How to Start A YouTube Channel for Your Brand with Avi Shenkar | Ep. 383

0:00Avi Shenkar:Welcome back to The Marketing Millennials Podcast. We're bringing back one of my favorite episodes from last year and honestly, it's even more relevant now than when we first recorded it. This is Avi Shenkar from Luxury Bazaar. They're a gray market watch dealer selling Rolexes, Patek Faleed, Audemars PJs, high-end stuff. But here's the problem they face. Meta banned them. Google restricted them. The luxury brands kept sending cease and desist because they didn't like how their brand was being used. So Avi had zero traditional marketing channels. What did he do? Built a YouTube empire that turned a watch dealers into celebrities and opened doors that paid ads never could.

0:48Avi Shenkar:The Gray Market series has over 477k subscribers. Their sales team gets recognized walking down the street. They're getting invited to the biggest watch shows in the world, all because they showed up on YouTube with a simple idea. Go behind the scenes. And the crazy part, everything Avi predicted about personal brands, YouTube shorts, and authentic content has gotten even bigger in 2026. So if you're thinking about starting YouTube or trying to figure out how to make it work for your business, this one is one of the best episodes to listen to. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast.

1:34Avi Shenkar:I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. What's up? Welcome Avi to the Market Millennials.

1:58The Marketing Millennials Host:What's going on, Daniel? Big fan.

1:59Avi Shenkar:I'm excited to chat because you have done something really interesting with YouTube. And I want to start with why YouTube? Why are you doubling down on it? What are your thoughts on YouTube?

2:13The Marketing Millennials Host:So, yeah, we were kind of without options. Um, we are in an industry that deals with high end products where the brands are very, very, um, I guess careful with how their brands are being used. We are considered a gray market watch dealer, which is not authorized by brands such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe. They have their own authorized dealers and boutiques. We buy and sell on a secondary market. So it sounds shady, but it's not. Um, there's, you know, for example, if you want to get a Rolex and you're going to a Rolex boutique up to three, four or five, even 10 years to get the model that you want, if you want to get it instantly, you go to the secondary market, which is us.

2:58The Marketing Millennials Host:Now, obviously you're going to have to pay more for it because we pay more for it, but we have it all available. So the problem that we had with the traditional marketing methods, which are, you know, running meta ads, running Google ads, um, was that their attorneys kept sending us cease and desists on simply, you know, just running retargeting ads. Like if you came to our website and you looked at a Rolex and then we show you that same Rolex on Facebook or Instagram next time you're on there, that was a problem for them. And they, you know, said that we can't use their brand that way, even though we're just showing them a product, you know, not mentioning the name or anything else with that.

3:35The Marketing Millennials Host:So our Meta account has been banned for probably about four years. Google, our most successful campaigns have always been name recognition campaigns, just people, you know, Googling us, searching for us, or just Google shopping, which doesn't have a trademark issue. But without the options, you know, without being able to get people to learn about us or see who we are, you know, browse our website, we were left with, you know, what can we do that's kind of organic? What can we do that won't violate any trademark issues? And with that, we had two ideas in mind. One of them was YouTube, obviously, because YouTube four or five, six years ago was really, really getting up there as far as a competitor to paid marketing.

4:25The Marketing Millennials Host:And I'm talking about the organic YouTube stuff. And SEO was our second option. So I'll talk about that separately. but YouTube at the time, you know, the industry was getting a lot of attention. Um, this is pre COVID COVID took it to a whole new level, but people were getting a lot of, you know, a whole lot of interest in buying and selling luxury watches just because you could buy it today for$10 ,000 and sell it tomorrow for$12 ,000 and quickly make a profit. Um, so we started a show that my whole concept was, if you're a fan of a million dollar listings, which I was at the time, was to create a million dollar listings for our business.

5:08The Marketing Millennials Host:You know, who are the people buying, you know, six figure watches? You know, what do they do? What does their house look like? You know, what does their life look like? We had a, we started producing a show like that and we hit a brick wall because most of these customers don't want to show themselves. They're, you know, very private individuals. They don't want to show their wealth to the world. So we said, okay, what can we do that others haven't? And that was kind of going behind the scenes, showing what we do, how we run this company, our salespeople, our growth, our problems, our drama. I mean, it's funny, like the episodes that get millions of views are typically the ones where you have some sort of drama, like, you know, a six figure FedEx package has been lost, or, you know, a customer who owes us$300 ,000 is not picking up the phone.

5:58The Marketing Millennials Host:Somebody used a fraudulent check to purchase a watch from us. Now, all these things are really the ones that are getting the most attention. But the show, which has been running for probably about three years now, is just every day, what we go through, how the business operates, it's our path, you know, to growing our company, and becoming a major player, which, to be honest, just that YouTube exposure has achieved. I mean, it's opened up doors that we could not open with any paid advertising in the past. I mean, we have meetings with manufacturers. We're getting invites to the biggest watch shows in the world.

6:38The Marketing Millennials Host:Our entire staff is recognized when they walk around in the streets. We made celebrities out of watch dealers, which was never a thing. And I didn't realize how small but how enthusiastic the watch collecting world is. I mean, to the point where I'm the producer of the show. I've been on the show maybe a few episodes, kind of like in passing. I was recently at Fort Lauderdale Airport with my family flying back, and a police officer stopped me and was like, hey, are you on TV? I said, no, I'm not on TV. It's like, you're on something. I said, you know, maybe YouTube. He's like, that's what it is.

7:20The Marketing Millennials Host:You're on the watch channel. I'm like, wow, I can't believe that this guy recognized me. It felt amazing because my kids are right next to me, you know, like a celebrity in their eyes. But that was, you know, the path that we took. And it's, I mean, it's ever changing. Every day we have to come up with like, you know, what do we want to do? Do we want to do something like crazy dramatic, you know, that will get the views? Or do we want to do something that's a lot more serious that will, you know, gain the right sort of viewers? and it's constantly a balance between you know more views and the right views um and that's that's

7:53Avi Shenkar:our struggle day in day out well i think the first thing i'd like to say is constraints are probably the best marketing tool that people don't realize when you have big budgets it's hard to oh you could invest in youtube you can invest in meta but if you can go on meta you can't go and other channels that are restricting you you have these constraints and do creative marketing things which youtube is creative i also love that you do the channel does a good job of mixing news and behind the scenes so you're also sharing your expertise that you understand the industry not only understand watches um and i think you hit it at the right time too because you started right when the uptick because i remember i mean even on tiktok for me i get fed all that those new york watch yeah they go behind the scenes and you don't really see the clients like you said because they are private but yeah like somebody but he wants to watch this watch and they do this and it's the drama are they going to make the deal or not make the deal and i think it's good and you guys do a really good job of doing that yeah we try to split with the content between two different

9:06The Marketing Millennials Host:channel. So we have our company channel, which is luxury bizarre. That's, you know, we try to do more of the educational stuff there. And then we have the gray market series, which is the Roman shark channel. Roman is the founder of the company. And I always believe that people follow personalities, not brands. Um, so I chose to do it on his channel and that's, you know, it grew his channel from, I think we're struggling at somewhere around like 30 ,000 subscribers. to now we're at 475 ,000. You know, videos, some videos have gotten millions of views. But ultimately, you know, what we realized is that, you know, everybody kept making fun of it.

9:44The Marketing Millennials Host:When I first said, let's go all in on YouTube, you know, there are some other partners in the company that are like, you know, oh, Roman just wants to be a star. Like, this is all just a waste of money. Cameras everywhere. We hired a whole team, like a whole production. We built studios in our offices. They said, it's just a complete waste of money. a year into it, they're like, wow, okay, that was not a waste of money. The amount of clients, the amount of awareness that we generated was finally like quantifiable. And like, they were able to see that like, okay, YouTube is responsible for the growth of the company, the growth of revenues.

10:18The Marketing Millennials Host:And along with that, obviously, we did a whole bunch of social like Instagram, TikTok, everything else that you could think of.

10:25Avi Shenkar:I want to go into that mentality of the rise of the personal brand and the institution, because obviously you could see if you go on your YouTube Roman, 477k subscribers, luxury, bizarre, 77k, which are still impressive numbers for a company profile. But when did you see that flip? Because obviously, like the trust and institutions have been going down for a while, but now people are hitting it. But you hit it right before the climb of like this TikTok and YouTube shorts and all that. So what sparked that in your mind?

11:06The Marketing Millennials Host:I mean, I just kind of like I try to be empathetic to like our customer, like who is it and what are they interested in? And I mean, just think about anybody else like, you know, a brand, you know, you kind of assume that whatever they're putting out there is meant to sell you on something. Whereas a personality, it's more their opinion, their expertise. And I wanted to position Roman as a thought leader in the industry and his opinion, his expertise. I mean, he's been doing this for over 20 years. It it actually has value like people care for it. I mean, he has a I'm not sure if you're familiar with there's a company called Minect.

11:46The Marketing Millennials Host:It's like pay for text messages or to have a conversation with somebody like some whether it's, I don't know, a celebrity or an expert or something. He has an account on there and people pay him just to ask his opinion like, hey, do you think this is a good watch for me? So using him as, you know, an expert and as a thought leader, I said, okay, we're going to create this content under his brand because making the company, you know, a thing is going to be way more difficult than making Roman a thing. And to me, it didn't really matter if people are searching for Roman or searching for luxury bazaar because they're one in the same.

12:25The Marketing Millennials Host:and it turned out that like you know again my belief in personalities being bigger than brands was on point and when we hit that like you know you kind of saw that all over tiktok and all over instagram influencers were becoming a thing creators was becoming a thing and brands were just kind of trying you know and they still are every you know brand some brands do it better than others. You know, they integrate humor, they kind of they're able to make fun of themselves. Those are the brands that you follow because they're entertaining. But otherwise, you're very limited in what kind of like the brands that you actually follow.

13:02The Marketing Millennials Host:You're mostly if you take a look at, you know, who you follow on social, it's people. And we were trying to create something that, you know, connects people, you know, just one to one type of connection.

13:13Avi Shenkar:i i want to go into the operational side of this so if i was a company today and i wanted to start on youtube what are the first three steps or four steps i should take to do that so today i

13:33The Marketing Millennials Host:think i don't know if it's easier or harder but i think with how youtube shorts has taken off For example, you know, my hobby is launching brands. That's, you know, I realized that's what I do for fun. So I recently, you know, launched like a little men's grooming brand on the side. The first thing I did was just create shorts. You know, shorts will start to, I guess, whether it's, you know, I don't know if that's a thing or not, but it'll warm up the account. It'll give you time. Like you could put out videos, see what works, see what doesn't, what type of content, you know, hits and what doesn't.

14:05The Marketing Millennials Host:So I just started by putting out shorts, which is what I would recommend to everybody. And then I would think, what do I do that people don't actually have access to? You know, I kind of, it's funny because a lot of my buddies have been like asking me like, hey, you know, what should I do? And I'm almost applying that whole behind the scenes thing to any business in any industry. Like, oh, you're a mortgage broker? Why don't you just show people how you go through like deals? You know, how you qualify people? Oh, you know, you're a realtor? Show them your daily, like, you know, day to day life.

14:38The Marketing Millennials Host:Like, what is it that you do? You know, people think that realtors just open up doors and flip light switches, show them, you know, that it is, you know, more difficult or maybe that it's not, that it really is that easy. That's all you do. But give people like a fly on the wall type of preview of like, you know, your business, you know, the behind the scenes of it. I think that applies to almost every industry. So what I would do is I would start with just shorts, something either educational or something entertaining. um you know there was recently i don't remember her name but there was a girl that started tiktoks um she works at a car dealership and her stuff went viral she like did almost like the office type of setup for the dealership i think the first episode she put little ducks everywhere and she kept recording people saying like what are these ducks like who keeps putting ducks everywhere and like it was nothing crazy but it did it performed so well that she said okay i'm going to continue doing this.

15:35The Marketing Millennials Host:Um, so I think it's just, if you do something that is, you know, I don't know, I don't know if you would say special, but if you do something that requires expertise or knowledge, then the first thing I would recommend is start with short form content about educating your viewers about what you do or how you do it or how they can do it better. Or, you know, let's say, I don't know, give me, give me a job, give me a business,

16:01Avi Shenkar:throw a business out there let's just go with plumbing okay plumbing is probably one of the

16:07The Marketing Millennials Host:easiest ones now you would think that like you don't want to teach people how to do what you do because that would be silly they would do it themselves you know i google stuff on how like i recently i had a um i wanted to install a water filter for my instant hot in my kitchen i ordered it from amazon i got it i was like okay this is super easy let me watch youtube videos I saw the videos, I got under the sink and I'm like, okay, there's no way I'm going to try to do this and possibly cause a flood or a leak in my kitchen. I'm going to call a plumber. So showing videos on how to actually do things, you know, although again, a lot of people think like, well, why would I teach people?

16:47The Marketing Millennials Host:Because teaching people makes you the thought leader, makes you, you know, the industry expert. And to do it on a local level is even more powerful because you become like, you know, I'm based outside of Philadelphia. So if I would like see somebody like, Hey, this is Philadelphia's best plumber, then that's the guy I'm calling. You know, like I recently, if you're familiar with Philly and a lot of people are with the Eagles going to the Superbowl, um, cheesesteaks, cheesesteaks are, are that that's our food here. So I saw maybe about a year ago, I saw a reel on Instagram or it might've been on tech talk, you know um philadelphia's number one cheesesteak is from these guys you never heard of i watched it i'm like oh my god i know these guys they're around the corner from my office i'm gonna try their cheesesteak it was delicious i can't say it was the best one but like the claim that they have the best cheesesteak that nobody's ever heard of you know could be completely false but it got me as a customer and i've actually been a customer of theirs for the last year just because of that one simple reel.

17:48The Marketing Millennials Host:So as a plumber, I would obviously concentrate on local stuff, but I would show people, here's what happens when, you know, it gets cold and your pipes freeze. You know, here is what to do when your hot water is not, you know, working or your hot water heater is not lit. You know, here's how to relight it. You know, why you should install a whole house water filter. You know, things that people are constantly thinking about or even researching. If you are there, you know, And we all know that our phones listen to us, everything that you say. So if you are just talking to your wife about, I think we should have a hot water filter installed in the house, it's almost guaranteed that you're going to get some content about that in the next few minutes.

18:29The Marketing Millennials Host:So you want to be that piece of content that is out there. and whether organic or paid, I think, you know, that's, that's the way to go. Just pump out as much content as you can about what you do, what your typical, you know, client is asking for, what the typical services, how much it typically costs, you know, like these are things that people are interested in.

18:50Avi Shenkar:Okay. One serious question before I ask you the next question is what is the best Philly's cheesesteak in Philadelphia?

18:59The Marketing Millennials Host:You know what? I can't, I can't tell you that. like everybody will go to like genos or pats like they're the most marketed ones i don't agree i mean we have steve's prince of steaks which is like it's not as big as you know pats or genos but that if you if you survey people from northeast philly they will say that it's steve's um me recently again it's that one real it's berardi brothers i mean like one real changed my entire a cheese steak life.

19:27Avi Shenkar:I want to also go into what does the YouTube team look like? So we talked about what you would do at the beginning if you didn't have much resources or you're just getting started. But what is like a full blown YouTube production look like?

19:42The Marketing Millennials Host:A full blown one, which took us a while to get up to. When we first started, we had one videographer and everybody kept delaying like, no, no, no, we need to hire a camera guy. We need to hire a sound guy. I said, no, you need to turn the camera on, turn the camera on, start recording. This episode goes live next Monday. And that actually is what happened. And after that, you know, we had to hire more people because we wanted to put out an episode every Monday and to shoot for three, four days and edit for, you know, two more days required a bigger team. So right now, I mean, to get all the content that we pump out, which is quite a bit, both YouTube and social, we have, let me think.

20:23The Marketing Millennials Host:I mean, we just, well, I guess we have three full-time, well, yeah, three full-time videographers, one of which is, you know, outside the office, two full-time in the office. And we used to use an outside studio as well that helped us if we ever needed additional, you know, people or something specific. So right now it's really just three full-time videographers that both, shoot and edit all of our content for both YouTube and social.

20:52Avi Shenkar:And what does it look like, the brainstorming process of, hey, I want to do a new series or a new type of video? I could tell already you watch a lot of content and get a lot of ideas from other content and try to make it for your city. But what is that brainstorming process?

21:11The Marketing Millennials Host:I mean, the easiest one is obviously to steal what already works. Just do it in your own way with your own flavors. My thing is, I kind of, I reverted back. So recently, you know, I'm launching a new series here. And the way we came about this one was like, okay, first time we launched a series, we based it off something that I personally liked, which was million dollar listings. I said, okay, what is another series that people really, you know, like? let's let me I got let me ask you what's a series that's been on the air for quite a bit of time has a lot of success successful entrepreneurs on um and everybody loves it probably shark tank there you go you got it first hit I mean it's very simple said okay I love shark tank too and I was like well the founder of this company his name is Roman Sharf Sharf is like shark similar.

22:06The Marketing Millennials Host:What if I do Sharf Tank? And I was like, okay, how do I structure that? And it's funny, like last week I was in New York scouting studios. We're actually launching a new series. I changed the name from Sharf Tank to Watch Sharks just because I thought like if somebody comes in, what are they going to say? You know, hello, Sharfs. You know, that would only work if like Roman Sharf's family was on the panel. Um, so we're, we're doing a series where somebody comes in to sell a watch to a panel of five expert watch dealers from all sorts of, you know, different areas. Um, and they are going to bid against each other, um, try to steal the deal, whether partner up on a deal, offer different terms, you know, make fun of each other, argue, fight, whatever, the same sort of stuff you see on Shark Tank.