Building a YouTube Empire: Secrets from Sean Cannell | Digital Social Hour #69

How much money would you say you need to get the right setup for

starting YouTube videos?

Man, I think the right setup today is like a hundred bucks.

That's it.

One of our students, Mary, joined our course when she was 60.

She's 65 now.

She's about to get a gold play button.

922,000 subscribers.

Wow.

We're doing it all.

Like, I think we post about 328 pieces of content right now.

328 a week.

All right, welcome to the digital social hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Sean Connell.

Sean Cannell.

Man, Sean and Wayne.

I'm fired up.

Let's get it, man.

Fellow, Sean's.

We got to stick together.

Sean and Sean.

It's Sean and Wayne.

I'd love to

I'd love to dive into your story yeah yeah so

I mean it's kind of a wild journey these days running a YouTube channel that's kind of a media company and we got about 20 people working there 10 contractors

we teach video and so we have some YouTube tip stuff we teach cameras lighting live streaming YouTube channels got around 2.3 million subs couple other channels I think over 3 million subscribers total 500 million video views, 8 fig company, but

didn't start there, you know, obviously

started from the bottom.

Now we're here.

And I actually got into video, though.

I've been doing this a long time.

So I got into video in 2003.

Whoa.

And I was volunteering at my local church in a small town.

And like the youth pastor gave me a camera and I started making videos and they were terrible.

And then the first YouTube channel we started was for that same small church in like a small town in in 2007, two years after YouTube started.

So, I've been doing video for 20 years, YouTube for 16 years.

I've probably made more mistakes, failed more than anybody, and that's where I learned some lessons.

I try to help other people learn video and grow their brand with YouTube.

Also, like, wrote a book, YouTube Secrets, which I think is the number one best-selling YouTube strategy book in the world.

I think we're over 100,000 copies now.

Wow.

So, and second edition just came out.

And yeah, I really believe that online video is the big key to getting your brand out, your message out, video podcasting like this.

But YouTube is really where it's at for the long game, the long term, long form, even though with shorts and everything, it's like the long form dominant platform.

And so entrepreneurs and everybody should be serious about building their brand on YouTube.

I love that.

So you were in the content game early.

Super early.

Super.

16 years in it, bro.

That's a long time.

And most people give up in 16 days.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I just committed the process.

I freelanced a lot.

So in 2009, I started a business called Clear Vision Media, wedding videos, music videos,

multiple different YouTube channels.

So I just kind of like fell in love with the game.

There's so many different hustles around it.

You could freelance, you could shoot video, you could,

you know, help people on the strategy side, video marketing.

I've done just all the different things.

So they could talk about like the 10,000-hour rule.

I'm probably like 50,000 hours.

Literally aware of what I

in terms of just different video scripting, on camera, behind the camera.

And so.

So what was like your first like niche?

Like what, what what did you dive into as far as the the youtube categories you're like okay cool this will be a cool it's interesting is in 2010 no it was actually like faith-based content okay and with my friend uh jeff we started a channel called think international our channel now is called think media that was kind of by like think international was because we thought think skateboards were cool and we had been to canada so we were like we're international um and so we started that and that we did about 250 videos which was interviews with like pastors authors, speakers.

That's a lot.

That is.

Especially then.

That's a lot.

And nobody was doing that yet.

So that was, I cut my teeth.

That grew to 10,000 subscribers.

And that was very early.

So that was kind of the first thing.

And then out of that, people were like, how are you making the videos?

What cameras are you using?

How are you just like showing up to events?

and like filming interviews with a really lean setup and then turning them around fast.

So I was like, okay, think media is just microphones, cameras, like the video production side.

And again, because I've been doing photography and video for weddings, music videos, I started making videos about like lenses, cameras.

And I've discovered that YouTube's a search engine and I discovered affiliate marketing.

And that's how I made my first six figures was doing kind of tech reviews or like, what are the best lenses or what are the best budget lenses?

What's the best camera for YouTube?

And with a video that would rank in search, people would click the links.

And then through just the Amazon affiliates program, I was able to get to you know seven, eight K a month or whatever, six figure a year, YouTube ad revenue, another couple hundred or a thousand.

And then, uh, and then these days started to teach specifically that system, too.

There's a lot of there's the whole suggested side, kind of the viral side.

That's where the big growth is.

But YouTube's still a search engine, and there's that slow and steady growth if you go around answering specific questions, reviewing products, doing search-based content.

Search-based is even relevant for shorts in some regards, too.

If you're especially in a business context, product context.

Somebody recently was looking for building a video editing PC or a gaming PC, and every part they researched was a ranked short talking about the part, you know, whether it's the GPU or whatever it is.

So anyways, I really love search-based content.

It's not as sexy, but it's kind of like the sleeper method of passive views, passive income.

Because the content lasts a while.

Exactly.

It could be evergreen.

Yeah, you're not like, oh, you're not even going viral.

You're like, yeah, but money's coming in consistently.

Because if that's also connected to smart income streams, whether a little bit of ad revenue or affiliate marketing, but if you're a business owner and you have an offer or you're doing leads,

or, you know, we help a lot of service providers, real estate people and stuff, like if they just need a couple of leads in their local city, search-based content getting discovered for market updates in Snohomish County can get you leads and that's all you need, you know, close a couple deals.

How much money would you say you need to get the right setup for uh for starting youtube videos

man i think the right setup today is like a hundred bucks that's it i mean because let's assume you already have a pretty decent phone you buy a tripod off amazon for eighteen dollars a softbox light for fifty dollars and a good mic for another twenty dollars that's gonna be like decently crispy to get most people started wow and a lot of sweat equity you got to put the time into

sure and

and that's not a video podcast setup like this if you if you go up to that next level i think you can make a really big dent with around a grand get like a 750 sony zv1 um tripod microphone softbox lighting kit you know now assuming who's going to edit are you going to outsource editing or do you need a mac book or something and then for like a nice crispy video podcast setup you could probably do it for under 5k i built a home office setup is around 20 to 30k so you could step it up and that was like standing desk, two monitors, three cameras, lights mounted on it.

And that was also so I could just switch myself and run my team and shoot from home.

So there's the there's the $100 setup and then you could, you know, 10 or 20K.

You could go hard with it.

Joe Rogan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're looking, you start building out the studio two sounds.

Is Joe Rogan at his house?

Used to be, right?

Is it still there?

Yeah, wherever he's shooting, I mean, you went into that like alien looking thing.

So yeah, you could start spending 30, 40, 50, depending on like the architecture to the background, if you're putting TVs behind, like, what are you going to do?

So, but so what were you doing like in the interim, like while you were, I mean, obviously you knew you wanted to do content or build a media company.

Were you actually still working like a normal job?

Yeah, I was working at a church for real for how long?

Yeah, so

when I got into video, I was working part-time.

Back when the youth pastor handed me that camera, I was waiting tables at Red Robin, flipping, you know, his burgers.

I was the host.

I was was the expo.

I was the buser.

And then I was a server.

And then eventually I was part-time at a church.

And that's why I also had my doing media.

And then eventually I moved to Vegas to work at a church as director of communications.

So it was a bigger staff, like 40 people.

I was doing, I got more into digital marketing doing that.

I was helping like the pastor launch books, Facebook ads, you know, kind of like the church social media accounts, his personal brand accounts.

And that was 2011 to 2015.

And

during that time, I was chipping away at YouTube, but that was like the main thing, the main job.

Video editors, how do you source those?

Because I know people struggle with that.

Yeah, so I mean, there's a couple of ways you could go about it.

There's like the VidChops level, which is, or Video Husky, which is these services where you're going to film the stuff, upload it to Dropbox, and the videos kick back to you in 24 to 48 hours.

Very affordable.

Maybe not the best editing, but they will rotate you through until you like the editor.

And if you get into a workflow, and if it's like a simple talking head video, that could be one of the best ways to do it.

You, of course, could just go up work

and look at, you know, you kind of get what you pay for.

If you start paying more per hour, you can start getting like higher-level YouTube edits, but it could be more expensive.

You could also try your luck on Fiber doing the same thing, just kind of trying to figure out somebody.

The next level would be, you know, tap your network or actually do a proper hiring process indeed linkedin whatever and just actually look for somebody what a lot of people maybe want entrepreneur wise is a shreddeder a producer shooter editor that lives somewhat local that

term shredded yeah you know teenage mutant ninja turtles yeah shredded but yeah if that if they could come out because i actually there's a couple different skill sets video editing especially with AI and stuff, I think is actually becoming, in a way, a less valuable skill set.

But

like the psychology of how to edit a great

YouTube video is becoming like a more valuable skill set.

So meaning like basic video editing will, I think, get replaced by AI, that like lower level stuff.

So it's where what's really becoming valuable is that strategy level.

So if you just have somebody that's turning the camera on and off, it's a whole different level than a producer shooter editor that's going to maybe come out, kind of help architect the shot, you know, perhaps make sure that you're shooting everything, hooks, the content, the outros, thinking about things.

Let's, hey, let's flip the camera and get like a vertical video, like somebody that may be synergistically working with you.

And then where does it go next?

Is there a YouTube strategist?

Are you doing that?

Who's uploading it, thumbnail, title, optimization?

And so maybe hard to find somebody with all those skills, but if you got one person for a lot of entrepreneurs,

depending on where you live, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100K would be that one person could potentially run your YouTube, you know, kind of empire.

They work with you locally.

And for, in a way, a lean startup, you know, maybe 80K a year, that role, if they were world-class at all those skills, it's a pretty, pretty legit person.

So there's kind of a spectrum of what it is hard to find dependable people now.

100%.

So that's why AI is important to all of us.

And granted, it can't do everything, but

you either pay for it or you build it.

So I think it's also depending on your leadership style and your skill set.

um

again

if someone is hungry um they might come in at 35 40 depending on where you know 45k

and then over 12 to 24 months you have them watch all our thick media videos and like go through our course and immerse themselves and if they have the aptitude for it then you build it and that's that's kind of true for any role and and you're right because it's to find that level of mastery is difficult for sure it is they don't really want to work anymore yeah but

you work with a lot of big youtube accounts and you also study all the big accounts what are some common things you notice for the the youtube pages that get millions of views i mean youtube pages that get millions of views are

really

smart about the topics they're covering there's just certain topics that get millions of views

um if you're if you're covering kind of conspiracy theory stuff or you kind of position it that way there's a guy named james janney who will cover like MLMs or he'll cover exposing fake gurus or he'll cover that kind of stuff.

And

he makes also great kind of documentary style.

People know how to hack viewer attention and kind of loop and continue to re-engage the viewer.

I've watched his video.

Yeah, right.

So that's that kind of stuff in sort of any different niche.

You know, when

Sean, I don't know why I'm forgetting his last night.

He's famous, and he started doing the, he did like the maybe a Jake Paul kind of three-part series or something.

Oh, Shane Dawson.

Shane Dawson.

Thank you.

So, yeah, that's kind of a good example, too.

I think that those are interesting.

Of course, he had the previous

growth and subscribers.

However, the subject content itself was trending.

It was about, so if a lot of times the biggest channels are

definitely going to cover maybe trending people,

influential people, even if there's a whole faceless movement, right?

Automation channels, they do similar things like the 10 richest celebrities or best celebrity mansions, like that kind of interest.

Personal finance is massive.

And again, if it,

interestingly enough, long form can really crush if it's very engaging.

Yeah.

Sunny V2 is another example of that.

Like I'll watch a lot of stuff that

is like the rise and fall of like Bam Marguera, you know, or something like that.

Same thing with me.

You look up, you didn't watch 20 minutes of it.

Yes.

The clips are just graphing.

You just Kanye Iceberg, yeah, part one, yeah, part two, part three.

And it just keeps going down and then all this different stuff.

You just like turn it on.

And then I think also, I mean, what's interesting is certain video podcasts are going value tame it.

I love Patrick.

I bet.

And so

politics.

If you build up that influence, Tucker.

Clips.

Yeah.

100 million.

What didn't he get get offered 100 million?

By Patrick.

Yeah.

And Clips can get 400,000 and podcasts get 700,000 and some of them break out and get millions.

I think he's getting 100 million views a month on YouTube content at this moment.

Wow.

400 million.

Patrick at David across multiple people.

That's insane.

And that's all on talking head, but political commentary, kind of business, a little bit more politics.

So I think, and then of course, Mr.

Beast is kind of a

that type of content and Ryan Trahan and a lot of people that are doing that style of content.

And then I think it's also there's the

niches.

You know, what's interesting about our community is we,

like people that are part of our course and stuff, we kind of like to talk about them as like the

unfamous,

unknown

YouTube creators that are wealthy

because they don't have necessarily huge channels, but they got a big bank.

Or they got like, and so, or even crazy stories, like this, one of our students, Mary, joined our course when she was 60.

She's 65 now.

She's about to get a gold play button.

922,000 subscribers

right at this moment.

She's got making bone broth videos,

you know, how to cook a chicken.

It's never too late, bro.

It really isn't.

It's never too late.

I think people give up.

And

to that point, I think also,

like you said who's getting millions of views like the stuff that that really goes big is is tapping into like sometimes dancing music uh children trendy stuff trendy stuff kind of like viral clips but i think viral is overrated meanwhile you know levi lassic um is in the story he's in the back of uh the second edition of youtube secrets he read the first edition implemented everything started a channel called living in dallas real estate he's a local agent his partner travis plum they start doing organic YouTube videos.

There's no other marketing source in their real estate business in Dallas, just organic YouTube videos.

They're not over 5,000 subscribers.

For six months, nothing happens.

A few leads come in.

The following 12 months, they do almost $90 million in top-line revenue, which is $3 million in real estate commissions.

Wow.

What?

They don't even have 5,000 subscribers.

Under 5,000 subscribers.

Just from taking videos of houses and explaining it.

Neighborhood tour.

Yeah,

because video builds know like and trust.

and their business model like i like to think of you know real estate's kind of like high-ticket affiliate marketing because you get three percent on a million dollar home you get thirty thousand dollars i get four percent on a thousand dollar camera i get forty dollars so it's better to get a forty thousand dollar real estate commission so it depending like what's the business model what's the opportunity vehicle that you're connected to your youtube channel so what's Sometimes it's funny that even like haters in our community is like, oh, you're a, you know, a YouTube coach, but you don't get as many views as Mr.

Beast.

I'm like, number one, nobody does.

Number two, Mr.

Beast will tell you that.

Exactly.

Nobody's beating me.

But number two, like you're also, you're not seeing underneath the surface because especially if entrepreneurs, business leaders, is elites, client sales, just what's the model?

Yeah.

You know, and I think, I think right now we get.

40 million views a month.

So I'm always like, I apologize, like that we're not getting enough for you.

But like, that's all organic.

No, that's all organic.

How many views are you getting?

I mean, 40 million is a lot, you know?

And so, so, yeah, it really, it is like the iceberg.

It depends.

You see the views up here, but like what's underneath the surface.

And for some, a lot of influencers are hurting right now.

Like brand deals are drying up a little bit, especially with some tech companies, fintech.

Ad revenue's down a little bit.

We're kind of going into a recession.

You know, if you're dependent on.

the influencer income streams and you haven't created journal products or services, you're vulnerable.

And so that stuff's all amazing but i think diversifying your income streams and having like a deeper business than just youtube is important yeah but most people don't have that business acumen to you know want to um you know monetize on top of whatever they're doing they kind of get comfortable i agree yeah you know cpms are hitting they're getting ad ad ad money and it's just kind of like oh we're cool they got to grow i mean that's or or

accept you know or partner you know i think that's what some people do like mr beast didn't figure out how to start running restaurants or doing like ghost kitchens.

He hired a CEO to do that for him.

Obviously, he had that leverage.

So I think a lot of influencers, and I've been able to see, as you can see, gray in my beard, like I've been in the game, you know, I've been on YouTube 16 years.

That's crazy.

So I've seen people come and go.

I've seen people like, you know,

really

rise and fall.

And a lot of times people, they've done really well.

Massive money was coming in, but they weren't at that point.

They should have been like partnering, hiring, building their business acumen, right?

But instead, they're just spending their money.

What gives you that drive, though, bro?

Like, what gives you that constant, just tenacious attitude?

Just like, yo, I'm going after it to be 16 years of doing anything, bro.

That's like, nobody even plays in the league that long.

What you got a couple, you might be the longest, you got Haslam, you maybe got a couple different Tim Duncan, maybe.

Like, like, how did what gave you that drive?

Like, what's pushing you?

Like,

what is it?

Like, since 2003.

Yeah.

I don't even know.

It's 2023.

YouTube started in 2005.

Yeah.

2003, I got into video.

So I had a two-year head start learning video.

Yeah.

So like, what, what gave you that?

Like, you're like, no, I'm going to make a million dollars for sure.

Like, you just like.

Yeah, I mean, I think a couple things.

I think that even though as an entrepreneur, I've been distracted by stuff, like you always have a million ideas.

I think I understood the compound effect that like if you could stay disciplined and keep doubling down, like, you could just get so much more depth out of something instead of just switching things all the time.

Like, like, for me, you know, my faith in my values are really important.

I've been married 17 years, you know, and so I would.

So, she stuck with you through all the Red Robin, all the stuff.

Breaking the yard.

And I know she didn't marry me for money.

We were broke as a joke.

Right.

We got married at 21.

You were originally from where Seattle?

Seattle.

So, and it's expensive to live out there.

It was.

We were more north.

north, but yeah, no, we were, we got crushed.

We got crushed in the housing crash in 2007, eight.

Yeah.

Uh, because we actually had two houses, declared income, the whole thing.

But I guess what I was going to say is, again, my ethic would be like, I would rather double down and go deep in one relationship and have sex with the same woman thousands of times than like have sex with thousands of women or whatever.

So it's that, why?

There's that depth, that trust, that relationship.

There's more richness there, right?

And so applying that to like by just choosing to pick a horse and ride it.

I think, I think

Dr.

Phil, I heard him say once, God only gave you one.

So pick a horse and ride it.

You can't ride two horses, you know?

And

so I've just been riding the same horse.

And by the way, there's a lot of times when it's tempting to be like, man, still talk about this, getting bored with this.

But man, as it goes deeper and as you build more, more momentum, kind of learned that from Steve Jobs, too.

Like

when he left Apple and then the product lines expanded and there got all this noise and all this destruction.

And then when he came back, he narrowed it back down.

They fired him actually.

Yeah.

We've actually, we did that.

You start just creating other things.

You're responding to stuff.

You're getting distracted.

And like, I just saw Layla Hermozi tweet, like.

you actually will grow faster by subtraction, not by addition.

Wow.

And so this idea of like just continuing to add more.

So yeah, just trying to double down.

And what I found is that it just has created more leverage.

More doors have open, more momentum, and more opportunity, more

depth in the expertise.

So, I think that's part of it.

I think that I also

was making an educated guess on the horse I was betting on,

and that was YouTube itself.

And I think that YouTube, of course, anything could happen, but YouTube is the play.

It's the longevity.

It's the strongest platform.

It's the biggest library owned by Alphabet.

It's got the greatest technological infrastructure.

It's got the greatest head start.

Like, who's going to disrupt YouTube?

TikTok is just noise

because the depth is not there.

Last year at VidCon, Grace Africa, who had millions of followers, did a meetup and nobody came.

And it was this whole thing with, you know, respect, but.

She it showed the depth of like a TikTok audience versus the depth of long form.

We even studied audience retention of our clips and our vertical clips.

Like YouTube Shorts had the longest shorts audience retention by double of TikTok, and then Reels was last.

Now, that might be subjective to us, but it just even shows the mindset.

Like, shorts are like shallow calories.

If you want real longevity and to be built to last, you want that real depth, which by respect to everything, we're doing it all.

Like, we post, I think we post about 328 pieces of content right now.

328 a week.

A week?

Whoa.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

It's a whole system.

I i thought we were doing a lot of like yeah i mean we did uh how many episodes are we right now 150 episodes 150 episodes we're not posting them in three months but that's two like two two new vertical videos a day tick tock instagram reels facebook reels youtube shorts a couple different channels like and and because it by the way and people are like why that sounds dumb well it all we're doing the math man we're tracking everything so like the roy is there but The punchline is I'm into all of the stuff, but as far as the depth, and I did think I heard Jimmy Mr.

Beast talk about like they people are like, what are you doing next?

Is this a stepping stone?

And he was like, doing next?

YouTube is the play.

Like, YouTube is the destination.

He talked about how he didn't want to hire people from Hollywood because they saw YouTube as a stepping stone to something more legit.

And he was like, no, I want people to understand that YouTube is the game.

Like, YouTube is, and I agree.

So, at least for the foreseeable future, this next decade is going to be the best decade on YouTube.

And so, to that point,

I mean, 16 years here, if it went the way of MySpace, if it crashed.

I mean, obviously, I would have, if some people, when Clubhouse came out, some people were like, ooh, I'm going to write an e-book and create a course.

And I'm the number one expert on Clubhouse.

And I'm going to build my castle on Clubhouse.

And then four minutes later,

so I think there's something about that as well.

I feel incredibly blessed that I...

got into video.

And in a way, I felt like video chose me.

I didn't choose video because I just showed up at church and my youth pastor was was like dude start filming stuff and i just didn't stop you know so youtube secrets first and second addiction addition i said addiction yeah

that's all i was saying um what actually made you come up with the with with with that concept like okay there's secrets there's there's a method to the madness so i'm gonna you know tell everybody what it is what what made you eat this like well i think the title was just good marketing yeah to be honest i mean and and there's secrets in the book for sure no yeah but respect to the to the haters because some people go oh there's no secrets in here or you could find this information on youtube and i'm like okay yeah but respect to a hundred thousand copies sold you secrets is just classic good marketing

and

we have like a 2000 200 2400 positive reviews 4.5 stars on amazon because everything's a secret to somebody especially like probably 99 of people listening to this that book would blow their mind But if someone's like, I've been doing YouTube for five years, I've watched a million videos, I didn't learn one new thing.

I'm like, all right, dude, I'll refund it.

Just give me your PayPal, dog.

I'll, you know, like, people really come to me and say, well, no, I mean, there's like four reviews that are like, you could get all this on their YouTube channel.

Also, true, if you dig long enough, like, you're probably eventually going to figure it all out.

But people want the book and whatever.

So, saying that,

you know, it's a pretty good title and

how lean the title is, and that's helpful for how well the book's done.

Then, on on top then on top of that the book's in two parts so the first part is actually timeless which is very hard to do on social media but it's the seven c's of youtube success which is clarity you know start with the end in mind uh no it's actually first it's courage you actually have to have the courage to get on camera and press record then clarity what's your channel about who's it for then you actually have to set up your channel that's the third c then you have to start posting content that's the fourth c then you need to think about your community that's the fifth c build your community sixth is cash how you gonna monetize?

And then seven is consistency.

How are you going to keep going?

And it's a circle because you just keep going through all of those.

Even this show, right?

You could come back to it.

Man, how do we go to the next level?

Like maybe be more courageous.

I'm sure you're there, but it's like be maybe more bold, more polarizing.

We're always having conversations about the next level.

Courage.

And then clarity.

Who's our audience?

What's the next level of strategy?

So always clarifying the strategy.

Can we update the channel?

Like right now, how's your playlists?

How's your community tab?

Are you posting daily on your community tab up to three times a day?

Are you doing polls, getting feedback from your audience?

Like, how can the features of your channel itself categorizing all the new playlist features, YouTube music, whatever?

And so, anyways, that's the seven C's of YouTube success.

So, what was powerful was building a framework that's unbreakable.

Like, those aren't going to probably change.

And I think that's also what's helped the book is sometimes people just kind of do like tactics,

but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Oh, I have some title tactic.

Yeah, but what's your overall strategy?

Oh, I just figured out this hack that's working this month on the community tab.

Yeah, but what's your overall strategy?

So, like, the seven seasons of YouTube success.

But the reason we just wrote a second edition is then the second part of the book is about social media: when you should post, vertical video, YouTube shorts, new features, ranking videos, new ways of making money,

like click-through rate stuff, the perfect video recipe, how do you good thumbnails, good titles, and nuances that kind of change, you know?

So

there's a lot in there, but it's definitely a good foundational solid, but we put a lot of work into it, too.

There's a lot of fluff out there that's like chat GPT wrote the book.

They got like Mid Journey to do a cover, and the book was out in four minutes, but it also like sucks.

Like we really put our blood, sweat, and tears into it.

And so it's a substantively good book.

It's awesome.

Yeah, 100,000 copies.

Numbers don't last.

No, not at all.

You also had one of the best business conferences I've ever went to.

You managed to get speakers like Alex Ramozi, Gary Vee, Patrick Bett David, and others.

How were you able to pull that off?

Man, it's a good story.

It all started with, we've done the event five years.

This was the fifth year, but nowhere near this side.

We took a size.

We took a quantum leap up.

And two years before was pandemic, so it was virtual.

So we had like 100 people our first year, like 200 our second year.

Then virtual was pretty good, but it was virtual.

And then we're like, we're coming back strong.

And at our previous year's event the big idea was what if we had garyvee because we kind of lean towards the entrepreneur side my friend daryl eaves and mr beast run vid summit and that's leans a little more entertainment based right and mr beast style entertainment channels so we kind of lean more business entrepreneur channels and teachers people that are helping people solve a problem so we're like who is a celebrity guest speaker at the highest of levels, especially for entrepreneurs.

And Gary Vee is like, in in a way, the one.

I couldn't even really think of other people we could brainstorm, but like that really sells tickets.

So then it was a matter, could we even get him?

What would he cost?

And on down the list.

And so I had a couple of friends that introduced me to Vayner Speakers and some people in the back end.

Gary actually, the co-author of YouTube Secrets, Benji, Gary actually endorsed the book.

And Benji went to his office.

They worked together previously and they had a conversation.

And Gary was like, yeah, get the book.

That was helpful.

So like, it's always nice to have that kind of stuff too.

So he was like aware of me, which might have been helpful because he's busy.

Whether or not you can pay his keynote fee is it, will he even do it?

You know, so that's kind of the long story short was locking him in 155, I think his keynote fee went up immediately double 155,000.

Yeah, my man.

We made 180K in our business the first year,

like 160.

So, it's basically, I was like, Gary's keynote fee was the totality of paying my wife, myself, all the contractors, every expense

in our first year of Think Media, which was about mid, by the way, not back white when it started, but was like when I went full-time.

And so, anyways, it was that was a leap of faith, but then it just got crazier.

We eventually ended up spending $917,000 on that event.

Holy, and we were profitable in ticket sales, but I mean, whether that was like VIP was full, so we had to add like the 10th thing at the M hotel and add more seats.

And then the hotels the wait this was at the M here

yeah bro wow yeah it was 10 minutes from my house and then and then I was like well what if we get patrick at David as well

you know and and then uh a friend of mine knew Alex Hermosi and then I was like well what if we also got Alex and he was just blown up I mean he's more busy these days or whatever and is just kind of getting more into content and that was his first session ever talking about content and the session was funny, right?

Because he was like, this isn't even my main thing, but here's what I did so far.

And now he just crossed a million subs, you know?

Yeah.

And so it was kind of the compound effect from there.

And what I learned was it was sort of like, first,

scared money don't make money.

Right.

Absolutely not.

And then locked in, but then

it's like skiing.

Like once you lean down the mountain, you got to keep leaning.

Cause if you lean back, you're going to fall over.

Then I was like, shoot, we're just going all in.

And whether even ads, like now, we better hit a tipping point of awareness.

Yeah.

It's not, we didn't even spend that much on that, but like just everything.

It was like, we are not hitting the breaks it's all offense on this that's crazy and so and then kept adding we kind of had too many speakers yeah i think it ended up pretty good like you got to be there but like because i just taken so many actions and different people had said yes and we didn't we thought we were gonna have a breakout room we ended up not we learned a lot and so i definitely think that's also when you make bold moves at whatever level you're at in business, if it doesn't break you, those are your greatest growth seasons.

And the networking you made, I thought about must have been phenomenal.

Greatest growth brand.

And that way, it was the other thought about it was it was a branding play.

It was like a

shift our whole brand, which I believe it accomplished that purpose.

And I mean, content from it's like still coming out today, clips or whatever.

And it's, you know, about a year old now.

So it's about run its lifespan.

But even that, there was not just the event, but past the event, the virtual side, all the stuff.

Yeah.

Dude, it was a great event.

You got to go to the next one.

Yeah, he was telling me about it out there.

He was telling me about it.

Yeah, we took a break this year, too, which was people are like, no, dude, you got all this momentum.

But, but even just trying to be wise as an entrepreneur leading our team,

it also kind of almost killed us in a way of like, we're not an event company technically.

And so until I have the right team and systems, so we have a sustainable pace for just health and lifestyle and everything we value for our team, we paused until we could make a few key hires, reorg a little little bit right so that we could do it year after year in a healthy way because it's a big stress it was like it was like lifting above you know if you're not fully trained to run the marathon the recovery is it's it's pretty tactical to put on a concert yeah so we're we're uh getting to the place where we could be like the iron cowboy in this next netflix show where he ran like you know, 50 Iron Mans in 50 days or something so that we can actually just have like the foundational fitness to do it.

I don't know if that's healthy either, probably not, but to do it over and over.

Sean, it's been a pleasure, man.

Any closing comments for the audience?

No, man, I appreciate you.

Thank you for having me on.

And yeah, I mean, closing stuff for the communities, especially if people are thinking about doing YouTube, you can always check out YouTube Secrets on Amazon.

Audible is out as well in the e-book, a physical book.

But whether you're into that or not, I want to encourage everybody:

YouTube is a good bet and it's not too late to start.

And

it's a marathon, not a sprint.

So it builds over time.

And so, you know, starting to invest now, start messy.

You're going to be really grateful you did, not just 12 months from now, but three, four, five years

looking back at the momentum you can build from posting simple videos on YouTube and building your brand.

Absolutely.

Wayne, you can follow me on Instagram at The Creator.

Sean Kelly here.

Thanks for coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast.

See you guys next time.

Peace.