I am Failing! I stink at YouTube and so should you! + TV Shows I’m watching! Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 370

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And I wanna talk about something that's not going well for me that I'm failing at, and I'm totally cool with that. And that is my YouTube strategy now. Ah, who cares? I don't care about YouTube. So first off, I'm definitely gonna break down why you should care about YouTube and why I care about YouTube.

Jay Schwedelson: But more important than that. This idea of being comfortable failing, sharing your failure, and making sure that as you go through your failure, you're taking certain steps to get the most out of it. It is so important, uh, and so many people out there are full of it, you know, they'll be like, oh, Jay, you can't talk about the fact that your YouTube channel stinks.

Jay Schwedelson: That you don't have a lot of people checking it out because you have a, you have a podcast that you put out there, you have a, you, you're trying to grow this, you know, personal brand. Nonsense. You have a LinkedIn following all this stuff. If you do that, people are gonna think less of you. Wrong. Who cares?

Jay Schwedelson: We're all people. We're trying to connect with each other. We're trying to share the wins, the losses. And in this world of garbage ai, you don't get ahead. By just pretending everything you're doing is going great. You don't get ahead by, uh, never sharing what's really going on because you can't connect with another human being anymore if all you're doing is everything is awesome.

Jay Schwedelson: It's like the Lego movie. Everything is not always awesome, okay? It's just isn't. So what am I up to and why does YouTube even matter? And what are the important steps while you're failing? So first off. YouTube, obviously YouTube is a big deal. That's a ridiculous comment for me to even make, but what I don't think everybody realizes is where it is headed.

Jay Schwedelson: So about three years from now, YouTube is going to be dominating content. It is. The short form video that we are all consuming. Do you realize that 90% of internet traffic right now is short form and, and longer form video? 90% of internet traffic, but where it's all headed, I. This idea of YouTube shorts specifically, those are videos that are under like 90 seconds, under 60 seconds.

Jay Schwedelson: This is going to be the content that matters on planet Earth in the next three years because Google. Okay, which owns YouTube is prioritizing YouTube shorts everywhere in its AI summaries. In its search summaries in obviously YouTube itself. And so the days of, uh, hey, we made a new checklist that we want people to download.

Jay Schwedelson: We made a downloadable guide. We made a downloadable 1 0 1 sheet, all this downloadable stuff that we put out there. That is not going to be the thing that fills up your, your sales funnel. It is not, it's going to be people consuming YouTube shorts. And the problem is, it's hard. I. It's really hard to stand this up.

Jay Schwedelson: So I'm a believer that this is where the world is headed. That's what all the data is showing. So I said, uhoh, I gotta figure out YouTube because when I say I didn't know anything about YouTube, like a zero burger, like nothing. So I said, okay. So a few months ago, about three months ago, I said, Jay. You gotta figure this out.

Jay Schwedelson: And I have a team, I've about a hundred or so people in my company, and I easily could have just told my team, Hey, figure out YouTube. But the problem is when you go on YouTube now, you'll go on a page of some brand, okay? Some decent brand, and they'll have, you know, 30,000 followers. And then you go and look at their videos and they'll have like seven views on a video.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, 42 views on a video. Okay? Why? Because what everybody's doing with YouTube now. They're not trying to figure it out. They're creating video content elsewhere. Uh, podcast, video content, webinar, video content. They cut it up. Maybe they make it a little bit shorter and they dump it onto YouTube. I. They're not actually trying to play the game, which is so funny to me.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause when you go and you post something on LinkedIn, on your company page or your personal page, or on Instagram, you make a reel. Or on TikTok, what you are doing normally is you're saying, oh, Instagram likes this. TikTok likes this. LinkedIn like this, and you're making the content fit the platform. But for YouTube, what everybody does is they just dump their garbage there and they hope for the best.

Jay Schwedelson: And that's a recipe for failure. So here I go. I said, okay, I'm gonna start doing this. And what I quickly learned is, first off, I. Getting subscribers, legit. Subscribers is hard. It doesn't just happen. Okay? And I was like, oh no, I'm so embarrassed. Like right now, after about two or so months doing this, I have about 600 subscribers.

Jay Schwedelson: And somebody said, dude, that's embarrassing for you. You're supposed to be a relevant human being. You can't have 600 subscribers. What are you doing? You, you should take it down. That's gonna be like a negative signal out there. What? No, this is called being a human building in public, not trying to be full of it.

Jay Schwedelson: That you know everything. Okay, I'm okay with that. I'm gonna grow this thing. I'm gonna figure it out. And by the way, so I started saying, wow, how bad is 600 subscribers? Do I really think of this? And this is what I learned, and this is why you can find success on YouTube. Do you know only 9% of YouTube channels have over 600 subscribers?

Jay Schwedelson: Whoa, that's wild. But here's the bonkers thing. So I started figuring out shorts, the, the videos that are under basically 60 seconds. That's the secret sauce. And I started messing around with them and messing around with them. I. And I, I realized that if you do shorts in a certain way, you make them really compelling.

Jay Schwedelson: You have some cool, uh, headlines on it. You have some cool thumbnails. My shorts are averaging over a thousand views, a short, now that may sound like garbage, but when you have like 600 subscribers and you're averaging a thousand views, the majority of my views are coming from non followers. And I also found out that for people that have 600 followers, the average shorts only get 65 views.

Jay Schwedelson: So I'm like, wait a minute. This is cool. I'm doubling down on all this and I'm messing around and I'm trying to figure it out. What's the right time to post? Uh, what's the frequency? I should be posting all of this. Now, why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you all this. Number one, you gotta get on the YouTube train.

Jay Schwedelson: I, I'm just telling you, you have to get on the YouTube train. But the, the other piece of this, and it doesn't matter if it's a social media platform, maybe you're onboarding a new email sending platform. Maybe you are, uh, updating your CRM to a different system. I don't care what it's. Okay, and I don't care how big your company is, I don't care if you're the senior vice president of blah, blah, blah at a 10,000 person company.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't care if it's a one person company that you're at. I believe I've been doing this now for 27 years in my career. I believe that whether you own a business or you are a manager in a category, or you have a significant role, I don't care. You need to have your hands on the controls. You need to, uh, be in there with the new platform that your company onboarded for a little while.

Jay Schwedelson: That doesn't mean you have to do it all right? But you have to be in there. You have to see, oh, this is where this goes. This is how this works. Oh, uh, I haven't sat in on a sales call in three years. I'm gonna go sit on 10 sales calls. I'm gonna go sit with the operations group to see how they handle this.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, I'm gonna sit with customer service. Have they handled that? And for me, with YouTube. I'm gonna see how do you upload the thing? How do you make a thumbnail? How do you, uh, what is the data looking like? What's working, what's not working? If you are not in it, okay. And you're trying to just be like, Hey, you over there, you do this.

Jay Schwedelson: Or you hire an agency to do this for you, and you never have your hands on the controls. It's never gonna happen because there's no way for you to intelligently share your thoughts, your input, the changes, whatever, or have a meeting about, okay, how is it going? I wanna review this, that, or whatever, because you are too removed from it, so you're not above it, you're not that important.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm sorry, I have my hands in it right now. And it's like, you know, before my newsletter got going, I'd have my hands in my newsletter, every piece of it before LinkedIn got going for me, I'd have my hands in it. Every post, every everything. Until you figure it out, you gotta be in it. So. I suck at YouTube, but I'm gonna figure it out.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm gonna grow this thing. It's gonna happen. It's gonna take me time. And by the way, if for whatever reason you wanna follow me, that's amazing, please subscribe to it. It's just at schwean, my horribly long last name at S-C-H-W-D. E-L-S-O-N. That's not why I'm making this episode though. I'm making this episode to encourage you to be okay with failure.

Jay Schwedelson: Sharing failure. It's not really failure. You're growing, you're learning. And by the way, you gotta check out YouTube. Alright, let me get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast. Um, oh, before I do that, we have a sponsor. Woo Marigold is our sponsor, and they have an email sending platform called Emma. I use it.

Jay Schwedelson: It's amazing. Only for listeners of this podcast, okay, can you get 50% off for three months? It's bonkers. This is like the ultimate email sending platform. I love it. All you gotta do is go to j schon.com/ma to get 50% off for three months. J schon.com/emma. Check it out. Alright, let's get to the ridiculous portion of this podcast.

Jay Schwedelson: So. Speaking about things I should be embarrassed about, like failing. Uh, I should be embarrassed about the TV that I'm currently watching and I'm gonna break down exactly the TV shows that I'm watching because I know how much you don't care. But that's okay. Number one, I am all in right now in the Gilded Age on HBO Max or whatever it's called now, max, max, HBO, I dunno what it's called.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm I'm, I was sleeping on the Gilded Age. Okay. It's in season three. I'm just finished season one. This is about New York and like, I don't know, the 18 hundreds. This is a great show. I am telling you, if you've never tried this, go to season one. Start the Gilded Age. It gives three thumbs up for me. Okay, cool.

Jay Schwedelson: The other thing I like, which nobody's gonna be watching, but I'm telling you this is a must do on Hulu with Gordon Ramsey. It's his new show, secret Service. I love all things Gordon Ramsey. I've seen every episode of of Kitchen Nightmares. His new show's Secret Service is great and what basically is he goes like undercover, sort of in these restaurants and he fixes them and it's awesome.

Jay Schwedelson: And these restaurants are disgusting. They have like rats and the foods gross and I can't watch this show enough. I'm very pro this show. I'm also watching Love Island on Peacock, which is super embarrassing. I do have a 17-year-old daughter who I watch it with, which is also a little awkward because everyone's hooking up.

Jay Schwedelson: So, uh, my wife watches with us too. My son, uh, who's 18 wants nothing to do with this situation, but because it's like blowing up on TikTok and my daughter watches it, then it's like family bonding. We're family bonding, watching Love Island. What the hell's wrong with me as a parent? And then the last thing is.

Jay Schwedelson: Um, I can't wait. Bachelor in Paradise comes out Monday. Cannot wait. This is gonna be so great. They are combining the cast, not just from the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, but also the Golden Bachelor. And the Golden Bachelorette. There's nothing better on tv. I don't care what you say. You're wrong. This is it.

Jay Schwedelson: So, uh, bachelor in Paradise. Very excited. I appreciate you listen. It would matter to me. I lied. It would matter to me if you go ahead and check out the YouTube page at schon. I'm trying. It's not going perfectly, but I'm gonna get there and I really encourage you to go deep on YouTube and thanks for checking this out later.