186. If Your Personal Brand Gets Less than 500 Views, Watch This.

0:00If you're serious about building a personal brand or scaling a creative business, as 2026 is the year you go all in on YouTube. Today, we're breaking down why YouTube is the most important platform for your content strategy and our top 10 tips for success. Whether you've never uploaded a video or been in the game for years, this episode is gonna give you the blueprint to set yourself up for real success on YouTube in 2026. Let's get into it. All right, Brayden, to start us off, why should people go all in on YouTube in 2026? I think first off, it's the full stack. So you have a long form thing can live there, 10 plus minutes.

0:31We could also have shorts live on that same account. We could also have shorts live on that same account that can generate some traction. And let's say you have a really long thing. You could have a clips channel that's like two to 10 minute pieces of that longer cut, just like our podcast. So we're starting a clips channel in 2026. It's going to be a huge area of emphasis. And then we also have a vlog channel where it's not, it's like a vlog format, but we're going to be giving out value in this new channel. So it's like another stab at the apple every single month to get new people into our ecosystem.

0:59I think the fact that it is like the main platform for long form content helps build trust with your audience more than any other platform. There's people who have built incredible personal brands on short form. But I think about the people who I gravitate towards most, who I enjoy consuming their content the most, and who I've built the most trust with are the long form creators. And I totally understand that creating long form content on YouTube takes a lot more time and effort than it might for short form. But I think it generates the highest ROI, bar none, like more than any other platform.

1:39I think the creators who actually build businesses, 99 % of them, in my opinion, come from YouTube. Yeah. Like the ones that you see end up doing, oh, a successful brand, not just, oh, I sell this like digital good in my store. That happens a lot on Instagram. Like you see creators selling like, oh, this is how I color my videos or this is my little PDF. Creators that actually build a real business off the back of their thing, whether it be a clothing brand, a SaaS company, they do online courses, whatever that may be, usually funnels from YouTube. And what I've seen, like when they actually build seven figure plus businesses, it happens there.

2:14Some of them, some of them like the biggest short form creators. Yes, you'll see them do it. But they have such a huge net. The majority of them never see like that crazy success, I think, that's just doing short form. Some of them, some of them happen, but very few. You bring up a really good point too. I think the fact that it is full stack. There are multiple ways that you can post on Instagram and TikTok. You can post both vertical video. You can do horizontal as well. You know, you really don't have a limit, I don't think, on Instagram. I believe it's what, like at the most 10 minute videos.

2:47but you don't really see a lot of like 10 minute videos on Instagram. It's usually like 15, 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds, maybe slightly longer, but you can post video and photo like carousels or single photo. But the fact that on YouTube, like you can do shorts and then you can post videos really as long as you want. Like you said, you have opportunities. Like you could do a talking head sit or you could do a sit down talking head style video. You could do a vlog. You could do a podcast. There's so many different formats that you can do on YouTube. And you also have a lot more options as far as like how long of a format you can make.

3:25YouTube is also evergreen, right? It's like something that we posted two years ago. They still get views, which is amazing when you think about like the stuff that you're creating, whereas on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, you post that video, it's dead. After that, pretty much that 24 hour period, it's not really getting kicked up. You might randomly see a reel kick up in the algorithm, but it's super rare. Like I've maybe had that happen one time and it feels like an accident on their end. We see it on our channel too. We'll check analytics and we'll be like, oh, whoa, this channel or sorry, this video is starting to pick up a lot more.

4:02Me and you, I think, used to get so caught up in how a video performed or a podcast performed in the first 24 hours or even in the first week. And then we'll notice, we'll come back to a podcast maybe two or three months later. The first week, maybe it got five to 10 ,000 views. All of a sudden it's at like 25 or 30K over the course of like a few months. And so there's no other platform that does that because Instagram and TikTok, it just dies after 24 hours. Like it's not really getting pushed out to other viewers. It's also the way that you guys can monetize the most, right? Like AdSense pays us quite a bit of money every month.

4:44Like it's kind of crazy to see like originally you get like your first$100 check. Then you get$500,$1 ,000,$2 ,000. You have$3 ,000 check. That's the most we've ever made from YouTube in a month. I'll be super transparent with you guys. But when we got that check, I was like, oh my god. This ain't nothing. This ain't nothing. We can actually put some money back into the operation. And it's really crazy to see. And now it's just every single month, you're just making money every single day from these views. And if you are in a niche like that has more spending power, i.e. like let's say you were talking about credit cards, for example, finance, your whole niche was finance, your RPM that you'll get from making videos, your rate per a thousand views is going to be a much higher than, you know, like the entertainment channels that are much more broad.

5:27Those channels don't get anything for their ad sense. So it's super interesting. We get about, you know, it depends. it fluctuates on the episode, but we've seen some episodes get like$30 for the RPM. We've seen other episodes get 15 and it just depends on who you have on and what the talking points are and let brands are like buying, uh, you know, ad space in that video. It's super interesting. Another really interesting thing about YouTube. It's a permission based platform. People are choosing to watch you when you're scrolling on Tik TOK or Instagram, you're scrolling a feed. So you really don't know what's coming next.

6:00It's a lottery. Yeah. With YouTube, you have the opportunity to like really get a viewer who wants to watch your video. They seeked out your video. They saw your title and thumbnail and they said, you know what? That's a video that I think I'm going to get value out of. And so that's also why YouTube is completely different is people are choosing to watch you as opposed to just being fed your content because of an algorithm. 100%. Number one that we're going to kick you guys off with, we have 10 fire tips. We have some bonuses. So just make sure you stay to the very end. But it's to start with the packaging, not the content itself.

6:35So think about what your title is going to be, what your thumbnail is going to be. That's infinitely more important because if they don't click, they don't watch. So it doesn't matter how great your video is or how much time you put into it. Nobody cares. Like really what I would do is screenshot your YouTube browse like you're recommended. Right when you open the app, like screenshot what those nine videos are. and then place your thumbnail in there with your title. And then just look at it and be like, what did I click on this one? Is this one that draws my attention? If the answer is no, then you need to rework it.

7:02You need to think about that and keep testing and iterating because that click-through rate, the likelihood that someone gets shown your video and clicks through to it is so, so, so important. I think one of the worst mistakes you can make as a creator and something that we learned after doing the podcast for a few years is the worst mistake is packaging a really great video with weak packaging or pairing a really great video with weak packaging. Early on, before we started working with our YouTube strategist, me and Fig thought we knew a lot about YouTube. And our mindset was, we just have to make an incredible show and provide a lot of value.

7:42And this thing is gonna grow and we're gonna go to the moon. We saw some really great success on like a micro level, like the word of mouth spread about our show, which is amazing. But until we started really paying attention to the packaging, our show was like growing very slow compared to what it's growing now. we've more than doubled our subscribers over the past 365 days over the past year more than we did over the first three years of having the show and so and that is a hundred percent because yes maybe the show has gotten a little bit better maybe we've you know upped the production quality a little bit more but the packaging we've even like gone back to old videos and repackaged and seen a spike after, which you can't do that on Instagram or TikTok.

8:38YouTube's the only channel you can do that on. If you guys have a video that's not doing super well, right off the bat, like if the AVD, the average view duration is there and you're like, people are watching this, they're seeing it, but very few people are clicking on it. You got to go back in and change the title and the thumbnail. This is the interesting part too about YouTube is like you guys might say, oh, this thumbnail is awesome. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what your opinion is of the thumbnail, the marketplace decides. So if you think it's a banger, like we've had that happen where we post one, like this is a banger to thumb title for sure.

9:06Most of the time we're correct, but there's odd outliers where you're like, damn, why didn't this hit? We need to repackage this. And like you get another chance. Like you get another bite at the apple. Another big one with a thumbnail is to not restate the same exact thing that you put in your title under the thumbnail. A lot of people waste real estate and they'll be like, you know, this is big. Let's just say they say that in the title. This is huge. They'll put this is huge on the actual thumbnail and it's like you're wasting precious real estate. Like use those few words that you do get on the thumbnail to really drive curiosity.

9:37Like I should read the title and be like, oh, I think about myself when I when I scroll on YouTube. I immediately am going for the picture first. So the picture has to draw my eye. Like immediately I'm like glancing these nine images. I'm like picture. That's cool. Then I go to title. Does that align with what I want? And then the first 60 seconds of your video, it better realign with what it is you're talking about. Something that Mr. Beast does really well is whatever the thumbnail is, you notice it autoplays, right? When you hover over a video on YouTube, it'll autoplay. It usually, most of the time is at said location that the thumbnail is at.

10:10So let's say it was like at a private island and then those first 10 seconds were him at an office. There'd be a disconnect of what's happening for what you clicked on. You're like, I clicked on this private island thing and now he's in an office building. So why are we at an office building? You take notes from what these really big creators do and then you try to implement that on a small scale with what you guys are doing. So let's say you were going to buy a car and you're talking all about the car. You're like, I'm getting this new car. And the first video is like you in your office. It's like I'm clicking on this video because I want to see the car.

10:36I don't give a shit what you're doing in your office. So get me to the part where we're talking about the car. And then I'm like, OK, I confirm the click. That's why I'm here. Then I can learn a little bit more about your expertise with the car and all that good stuff. I also think I've heard Colin and Samir talk about this. They give the advice of having no more than three things in your thumbnail. I think a lot of people make the mistake with their thumbnail packaging of it being too busy. You want a thumbnail to be like easy to digest. Like for our podcast, we'll just do a person and then something they said, like text to go along with the title that opens up a curiosity loop.

11:14That's also another hack. Like if you have a title for your video, just plug that title into ChatGPT and say, this is the title for my YouTube video. what is a thumbnail that I can make that opens up a curiosity loop if you are putting text on the thumbnail and opening up the curiosity loop makes somebody curious to be like oh the title is something I want to learn about and the thumbnail is not answering the question it's keeping this curiosity loop open so that it makes somebody want to click on the video just a tip but also keep things simple I think the best thumbnails like like Colin and Samir talk about is a few things no more than three because you want you don't want to confuse somebody and and like kind of overstimulate them in the thumbnail number two is one clear idea per video yes you like think about this you write up all your ideas you don't want to put all your 10 best ones in one video break those up so you have like more more bites the apple yeah that's my saying of the day yeah more bites the apple dude i think that um trying to fit in and it almost sounds counterintuitive because you're like, I want to provide a ton of value.

12:22But if you have more than one idea per video, you're almost talking about too much. And it's almost like information overload. And so you want to think about what is the one clear idea that somebody is going to come to my channel or to this video and learn about in this video. And like, can they explain in one sentence what this video was about? If you're covering too much, it's just going to confuse the viewer. Dude, kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. That's the motto. You feel me? That's the motto with YouTube. Keep it simple, stupid, or keep it stupid, simple? Either or? Sure. Yeah. Kiss. Kiss. I love it.

13:00Just think about kiss when you're making these YouTube videos, dude. Number three. Okay, I mentioned this a little bit earlier within my Mr. Beast example. That goes right here is to confirm the click, right? So if we're talking about, hey, these are going to be the top YouTube tips, and then we started the episode off with talking about a bunch of random BS, You'd be like, yo, I came here for this thing. You're not talking about this thing. So then I'm going to leave, which is what we we did this in the very beginning of our pod. We messed this up so, so bad where we would just BS for 10 or 15 minutes.

13:28And we're like, why are people not watching this? Well, because you click on a video with context of that's what they're going to talk about. And then we're talking about a story from the weekend. And you're like, dude, I don't know these guys. Don't care about this. I just came here because I want value. That's what I'm coming here for. YouTube is like a value exchange platform. Remember when we first ever started on the platform? we just didn't understand that we didn't understand that this was like a value exchange that was happening like youtube is not oh who can make the best video it's like i'm looking at the title and the thumbnail and i'm promising you this is going to happen and if it doesn't happen quick you're going to lose people you're here to crush youtube i have an amazing resource for you it's stan oh dude we love stan you know what stan does okay it allows you to bring your entrepreneurial ideas to life if they're a platform where you could sell products you can take coaching calls on there You could put a digital PDF on there to sell and it's a one-click checkout.

14:18It allows you to dare to dream. God, it's dare to dream. So that's their campaign. I got to read this to you guys because it's crazy. So it's their annual campaign. They're going to give a creator, a lucky creator,$100 ,000. Hunter bans? And they're going to give five of them$10 ,000 to support their business. Wow. It's so easy. All you have to do is post a short TikTok or an Instagram video sharing your dream and how you'd use the prize money to chase it and demonstrate the impact they would have on the community. This is great though, because you guys got some time. Okay, it opens Jan 1 and it goes till January 31st.

14:48Oh, that's great. You got a little bit of time to think about your idea. Dude, what are you doing with 100 bands? God, I don't know, man. A lot? I might go snowboarding quite, like a lot more often. Yes, 100%. Maybe share your snowboarding content. Maybe that's our thing. We could become professional snowboarders. I think you could build out a full team for 100 bands. And then you literally have no excuse. You'd have no excuse. I mean, you could get an editor. You could have someone. Filmer, someone on the back end. Maybe a second filmer. My God, you could get a penthouse. Yeah. $100 ,000. Dude, and then you'd have some money left over to go buy Air One for lunch.

15:20Literally. And vlog yourself doing it. Everything is covered. Because everything is content. Everything is covered. Everything is content. You can check it all out down below at that top link in the description. Don't make the same mistake that you made last year and knock it in on this challenge. That was one of the biggest mistakes. We almost went into a podcast. Or we, yeah, we went into our podcast being like, we're going to provide a lot of value. we started off talking a lot about content creation, but like photography and videography. But in our head, we were thinking like, okay, we need to cultivate a awesome relationship with our viewers.

15:55So they need to learn about like what's going on in our like day-to-day lives. And we're going to BS for like 10 to 15 minutes on the front end, and then we're going to get into it. Like Braden said, you got to confirm the click. And so whatever value you are giving to the viewer, you need to lead with that and so we kind of brought back the bs portion like talking about what is going on in our everyday life but we moved it to the back end because if you want to learn more about us and hang out with us a little bit more you can stay for the ppd but let us give you the value up front because dude nobody cares about you and i don't mean that to be like mean it's just when people are scrolling YouTube, they want to get value.

16:41And so like, they don't really care about what you got going on in your everyday life. They care about like, what value are you going to provide them in your video? And they're looking at that. And so it might sound harsh that like nobody cares about you, but that's just the facts. And I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm assuming you clicked on this video. Many of you might not know us. You've never seen us before. You're like, I'm here for this thing. I could care less of what they have to say. And I I listen to is when I'm driving. So if I pop up to a red light, like I just pop on a video and I put it in 2x speed, the person that's sharing it doesn't matter.

17:14It's interchangeable for me. It's just the value, right? So if I'm not getting something quickly, I'm like, oh, I'm off to the next at the next red light. I'll switch it out to something else. You know what I'm saying? That's a perfect example of like, I am the viewer that really isn't there for like your thing. I'm not there to hear about your thing. I'm just there to get something, which is interesting. So like, think about how you like to watch videos and the stuff that you're watching like yeah obviously this is going to depend per niche and all that stuff but specifically in the business niche and like if you're content creation learning about making money online personal brand whatever the heck it has to be value-based granted yes do you click on certain people because their personalities and you start to be interested in them yes absolutely but at first it's like what do they have for me that's how you got to think about like making the stuff like what are you giving to people.

18:02And then after a while, they'll start to ask questions. Then you can go talk about your backstory, how you got to know all this stuff or whatever. I also think we're talking to people who are more so in the educational space as opposed to entertainment. For sure. These rules or these tips could help a entertainment-based creator, but that's not really who we're talking about. We're talking to people who want to build a personal brand and want to make videos to build their personal brand and monetize in some way and like you can do that as an entertainment-based creator but like it's not really who we're talking about um i think with entertainment-based creators on youtube like it's so much uh dude you're having to follow up every single video it's such a spectacle oh it's brutal yeah it's brutal you're just how you're like in the circus and you're like you gotta watch you gotta watch the circus it's it's so difficult week after week and there's people that make a good living doing it.

18:59But I think there's a far majority that never end up breaking out of that space. Like you really only see like those tip top dogs. Number four is to batch and pre-plan your content to stay consistent. This is a big one. This is something that as we add another, actually we're adding two channels onto our workload going into 2026. Have someone that's gonna be helping us with one of them, but the other we're really taking on. And it's gonna be so important for us to just write out what the value is going to be in these videos before we shoot them. We're not just going to like walk outside with our cameras and be like, today's the day we're going to film a video.

19:32That'd be stupid. We've done that before too. We've done that before. Like we've been making videos on YouTube for both of us, like over a decade each. And like I go back and watch these videos that I made in college. And I'm like, man, I was making videos every week. Why weren't they growing? I made 55 daily vlogs in a row. And I'm like, why aren't these growing? And I go back, I'm like, of course they weren't growing. There's no value here. this is just like, look how cool I am. And it's not that cool. Well, you thought the value was in, was in the aspiration. People are really interested in my lifestyle and I'm really funny.

20:05And they're like my friend and they're not. And that's the thing though. They're not, they're not like, if you go back and you watch David Dobrik stuff when we were in college, that's a value or that's an entertainment creator, right? You watch his stuff. You are giggling within six seconds and it's like constant laughter. That is the value proposition. And like you go back and I look at mine and I'm like these weren't funny these weren't entertaining they're kind of cinematic but that's it and it's just not enough to like get people to be interested because there's nothing there's no exchange happening you know i think um you should sit down and write down and come up with like 50 to 100 titles for videos i love that and if you can't do that you're kind of screwed you should be able to talk about your niche or whatever it is you teach about and think about 50 to 100 different ways you can talk about that thing, you shouldn't be sitting down week after week being like, okay, what's the video I'm going to make this week?

21:07Like you should have an ongoing list of video ideas that you can make and having a list of like 50 to 100 that might sound like overload if you don't want to do 50 to 100 write at least 20. Stop being soft and do 50. That's what I'm saying. Do 50 to 100 because if you can't think of 50 unique like titles how are you going to stay consistent over a year of making videos? Like ideas is at like the very is one of the very first steps. It's like one of the most important parts of creating content. Like you have to be able to come up with different ideas and talk about the same few things in different ways.

21:45I would also recommend, I don't think it's on our list, is to just pick something that's like at the ethos of what you're creating. Yes. I think too many people start YouTube and they're doing, oh, I'm going to do plants. I'm going to do finance. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Like YouTube categorizes you in a bucket. Dude, when I was first - You know what I'm saying? When I was first starting out, I was like, it was because I consumed a lot of different content that I like. So I was doing challenges. I was doing skits. I did a few like fashion things. I did, you know, different styles.

22:17And I was like, I don't want to really pick one thing because I'm interested in a lot of different things. But the facts are the facts. Like, you kind of have to narrow down into one specific niche because YouTube needs to figure out who to serve your videos to. And if you're switching around way too much week after week, YouTube's just going to be confused as to who to serve your content to. If you think about, let's say you're making a video one week about finance and then the next week you're making it about cooking, you're going to attract the finance people on your first video. And then it's going to serve your cooking video to the finance people.

22:59I know this is kind of like a very broad, random example, but think about if you're into this one thing and then you get served a video or suggested a video that isn't about what you're originally interested in, you're not going to click on it. And that goes back to the rule that you were saying is like, if they don't click, they don't watch. And so you got to kind of stay aligned in the same niche to see success. Number five is underrated, but so key. And it's to remove financial pressure from yourself when it comes to creating. This is something that everybody wants to be a YouTuber. Everyone wants to create content and they want to go all in.

23:38And yes, I do think that like to be successful at content and on YouTube, you need to go 100 % all in because if you don't go 100 % all in, you just won't see success. With that being said, the caveat is when you are 100 % reliant on your content creation, your YouTube to produce your income, it's a dangerous place because then it affects the decisions that you're going to make and especially when you're first starting out to see success on YouTube you have to try a lot of different things a lot of different formats and when you have the financial pressure or the burden of making money from content creation you're going to not you're not going to take as much risk as you would if you're like okay to start off I'm just making YouTube videos just for fun just to see where this goes.

24:31And like, if you have the added pressure of I need to make money from this, you're not going to see as much success. Yeah, and I think go at this, like you're going to see success if you post 52 videos. Like that's how you got to think about success. Like the uploads, not view count. Because I'll tell you from experience, it's going to take way longer than you think. You think it's going to take a year? It'll probably take three or four. Well, I love our last episode with Jeff. Yes, yes. He was like, I went into this with the mindset of if I post two years, every single week, I will see success.

25:05And he'll change his life. And he was right. He's now at over a million followers on, you know, subscribers on YouTube. He makes great money with it. It's his full time thing. Like the possibilities are endless. If you can just cut out the noise and just look forward to like 64 uploads, 100 uploads. Yeah. And I think a lot of people go into, you know, content, especially YouTube and everybody's got a handful of videos in them. and especially when you first start out, it's this like shiny new thing. You're like, oh, this is exciting. We're gonna go off on YouTube. But I think the reason why most people quit is because they don't see success as quickly as they thought they were gonna see success, like you said.