The Case for Being a YouTube Strategist (Not a Full-Time Head of Content)

They can make like $30,000 from a single video. I was earning more money with this side hustle than I was with my main hustle. What are you worth? Start charging that. Be okay saying no to people, or at least putting them on a wait list. Hi, I'm Jamie Whiffin. I am a YouTube consultant. I've worked with Ali Abdaal, Simon Swib, and Grove Edge, and I mostly help business owners turn their YouTube channels into their best source of clients through fixing their ideas, their titles, and their thumbnails. Jamie, you have years of experience as a strategist, and you've earned the respect of everybody across the internet, to the point where you've actually turned down a role as head of socials for Stephen Bartlett. Why? Yeah, many, many years ago, I was kind of at a crossroads in my career. I was working in a TikTok agency at the time, and I learned a hell of a lot there. But what I really wanted was to kind of go back into the YouTube world, because I'd worked in a YouTube agency. I had my own YouTube channel before that. It was sort of a gaming channel, and I built that up to roughly like 100,000 subscribers. And I just kind of wanted to get back into YouTube. And at the time, I was like a big fan of Ali Abdaal. He was kind of at his, like he had a lot of momentum around productivity, and side hustles, and making money online. And that was kind of like the lifestyle that I wanted to have. I thought it would be great to be able to have a YouTube channel, creating videos on whatever I wanted, especially around the same topics that Ali was creating videos on. And then obviously have a great income as a result. And so I ended up being in a position where I had these two jobs in front of me between working for Stephen Bartlett. I'd gone through the interview process there. They kind of wanted me to come in and start managing the head of socials, because I'd started to build like a, I was a big Kanye West fan. And so I'd built this Instagram account on the quotes of Kanye. And I agree that's like 35,000 followers in about 90 days. And it just kind of like really took off and started having like, even like Chance the Rapper was following it. Like these kind of celebrities started to follow it. And so I was kind of like, knew a little bit about Instagram. I had my background in the YouTube world. And then obviously working at the TikTok agency, I started to understand short form sponsorships. And so I started to kind of become well-rounded in content. I think that was really what sort of attracted Steve's team. Part of me was like, ah, this, this seems like a cool opportunity. This wasn't Steve at where he currently is. Like Diary of a CEO was definitely a thing. It definitely had momentum, but it wasn't what it is today. Like one of the top five biggest podcasts in the world. And I, yeah, I kind of just looked at these two options and I thought, you know, Ali seems way more aligned with my values, the lifestyle I want to have the YouTube world more so than the podcasting world. And so I took that sort of jump and started working for, for Ali as his head of YouTube. Can you just quickly riff off a list of some of the other creators that you've worked for? Yeah, I've worked with, yeah, Ali. I've worked with Rian Doris, Mrs. Eats, did some very light work for Brian Johnson when he was starting his channel by designing a lot of thumbnails for him. And so, yeah, I've worked with a lot of like really big names in this space down to like those mediums of small size creators as well. What have you learned about greatness and excellence working alongside such esteemed people like Ali Abdaal and Simon Squibb and Brian Johnson and Rian Doris? They know what they want and they've, they ensure like anything that kind of gets in the way they figure out a creative way to get around it. And I think that's really what separates sort of the, the entrepreneurs in the space who kind of move into the YouTube world and actually succeed. Seed in it compared to some of the other people who are more, you know, your creator first, not entrepreneurs first. And they like to create, but they kind of hit these roadblocks where something might be a little bit tough and they're not exactly sure how to fix it. Whereas I find the entrepreneurs are like very direct with their team of like, we need to get around this. We need to do this, you know, fix this within the next week. And it just has this kind of different energy about them that I think really kind of bleeds over into the system and the processes that they have for actually getting content out. I think when I was working with Rian, Doris's team in the early stage, it's probably the best example of someone who like really knew what he want. And he was just like hiring and firing people like crazy in those early days, because he knew what he wanted. He wanted the team that could run with it. And so I was in there making thumbnails for him and he went through like three or four producers in the span of six weeks, which is obviously kind of unheard of. Yeah. Most, most YouTubers will obviously hire one producer and work with them. For an extended period of time. But Rian was not like that. He knew what he wanted. And at the time, I won't lie. I was kind of like, this is a bit extreme. Like he was getting good producers in who'd worked for other names. I'm not going to say who these people were. They were doing a good job. And he was like, it's not to the standard that we want. And at the time I thought, well, this is, it almost felt extreme. Right. Because I've seen creators who are not like that, but then Rian blows up and he has continued to, right. And he gets like 500 K views per video, millions of views per videos. In some cases. And he just took off. And I think it's because he had this incredibly high standard that he was relentless about and it, it worked. It paid off for him. Should Rian be praised for hiring and firing for producers like that? Like, obviously he got the results that he was looking for. Yeah. But that's a pretty turbulent working environment for people who do work for him. I would say it was definitely stressful, you know, for those folks, because it was like, you know, you kind of joined and then you had very, you had to very quickly prove yourself. You know, this wasn't full-time employment, by the way, this was kind of a come in, can you run the show? And if you can, the full job is there for you. So it wasn't technically like firing is more just like, you know, you're not a good fit, but the results that they were getting were, were strong, but there was sort of this standard. Yeah. That kind of had to be touched. And I think that is sort of the vibe that I get from the biggest entrepreneurs in the space that I've spoken with is they, they do have this incredibly, really high standard. And I think that the employees that thrive off of that, it's not really a problem. I think they see it as a challenge where others might get stress and anxiety from it. That's a good point. I'm convinced. I do think that this industry as a whole is a place that is likely more stressful than most other industries. But if you set the bar for yourself quite high and you're willing to take on difficult challenges and you're willing to hold yourself to such a high degree of excellence, I do think that you can get rewarded for it. Like, the, the pay opportunity here is significantly higher than most other industries. You know, the rate of growth as well is much, much faster. If you are someone who's willing to work hard. It's because it's results orientated, right? Like you, you have direct inputs and outputs. And if you're paying an incredibly high amount of money to someone, and as a result, you're not seeing that needle move. You're very quickly going to say, well, this, this isn't working, which I think in some other industries, you can get paid a lot of money, but the inputs and outputs, aren't as clear and you can sort of stay in that position for, for years without essentially being caught out if it were. How do you find that right kind of balance or do you just give yourself over to the hustle and the grinding culture that YouTube is? I think it's set by the leader. I think it's set by the entrepreneur. I mean, when I worked for Ali, Ali didn't really have that approach, right? He was very anti hustle, right? He, he kind of, he talks about this a lot in his content. It's something that he, he doesn't personally enjoy it, right? He kind of, as you said, you know, many times he likes to sort of enjoy the process, right? He talks about the journey, not the destination. And I think that really kind of bled into the culture of the company and us as employees. Again, like what type of YouTube and entrepreneur you are, I think you approach it from a completely different perspective. That, that is the culture that you are building. And I think as yeah, producers, thumbnail designers, video editors, you've, you've got to find the right fit for you. And like, that's why I joined Ali's team is because I liked his personal brand. I liked his vibe. And I thought working at this company is going to be pretty fun, right? I didn't think, Oh, I'm going to join. And it's going to grind me into a pulp and I'm going to hate it where I think I can look at other YouTube content from YouTubers that I like, but I can be like, I probably wouldn't work for this person. Like I, I admire them from a distance. So I think it's like any job, whether you're an employee or an employer, there are certain styles of careers that you're going to aspire to. You know, if you want to go and be a lawyer, for example, you know, you're going to be working a hell of a lot of hours. You can't really go in there and then say, Oh, I want to have a bit of a chill, you know, lifestyle career where I can have a really nice work-life balance. And there will be those jobs within those industries, but you're likely to find yourself, you know, getting paid less or not working on the sort of the most interesting work in, in your industry. Why is being a, for, for higher YouTube strategist, the right move for you instead of being the head of content or a creative director for one channel? I think it's worth remembering that I, I was that right. Like I, I definitely spent my time working for people. And like I said, I joined Ali's company from the perspective of, I wanted to have my own business, right. I wanted to live the lifestyle similar to his. And I would say I have that, you know, I don't, I don't make as much money as Ali does, but I definitely have the ability to say, I don't want to work today and take the day off. I, you know, I wish I actually used that as much as I possibly could because I work a lot, but it's, it's there, right. It's, it's the option of like, if I wanted to just chill out, if I wanted to go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon, I could do that. Whereas if I was an employee, I'd be kind of stuck in an office. So that, that was my experience when I worked for the YouTube agency. It was like nine, 10 hours a day, headphones on staring at a screen. And, you know, after a year of doing that, I felt really kind of depressed about it. and down because it was like, this is not a collaborative experience. I wasn't enjoying it as much as I probably should have. And so I think for me, like I've, I've experienced a lot of different types of work and a lot of different types of agencies and sort of solo creator work that for me being in a position now where I can work with multiple creators and have an impact on multiple, you know, sort of niches is way more enjoyable for me than it was if I was to just be stuck working on one creator. That doesn't mean that occasionally I don't have the idea of like, it'd be nice to kind of work more in depth with one creator. Cause I still have that feeling from time to time, but I personally like sprints, you know, last year I worked with Simon Square for about four months and it was, it was a sprint of like, let's come in. I worked more intensely on that channel than I would with my, consulting clients. You know, I was in a making the titles, the thumbnails, reviewing the edits on multiple hour long calls per week. It's because I want to have a bigger impact there. And so I think, yeah, for someone like me, I kind of like the flexibility that comes with this sort of career, this business that I'm building. I'm someone who really likes variety as opposed to one style of, of working. Can you talk to the moment where you kind of pivoted away from working for a company and now you're working for a company that you're working for? the agency or you know doing work for Ali and then you kind of realize okay I have this opportunity to actually take on extra clients or and then what was that transition into your first client this is interesting because I was not really aware of the YouTube consulting world you know when I look back and I was making like that Instagram account that was my attempt at sort of figuring out what's my side hustle what's my business and like for that Instagram account I built that platform up I got into drop shipping and I was creating these Kanye West hats and other kind of merch and I was selling them I wasn't making crazy money but I was like learning that process because I always like I want I want to have my own business when I look back I'm like well YouTube consulting was obviously the answer right why I'd grown a channel to 100k subscribers when I was 16 17 right and so it's like that entire time working at the YouTube agency that I should have been doing consulting from all of my 20s but I think I only started around 26 27 and so yeah it's kind of like it was always there but I wasn't aware of it because this space wasn't developed like it is today and so when I was working for Ali, Ali's sort of head of editing Gordon he was saying to me you should probably do consulting and he was kind of I was like you know what does that mean what does that really entail and he was uh sort of a big believer in like yeah you could absolutely charge money for this there will be people who will pay for that and I really kind of struggled to be like people will actually pay money for me to just talk to them for an hour of Zoom didn't feel like reality barb had her own podcast on above worked for ali as well and she had her own podcast and she i think she paid me like 50 pounds which is like 60 70 dollars for like a cool week i think it was per month and then joe gannon who always used to work for ali he kind of referred me to grove edge which was my my first client which was a gardening channel i'm still working with them you know four years later wow and kind of like joe kind of gave me i think two clients i think it was my first two clients and then eventually once i left working for ali i think within four to six weeks after leaving i was already making double what i was making for ali as a salary and when that happened that's when i was kind of like oh this this is a a real thing because i was only working a few hours per per week right i think i had like three or four consulting calls per week and then i suddenly yeah i was making more money than i was full time and so very quickly i was like oh this is actually uh a real career this is something people will pay money for and you know it's just sort of been this iterative process over the last three and a half years of figuring out business figuring out how to position myself how to price myself what do people want uh what do people not want you know i've learned a lot over the past four years and i think it's just a case of you know trying out do you that's your side hustle if you're interested in kind of like going full time it's like you can definitely build this up on the side of whatever is your main thing and then eventually quit and and make it your full-time job i think it's very doable for a lot of people and i've i've seen people do it in the consulting world in the editing world and thumbnail world i think there are more people willing to pay for help in a creative economy than ever before and you can do it you can do it i'm always encouraging people i love talking to people about starting their business especially in the creator economy because i feel like it's such a big opportunity it's it's life-changing and everyone should really consider it and i think if they have any kind of skills that they think that they could sell to creators yeah i mean what you just described is a similar trajectory to to what my year was like last year when i pivoted into consulting my first client came and asked me what i offered what i could offer and i was like i don't know i'll just give you everything that i have and i'll try my very very best to do a great job and we'll do like a weekly call and you can message me on slack unlimited i had no idea what my actual offer was but they agreed and i was like okay awesome this is fantastic and i got eight hundred dollars per month for this service which i thought was excellent because it felt like really easy because it was just stuff that i was already doing but to your point it ramped up very very quickly and i found like i was earning more money with this side hustle than i was with my main hustle and that was only six or seven months into it it got to a point though where i got a lot of inbound traffic coming and i didn't know how to say no and all of a sudden i was overwhelmed with work did that ever hit you as well where there was just so much opportunity and you were bringing in all this money and you're looking at it you're like oh my goodness what am i going to do and then now all of a sudden you're working 50 60 hours and you're like oh boy i have no life yes yes i i think uh everyone who kind of gets into the space doesn't realize the demand because you go from does anyone want this thing are there actually people who pay for this to suddenly there being loads of people and it doesn't really stop i think the way that you make it stop is by increasing your rates because i think that was one of the things that i would say was a mistake back in the day was i was undercharging and i had all these opportunities and i was sort of saying yes because i don't like to say no i like to help people if i can you know i ended up where i was working so many consulting calls every single week that i started to feel a bit burnt out and i could sense that the quality of the conversation and the advice that i was giving within those calls was starting to dip that didn't sit right with me because i always want to give my my best i don't want to give 90 i want to give 80 and so when that started to happen and i started to just feel tired all of the time i was like i need to start saying no and you know the best way now that i've realized is when you start to feel like you're at capacity that's the time that you increase your rate and you just sort of have this stair-stepping effect over time where you will end up reducing the amount of consulting calls but you'd end up earning more and that way you can actually go more in depth with the quality of the conversation and the advice that you give the one-to-one clients that you have as opposed to spreading yourself so thin over like 20 different clients uh you know it's better to have eight than it is to have 20 um and so uh you know for me that's that's something i would give as advice to my my younger self figure out actually what are you worth start charging that and be okay saying no to people or at least putting them on a wait list which is is something that i i didn't really do especially for the first like two two and a half years of of the business do you have a wait list now like is that something that's part of your your business i've started to within the last month have a wait list and park people who i think are a really good fit but i'm kind of like a bit stretched too thin mostly because i'm not focused on just delivery at the moment i'm actually focused on improving my program because for the last three and a half years the way that i would work with my consulting clients is i'd kind of like see myself as a doctor where i would speak with them and i'd diagnose where their bottleneck was where what was the issue on their youtube channel that we needed to fix that would then allow us to get more views or more lead conversions and so what i started again i started to feel myself a little bit burning out of like i'm repeating the same thing for the 500th time um let me actually start to build some training let me start to build some lessons and some video courses and some resources within notion that i can refer to when i'm in a consulting call or they can actually use it kind of as homework that i can actually use as a way to sign to them at the end of those sessions so they are improving outside of me having to deliver one-on-one all of the time and then we can actually use those hour-long or 90-minute long sessions to actually implement the stuff rather than me educating you and kind of answering very basic questions that could have been answered by something else and so right now i'm really focused on like what does the first 90 days look like and how can we get you that win whatever that is by them like defined by them as soon as possible and i'm still going to take this sort i'm not going to prescribe sort of a general approach to everyone because every single youtuber in every single niche completely has completely different problems and team members and you always have to start from scratch but i want you know if you like i'm going to continue with the doctor analogy but if you if you're a doctor you'd be like here's this pill right or go and do these exercises um you know go and take this i want to have that approach where i'm able to look at sort of like the three main areas that people struggle with on youtube and be like training for this there's a training for that and get the sort of the the momentum much quicker where they can get that result um so that's where i'm focusing at the moment and all of the leads that i think are perfect for that they're going to be put on a wait list because the second that i'm able to open those doors the offer is going to look better than ever and we're going to get the results soon and so i'd rather bring someone in once that's done than now when i'm in the middle of construction basically is youtube the best platform for any thought leader or business person or educator or are there arguments for why instagram or linkedin might be a better fit for somebody well i mean yeah i think there will definitely be people where linkedin is a better fit i think it would be silly to kind of say yeah youtube applies for everyone in every situation but i think more often than not youtube is the place to be i've had clients who were huge on tiktok or huge on linkedin or huge in instagram come to me and want to start a youtube channel or they've already got the wheels rolling and they're like a fraction of the size and they all say the same thing to me which is i wish i started youtube earlier it's 10 times better than instagram and like this is what i found is in the tiktok world because when i was working in the tiktok agency we were dealing with short form creators and if it was like a brand visibility campaign it was really kind of easy to please the client because you can be like hey we've got 500k views we've got three million views right that's great but does that actually help with conversions and so when we'd have a conversion campaign this was scary for all of the account managers in the tiktok agency because you knew that you actually had to deliver you had to actually get people to click the link in the bio to the website and purchase something and short form creators really struggle to do that because they don't have that trust with their audience they don't have that depth of relationship that you can get from youtube because if you think about it this way with tiktok it's an instagram reels uh you know it's it's very much a swiping platform right you're swiping through this feed you are served a piece of content by the platform you didn't choose to watch that youtube's different it's a click and watch platform you have to say yes that title and thumbnails hooked me i'm interested in that topic let me click and watch it and youtube videos are always like you know 10 minutes long 15 minutes long 20 minutes long hours long with a tiktok or an instagram reel you're kind of looking at you know 30 seconds to a minute and a half and so let's just say it was 60 seconds you'd have to watch 10 60 second videos to have a 10 minute watch time whereas on youtube you can just watch one youtube video and you already hit that and so if you're able to this spider web of amazing content which obviously the algorithm is recommending all of the time to people you can very quickly develop that relationship on youtube then you can with tiktok because no one ever really kind of goes through and watches 10 tiktoks in a row and then decides to buy something but i have seen that happen quite a lot on youtube and so i think for a lot of people especially if you're trying to sell anything youtube is the place to go if you you're trying to sell anything youtube is the place to go if you're trying to sell anything youtube is also awesome because i think more people than ever are on youtube and you just you just get that brand visibility that depth that relationship and i think you you have more friction creating youtube content and making that a success than you do on something like instagram where you have stories and reels and carousels and sort of other formats of content which are easier to outsource and delegate but it's worth it if you can crack the the youtube game i talk about that sometimes as well with michael and i talk about that sometimes as well with michael and i talk about clients where i feel like you have a stronger relationship with your audience because of that time spent and because they're electing to click on the video rather than being fed it kind of randomly i think one piece of pushback that i get from clients who aren't overly educated in the in the youtube space is i can go and film a reel or a short you know and it can get 50 000 views and then we spend so much time and energy scripting out this magnificent youtube video and it gets 1200 views and i think those clients are predominantly the ones who don't have something to sell at the end of the day they don't have like an offer to convert so they're not seeing that depth of relationship yeah i mean it depends i think and especially for anyone who's listening who thinks about offering services to anyone in the youtube world i think it's very important that you focus on who your icp is in other words like what are the problems that you want to solve and can solve and will people pay for them for me when i got started i was happy to do consulting with entertainment and education channels i actually find that it's way easier to grow entertainment channels than it is education because entertainment like the ideas are always really big and bold and you you kind of get slightly more over into clickbaity territory which doesn't necessarily happen too much in the education space and so if you want to go views i think entertainment's quite an easy thing to do but from working again with like the youtube agency the tiktok agency and then working with these creators entertainment channels can get a lot of views but they don't have a lot of money because they're living off adsense and sponsorships and the kind of merch and merch isn't very uh you know it's quite cheap it's like 20 for a t-shirt that kind of thing right it's you're not making great money there for for the majority i wouldn't say all but for definitely the majority of entertainment channels they have a completely different business model to the education creator who can get a fraction of the views but be selling something that's high ticket and they just need you know 10 000 views and they can make like 30 000 dollars right from a single video and i've seen that happen so many times for me i over time i started to drift over more towards like i'm just helping educators then i realized i really like talking head content so i've started to create educational talking head content and now it's kind of like my icp is more for business owners and experts thought leaders who create talking head educational content on youtube right so i'm like over time becoming more and more refined of who i'm creating for because those are the people who have the ability to create content that they want to create and they have the right characteristics they have the right behavior mindset compared to some creators where there's a lot of mindset issues and it's like it's less about the the giving them the strategy it's more so about them kind of having their head right and so sometimes with those clients i'm i feel like i'm more of a therapist than a strategist and it's like helping them to do the things that are actually gonna get them to move the needle whereas i find with the business owners and the experts and the thought like the thought leaders their way they understand the investment that youtube requires for them to do the things that they want to do and they're going to get the skills in order to get the result because you have skills and you have strategy with youtube and i've seen on some entrepreneurs will pay for the strategy and for the thumbnail design it's an editor but they don't have the skills they don't they're not very good at speaking on camera as an example and then like why why am i not succeeding right because i think they can buy their way there and that's not the case with youtube the the best entrepreneurs i have seen are the ones who understand that they need to actually really uh treat youtube as if it was business and learn the skills and practice and be in it for the long term are your clients hiring out their own editing teams and everything themselves or is that part of the service that you offer where you pair them up with the team that they need to succeed um i have like friends who have editing agencies i refer them to but i don't offer it myself i did think about doing so at one point because i had a full time video editor and i thought well this is a great way to kind of like fill in the gaps of their work schedule because they would have like weeks where they wouldn't be editing anything and i thought well i could just offer it to clients and i thought well i could just offer it to clients and then i thought actually i don't want to do that because then you're starting to enter into a completely different game you're actually becoming a more like a done for you service at that point where you're then having to juggle multiple clients who want different styles of edit and you're taking me out of being a strategist into being the manager of an editor and so that that's not my zone of genius i know a lot about editing i used to be an editor but it's not what i want to do it's and especially i don't want to manage an editor and i can do the thing myself and so i i don't want to be a strategist i don't want to be a manager i don't want to be a manager i don't offer that at all i think that for a lot of people hiring a full-time video editor is like almost like the first hire that you should get when you're a creator even if you're a small creator and you can't afford someone who's full-time outsourcing or editor to someone who's part-time or on a video by video basis is the quickest way to free up so much time that you can actually dedicate that to the areas that are actually more important like creating great thumbnails or figuring out what actually the video ideas are worth the time you went into talking head content which is such a big important area of the youtube space and i want to talk about what that niche looks like in the year 2026 let me know if i'm wrong but i feel like it's changed a lot because ai has kind of become so prominent and everybody is using it like i think a year ago or two years ago you could make a video called seven ways to be more productive and you'd have a lot of success and now i think those same people who would watch that video are just asking chachi pt and getting the answer in five seconds rather than in 20 minutes how has the talking head world changed in the last 12 or 24 months and what is the right way to approach educational content this year yeah this is a really interesting question it's always evolving because of how quick the ai space moves i think yes there's definitely some people who will open up chachi pt and ask that question rather than watching a youtube video i think that's going to happen but you also have the element where google have installed gemini into youtube now so on some youtube videos you don't even need to watch it you can just scroll down click the ai summary and you can get your answers you know it depends on the topic of the video you know if it's a tutorial and you're telling me how to do something i might just look at that summary or just copy the transcript give it to claude or chat gbt and say summarize it walk me through it rather than me having to watch it i'm guilty of that i have done that in the past but i'm not going to do that But I think it depends on, especially like visual learners, right? on the type of learner that you are the reason that i love youtube is because i'm a very visual person and so sometimes i want to watch something happen as opposed to reading about it or clicking the the audio button and listening to it read the answer to me and so i think it's definitely going to be affecting the amount of viewers that you get but i think because of how fast youtube is growing anyway you're not really going to notice it that much i don't think i think there are more people coming onto youtube than there are answering asking chat gbt a question and then deciding i'm never gonna watch watch that youtube video because effectively all you're saying is like search traffic because if you're asking the question you would have been a search uh sort of viewer in that moment you wouldn't have gone onto the home page and youtube could have read your mind and then have the answer there already right you would have been a search viewer and so if you're someone who's you know traffic sources is dominated by search and that's how you primarily get your views then yeah you're probably in a little bit of a dangerous spot compared to someone where 80 90 of their views come from browse that's an interesting point i haven't heard that point before if you're ambitious but lazy watch this have you ever made a video with that title because i've made like four videos with that title uh i don't think i've ever made a video well with that title but i think i've i've definitely had videos like that when i worked for ali it's broad enough that it can kind of apply to everyone so you get a lot of clicks but you end up with uh so many people that's a lot of people that's a lot of people that's a lot of times i think the examples might not always resonate that title is so funny to me because i've made it probably four or five times with clients and i'm so sick of it and i've seen everybody in the youtube education space make that title and i think there was a time a year ago where you could make you could just see a title take it for yourself repurpose it the way that you want and then boom you've got your own great video but i feel like outlier theory has changed because it's been adopted so aggressively by everybody it's so widespread so well known so like how do you how do you avoid falling into the trap or what what strategy do you use to make outlier theory work in january i had a in-person workshop with me george blackman and guillem sims williams we we did a a four-day workshop for 20 people and it was it was great it's fantastic and like this outlier theory question continued to appear for the small creators all the way up to the big ones and i'll kind of like rehash my take on it again because i think like i i as i said before like i i've been on youtube a long time outlier theory was always a thing but it wasn't known by like your average creator so for strategists like me we would always use it we would always go and look at what are the most popular videos on your competitors channels or what's working you know quite recently that seems to be picking up momentum how can we make our own version of that and it would land quite well i think one of ten really changed the game because all of a sudden people became not only aware of outlier theory but they had a tool that helped them to make their own version of them implement it and because of that you end up with this issue where a lot of people don't actually know how to apply outlier theory they just think it's copy and paste and so if you have an original video that does very well and i think it's worth pointing out that the original video does well likely because it's not even you know copying another outlier it's original right everyone's looking at outlier theory right now it's like why don't you just be original stop trying to use outlier theory all the time but that's a separate point but if you're going to use outlier theory you have your original video that performs very well but then you you as the creator think oh i'm going to make my own version of that and but you also have the issue of there are 300 other creators who've just seen that exact same video and said i'm going to make my own version of that video and so by the time you've created yours and got it up sort of the tam the total just book market is shrinking because now that the market's just flooded with this style of video and i think the only time that you can truly use outlier theory like that and it'd be completely unique is if the language is the language that you're using the language that you're using is if the language that you're using is the language that you're using or whatever the advice is is unique so there was a number of outlier videos that i saw about a year ago around this i'm 30 uh if you're in your 20s watch this i'm 40 if you're in your you know 30s watch this and so i i made this version for simon squibb and i was like this is a video that's working really well there were channels that had 100 subs who were getting a million views on this but in the thumbnail they look like an interesting character so people were clicking on it and i said we need to do our own version of this and it's got you know 750k views now in a year and it's i'm 50 if you're in your 20s or 30s watch this that works because the advice that he's giving is is is personal right it's unique and so you can kind of see those titles often and you won't get sick of it because you care about the youtuber and and their perspective i think outlier videos like that completely work but when you're creating an outlier video that's exactly the same as the original it's going to fall flat and so i think that's when you need to start looking at adjacent niches which is what a lot of people do now or completely different niches and saying how can i take this title effectively turn it into a formula and swap out the word you know cooking for photography if i was in the photography niche and so it suddenly makes you know cooking master class how to create you know perfect pizza or something like that and you're like photography master class how to take perfect black and white photos right you can kind of swap those out and you can a lot of times see that you get the similar results but i think the most underrated way to use outlier 3 which most people aren't is actually studying why it worked in the first place why was it an outlier video in the first place and for me a big part of what i do with my clients is is the psychology aspect of youtube i don't focus too much on the design of the thumbnail i look at what were the power words that were used in the title and the thumbnail what emotions did that evoke in our icp you know what was shown what was not shown in the thumbnail that may have built intriguing curiosity that got someone to click you know what desires what fears what aspirations is that title and thumbnail communicating that got people to click because if you if you think about it right this is what i always say to people when you're on your phone and you're scrolling through youtube and you click on a video straight away that catches your eye try and catch yourself and go back just like pause the video go back to the previous page and look at that packaging and say what just happened there what made me in under a second click that video because there was something that you saw whether that was the title or it was a thumbnail that evoked some sort of emotion within you right you just think about this from a psychological perspective of like cause and effect something happened within your mind that made you say i want to click this so that you instantly clicked it right and the effect was you increased the the view count what happened if you can really try and like understand what happened you'll start to learn about more about yourself on what attracts you and you can also do the same on the flip side why did i not click on these other types of videos what was bad about them that didn't appeal to me and so when you're able to start understanding your ideal viewer and you're able to start seeing patterns across your most popular videos and competitors outlive videos you can start to say oh this type of person tends to click on this style of video or this type of person tends to click on this style of video or this type of person tends to click on this style of video or this power word master class appears in 10 of their their videos so clearly the word master class works then you can start to use it get results if you find that it stops working you can look at adjacent words you can say okay the why did master class work master class probably worked because from a psychology perspective it feels like it's the full picture right i feel like you're going to tell me everything i need to know about this topic that you're educating me on so what else has that kind of vibe well it might be the word blueprint right that has a very similar vibe it might be the word roadmap it might be the word system and like the reason i'm mentioning these is because that's what i've seen with entrepreneurs who make content for other entrepreneurs entrepreneurs love those types of words of system blueprint mode wrap master class because they imply step by step what you need to do even step by step is something i've seen that works because entrepreneurs love this input and output game they love things to be broken down very clearly for them and so you know depending on what you're doing you're going to be working on whatever your niche is you need to start learning from a psychology perspective what resonates with them and how can we then start to use this to flesh out our icp document that over the course of like a year two years three years we get really sharp and a refined document on who we're making content for that then filters over into the video ideas we make the titles and the thumbnails that we create the hooks and the languages that we use to call this individual out that is how i think people should be using outlier theory i'm completely just like brain dumped on you for like three minutes there i'm just that's in such an incredible answer like i could tell you've been thinking about this for a very long time you've refined it into a way that's just like very distillable and palatable so yeah i mean i could talk for an hour and a half on it there's so many thoughts it's sometimes hard to explain it because i feel like am i making sense right now i just sound like a madman right now i don't think from topic to topic i mean fortunately for people who live in the uk it sounds like you're around giving in-person seminars pretty frequently uh and you can people can hear you talk about it at length by joining one of your your workshops so that's really cool do you have anything coming up in the next month near like where people who are in the uk can come and meet you in person we're gonna plan to do one later this year we think around august september october time and if that does well we're also thinking about doing one in dallas and later this year after vid summit so those are two plans that we have right now but it's it's definitely not a monthly thing okay it was it was a lot of time lot of money for like the venue and everything and say right oh we we don't want to Yeah, put the workshops on so often that we run out of leads and we get hit with a big bill. For anyone who happens to be watching this and they're interested in joining that wait list that you have, what is the right way for them to find you? Yeah, you can go to ytintensive.com. That will take you to the landing page where you can join the wait list. Excellent. My last question for you is in the talking headspace, who is a creator that is doing an excellent job right now? I really love Vin Jiang. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, if you've seen his talking head content, it's so dynamic. Peter, who runs the channel, he's great. I've had a few calls with him and he just thinks about YouTube in such an interesting way. And I think that some of the editing decisions that he and the team have are just really smart. And I haven't really seen anyone do that. So I'll give you an example. So you see a lot of educational YouTubers. They will do that. They'll kind of have. A presentation, some sort of talk and it gets recorded and they just upload it as a clip or they'll have these bookends, right? Where it's like the intro it, they have the clip and then the end that the YouTuber outros and then that sort of it. What I love what Vin's team do is they have been sort of interspliced within the episodes clip. So it feels a little bit more dynamic, like an actual video. But what's interesting is he's, he's reacting to his own clip and the things that are happening within the actual video. So when he's helping. Someone to present well on stage and the person messes up, you see Vin laugh and talk about that in the moment. So you're kind of, you've got two bins, you've got the onstage bin, and then you've got the sort of the future version of him sat down in the studio reacting to that. And it's just these small things, for example, where rather than it cutting straight away back to Vin after like a three minutes section of where he's been talking on stage, they will have been sliding on the screen and he's like looking at the monitor. Yeah. Yeah. For about 15 seconds. And it's like, oh, me and Vin, we're watching this moment together right now. Then Vin sort of becomes full screen rather than just being in this box in the corner. And then he, he comments on it. And I found that that was such a nice way to have this blend of the two where it didn't feel so abrupt that you were constantly cutting between him on stage and him in the studio. And they do all of these tiny little things like that across their content. But I think a really interesting, I don't see a lot of other people doing. And so. If I was a betting man, I would definitely put money on Vin's brand getting bigger and bigger over the next 18 months. That is a really interesting take. I'm so glad that I asked that question. Fascinating. OK, Jamie, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate you being here, taking the time out of your busy life. Thanks so much for inviting me, Devin. Thank you so much for watching or listening to this show. If you're new here, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms. It really helps us out in the early days of this show. If you want to check out another episode, there's one in the description or you can go through our catalogs. We've got like 20 or 21 episodes now, so we're moving right along. We'll see you next week. Thank you.