topics because I think they're really important, especially for people that are just beginning because that can be very daunting. But Fire Nation, before we do that, Quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business.

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13:01You'll also have access to a team of licensed agents who will walk you through the process step-by-step. Not to mention, Policy Genius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace with thousands of five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilots. Secure your family's future with Policy Genius. Head to policygenius.com to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. Nathan we're back and as we kind of teased before the break I mean I think there's a huge issue for people right now and that's the daunting task of coming up with these video ideas I mean maybe people can be like okay I can picture like five or ten ideas but then what like they don't realize what might come next so then they never start because of that what is your recommendation when it comes to coming up with video ideas yeah for sure yeah I mean that's something we we focus on in blueprint a lot I have a lot of basically blueprints for how I think of all of my video ideas thousands of them I think if you're getting started though the easiest thing to do is just to look around and replicate look around at other creators that are making content that you want to make and see how you can replicate their content you don't necessarily want to copy them but you want to take inspiration from them.

14:26There's a great book about this. It's called Steal Like an Artist, where the idea is that you don't want to necessarily steal the actual art piece, but you want to steal the thinking behind it and what inspired it. And that's kind of how I started my channel. I would look at other creators that were making the same videos that I wanted to make, and I would kind of take their ideas, but I would put my own twist onto it. And then obviously, I would make the video in my style with my own personality and my own humor to the video. But then when you get into the more advanced stuff, you start using things like one of my favorites is called the one plus one equals two.

15:07And we use this all the time. And this has actually created some of our most viral videos on our channel that have gotten almost 100 million views. But it's basically the idea that you take two very well performing ideas and you combine them together to make a third idea because the reality is is that every video idea has already been created but there is a insane amount of combinations of ideas that have not been created another one would be the law of leverage right so once you start growing your channel and getting a little bit of following you can use leverage from other creators other brands to help you grow We also have the 10x rule, which is one of the things that we like to do.

15:49If we find a underperforming video that we believe is a very good idea, we will actually 10x the idea to blow it up. So, for example, one of the things we did is we built a lemonade stand. Now, obviously, building a lemonade stand for a video is not anything crazy. So we said, OK, how can we 10x this idea? What if we build the world's biggest lemonade stand? right? So then we built the world's biggest lemonade stand. It was three stories tall. And we posted this video, I believe in 2022. And it was one of our best performing videos. I think it hit like 30 million plus views. But there's a lot of ways that you can 10X a video, not just by the size, but you can 10X the story, the amount, the intensity.

16:35There's so many things that you can kind of focus in on. And that's just a couple blueprints. I have 12 that I currently use to brainstorm all of my ideas. Well, I would say the word intensity definitely fits for that most recent example you gave about the lemonade sand. I mean, that is intense. And hey, Fire Nation, if you're going to go for it, why not go after it intensely? Why not make it big? Why not have some fun? Now let's go through exactly what we should be focusing on when it comes to growing and of course, how we can grow our audience. So what should we be focusing on to grow our audience and how should we grow it?

17:14Yeah, good question. So someone asked me this the other day. I was coaching with some creators and they asked me, hey, it was a very intense question. They said, hey, if I had to focus on just a couple things to grow my YouTube channel for the next 10 years, what should I focus on? And I told them, I said, okay, give me a second. Let me, let me think about this. I'm going to get back to you. And I came back to them a couple months later because I really, really had to think about this. What is the three most vital things to focus on when it comes to being a creator? And I don't know why, but I never really thought of this as a creator.

18:00I always focused on these things, but I never really pieced them together. So what I figured out is I like to call it the three pillars. And these three things all connect like a flywheel or a puzzle piece. And if one of them is missing, then the whole thing doesn't work. So the first pillar is focusing on your audience, right? That's one of the most important things because your audience is the people that consume the content. They're the people that share the content. They're the people that you're giving value to. The audience is super, super important. You have to know your audience so well.

18:39If anything, you should be your audience. So if you're making a YouTube channel about technology, you should know a ton about technology and really get into the world of technology. Go to conventions, go meet people, Just get immersed into that world and you're going to understand a lot about your audience. And what that allows you to do is understand what they love, what they hate, what makes them laugh, what they get excited about. You know, you really want to get immersed in that. The next pillar is being different because the reality is, is that the best way to stand out online is to be different.

19:18And all of my most viral, most successful, biggest projects that I've done have been completely different. Like we mentioned earlier, one of my best performing videos a year ago was buying a house on Amazon. That was so different. Now, there's a lot of videos online of people buying stuff on Amazon, but no one's ever bought a house on Amazon. It was a very different, crazy idea. This video flew off the charts. It went across hundreds of news stations. It blew up. People were clipping my content. Someone clipped our video and got 100 million views on TikTok from our video. I mean, it's crazy, but it was very different, right?

20:00Now, obviously, it's hard to be different. Very, very hard to be different. But it's one of the things you have to focus on if you want to go viral. And then the third piece of the puzzle is consistency. Now, a lot of people when they hear the word consistency, they think, oh, I have to post a video every week or every day or whatever it is. But that's only half of the equation. The other half of the equation is making your last video your competition. Making that a video to beat because you have to keep improving your content and getting better and better and better. and over time you will go from quantity to quality.

20:46But the big thing about quality is a lot of people when they think of the word quality, they think, oh, a quality video is a well-edited video, a well-produced video, whatever that means. But some audience viewers don't care about a well-produced video. If you look at some of the most viral videos online, they're not well-produced because the audience doesn't care about that type of quality. They care about a different type of quality. So throughout the process of consistency, you will figure out what quality means to your audience. And the only way you do that is by making your last video your competition, you keep improving, you keep evolving, and you keep adjusting as you go down this creator journey.

21:32Now, it sounds like a lot, but I basically just gave everyone listening a 10-year plan to focus on. I would say it's pretty easy to understand, but obviously difficult to achieve. There's a reason that 0.1 % of creators have more than 10 million followers, because it's very difficult to get 10 million people to follow your stuff and enjoy you as a person. But that ultimately is the plan. I've also researched tons of creators. I have many many friends with you know tens of millions and hundreds of millions of followers and they also focus on these three things if you look at their entire history of their channel and their success and everything you can apply these three pillars to pretty much anyone's success online and you can even apply it to businesses if you look at some very massive companies you can look at like a company like Amazon, where they focused insanely hard on their customer.

22:35They were extremely consistent, constantly improving, but also they were different, innovative in the marketplace, the first people to ever introduce two-day free shipping and all of these crazy things. So it's a very simple system to understand, like I mentioned, but obviously very hard to actually execute and make a success. Well, Nathan, you've been dropping value bombs this entire episode, brother. I mean, especially those three points you just made. I mean, that is a 10-year roadmap to success, Fire Nation. If you're willing to sit down, follow those steps, follow that roadmap, follow that plan, and put in the work.

23:15Now, if our listeners are like, I got to learn more from Nathan. I want to connect with him. What is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously my main big YouTube channels are called Unspeakable, but that's mainly for a younger audience. I feel like most of the people listening to this might want to follow my Instagram, which is also Unspeakable, but I post a lot more stuff on there that's more focused on YouTube growth and development and more exciting stuff like that. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with NG and JLD today.

23:54So keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, including how to connect with Nathan, go to eofire.com and just type Nathan in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Nathan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that brother, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Nathan for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment?

24:27My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

25:12Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession-resilient businesses, and create legacy income for their families through franchising. Get started today with Franocity's Franchise Funding Guide, packed with real-world strategies to launch your business without draining your savings. Visit Franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y dot com.