516: How To Skyrocket A YouTube Channel To 180K Subs By IGNORING Best Practices With Rob Berger

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quarter, Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Now in this episode, I brought on my good friend and mastermind buddy Rob Berger, who has managed to build a very popular YouTube channel without following any best practices whatsoever. Listen to this episode until the end to find out how he’s done it. But before we begin, I want to you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit,

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02:05
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have my good friend and mastermind buddy, Rob Berger on the show. Rob is the founder of Doe Roller, which was a top financial blog, which he grew to 2 million visitors per year before he sold it for a large sum of money. He’s been featured in Morningstar, US News. I believe he still writes for Forbes, MSN Money, Yahoo Finance, practically every financial publication. He is also the author of the book, Retire Before Mom and Dad.

02:35
But the reason I decided to have Rob on the show today is to talk about his YouTube channel, which is killing it. And what’s interesting about his YouTube story is that he’s basically defying all the best practices for a successful channel and is still getting a ton of views. And in fact, earlier this year, our mastermind group finally convinced him to make custom thumbnails. And with that, welcome to the show, Rob, how you doing? I’m doing well, Steve.

03:02
How are you? I am good. It was good seeing you at FinCon, albeit briefly, since you’re always mobbed at FinCon. Yeah. It’s always fun. And it goes by so quick and it just, it’s hard to believe it’s been so many years. And anyway, that just proves I’m getting old. Well, I mean, I think I’ve known you for a decade now or however many FinCons there have been. So yeah. Did you go to the first one? I missed the first one. I started going from the second one on. Okay.

03:30
That was 2012, yeah. Yeah, 2012. And I followed you for most of your journey here, but I’m actually curious and maybe the audience, fill in the audience, because I don’t typically interview bloggers on this show. Why did you start Doe Roller? Why did you sell Doe Roller? Why did you buy it back? And then what prompted you to start your YouTube channel? So I started Doe Roller in May of 2007. Actually, I think it’s a funny story. So I was still practicing law.

04:00
And I told my wife, said, I’m kind of bored with the law. She goes, get a hobby. And so I decided I was going to be a woodworker. And the reason I decided I was going to, you know, I guess build furniture or bookcases was because the house we’d moved into a few years earlier had a workshop in it. And so I started on the internet looking for, know, I built a workbench. I’m all in for this woodworking. I’m buying tools, at looking at a table saw. And somehow I stumbled across

04:29
a personal finance blog. don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s called the 2 million blog. No. And I think it’s, I think it’s still up. I never met the blogger, but that, that led me to like get rich slowly and five cent nickel and consumerism commentary and bargaining, all of those sort of early day personal finance blogs. And I said, you know, this is awesome. They’ve built a website. They’re making some money from it. love personal finance and investing. And unlike woodworking, I’ve got probably a near zero chance of cutting off my

04:59
My finger. So I said, okay, woodworking is out. And I started a personal finance blog. You grew that thing to insane heights. I mean, what was your strategy back then for doing that? Was it all SEO? How were you getting your traffic? It was entirely SEO. I’ve never really focused a lot on social media. As you know, eventually I started a podcast that, you know, that was part of the blog.

05:24
Yeah, it did great. was a lot of fun. The Don’t Roll Our Money podcast, that started in 2013. And then by 2016, I’d retired from the practice of law, running the site full time. And kind of out of the blue in 2017, a couple of different companies reached out to me about buying the site. And I got the kind of offer that I just couldn’t refuse. And so in February of 2018, I sold it to a company in Tel Aviv.

05:55
And at the time I thought, okay, I’m done. I had no plans to, certainly no plans to ever buy it back. No YouTube plans. I thought I was truly retired. I ended up going to work for Forbes as the founding editor of what they call Forbes advisor, which was totally out of the blue. I did that for a couple of years. then- I remember I asked to contribute and you said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you stopped returning my calls.

06:23
Yeah, it just, you, just kept pummeling me with calls and I just didn’t want to hear it. No. Um, I think I referred you to my editor cause I don’t, I don’t have any control over the contributor network. Are you, do you write for Forbes now? No, no, no, I don’t. I don’t. I, I didn’t think I was ready to actually take on that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. But, but I can hook you up if you want to. No, no, it’s okay. It’s okay. I just thought I’d bring it up publicly on the podcast. Yeah, that’s nice. That’s nice. Uh, anyway, so.

06:52
I published my book and then I decided the idea of doing video sounded fun. My non-competed, it expired. so in 2020, right in the middle of COVID, it’s like, what else am I going to do? So I started a YouTube channel and that’s what I did. And I enjoy it thoroughly. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had between blogging and podcasting and writing a book and whatever. The YouTube channel is by far the most fun.

07:22
fun to talk about it. We obviously will go into the details, but, then earlier this year, the company that bought my site, they bought a bunch of others. They, they had not done well. They did well at first, but more recently they had not done well. So they basically sold them all back to the, the, the, for the most part to the founders. And, um, obviously there was sort of a different, different valuation model at this point.

07:48
And so to me it was just I could get it back at a very reasonable price and so I did and I’ve got a team helping me sort of basically scrub every single page on the site and that’s gonna be a Pretty lengthy process, but that’s been fun. It’s been a little little more work than I anticipated, but that’s okay

08:09
And now I’m on your show. so life couldn’t be better. That could get you from 07 to 23. There you go. What’s funny is you now own a lot of those early personal finance blogs that inspire you to get started. Yeah, it’s true. And I’m in the process of shutting them down, I’m afraid, but such is life. Well, you’re combining them. I wouldn’t call it shutting them down, but that’s Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. All right. Let’s move on to this YouTube channel because you shot out of a cannon with this, with your YouTube channel.

08:38
And you said you started during the pandemic. What are you at? Like 130 something thousand subs. see the plaque in the background. Yeah. I’m actually looking at my, my YouTube studio. I’ve got 136,575 subscribed. Wow. That’s a lot. And you achieved that number fat much faster than I did. It took me about three years to hit that. You know, I suppose, but for folks watching, I would say it’s slow when you start. It just is.

09:07
It’s not like, you you publish a few videos and all of sudden you’re getting thousands of views and your subscriber, subscriber numbers are jumping up. You really should expect, you know, you’re going to get, you know, 25 views on a video, a hundred views on a video. You know, you’ll look at your subscriber count. won’t seem to be going up and you just got to expect that that’s the way it is. And you got to keep grinding and just keep putting out videos, the best content, you know, for whatever your goals are and your audience and what you’re doing.

09:35
Once it gets going, know, yesterday I’m looking at my stats. I published a video on is buy and hold investing dead. Now, prop, perhaps not the sexiest of topics that you’ll find on YouTube at any given point, but for my audience, you know, it’s a pretty important topic and it came about for a variety of reasons, but I’m looking at it now. It’s got 22,000 views. Yeah. Which is great. Um, but you know, two years ago, I would have never gotten.

10:05
I might’ve had 200 views, right? So you just gotta stick to it, gets grinded out, and eventually it’s kind of like a snowball and it really sort of takes on a life of its own, but it doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, just walk me through your process. And now you probably went into this goal, I mean, you’re already financially retired for the most part, and this is just a fun project for you. So I, and maybe I’m putting my words in your mouth here, but did you start this project saying,

10:34
Hey, I just want a very low maintenance way to basically publish videos on a YouTube channel. Pretty much. mean, well, in terms of my process, I can describe that. But in terms of starting the YouTube channel, was just this should be fun. Yes, I can make some side income. That’s nice. But I’ll do something that I enjoy. That was about the, that’s about how much thought I put into it as a business model. Yeah. And then I remember when I looked at your channel for the first time, I’m like, you don’t even have a thumbnail.

11:00
And you don’t do any editing at all. It’s just you in front of the desk that you are. Well, different desk maybe, but no, this is the desk. Yeah. And then you just film it. And that’s it. So, yeah. So when I started the channel, I didn’t know anything about how how I should do this. And I remember it was driving me crazy trying to, you know, just me in front of a camera like it’s basically it’s what you’re seeing now. And it’s not hard to put that together. But when you don’t know what you’re doing,

11:29
You don’t know what equipment to buy, what your lighting should be. I had a terrible time getting the sound to be okay, the lighting to look okay. I don’t have to be great, just okay. And so you’re spending all that time, that’s the first six months, just trying to figure that out. And then you’d look at other, in this case, personal finance YouTubers, at least I did. And my takeaway was you got to have the crazy thumbnails where the person looks like they ran over a dog with their car. They’re doing that or whatever, because that’s what YouTubers do.

11:58
And have to have a lot of cuts in your video because you’ve got to take out the ums and the uhs and it’s got to move quickly because people don’t have much attention span and some of them have the background music playing. You got to maybe that. And so that’s kind of the path I went down because I thought, you know, that’s just what you have to do. That’s what you do. And I was miserable. All this post-production editing of the video, I hated it. I absolutely hated it. So finally I just started to question everything. Why do I need a thumbnail?

12:26
You don’t need a thumbnail. Google will let you publish a video without a thumbnail. Now what it will do is pick a frame from your video. it tends to, for me, it tends to pick, you know, some frame where I’m like doing this, looking off to the side and that’s my thumbnail, but whatever, what I care. I thought I’m not going to edit anymore. I’m going to record it like this. And I’ll, I do put it in Final Cut Pro and I hit a little button that enhances the audio.

12:54
I lop off the front of the video, the excess and the end of it, upload. That’s it. And part of it too was that some people, there’s no right or wrong here, right? There’s different ways to do it. But some, would call it more of a performance that it’s heavily edited. They edit out any errors and it’s quick. It’s a production. For me, I think,

13:20
My videos are not unlike what we’re doing right now. I view them more as a conversation with my audience, right? When you’re at dinner with friends and you’re talking, you don’t edit out, you know, the things you get wrong. You just keep talking. You keep having a conversation. And so that’s kind of what I thought I would do. Part of it could be my demographic. know, the majority, I’d say at least half of my audience is 50 or older.

13:46
They’re not looking for a young 24 year old with a heavily edited video to tell them how they should manage their investments in retirement. So part of it I think is the demographic, but yeah, that was it and it just worked. And I thought, this is great. I can do less work and get better results. So there you go. Now, today I do a little thumbnail, but it’s not much. It’s just me, picture of me with like three or four words put on it.

14:13
Throw it on, throw them on in Canva. It takes me about 60 seconds and that’s my thumbnail. Did your audience start growing or your channel start growing faster when you stopped editing?

14:27
I think it did. Now, you know, the cause and effect there is always a tricky thing. One of the things though that I think the positive is I can do a video very quickly. Right. So I’m working on a video now, you know, there’s in the financial world, everything seems to be in flux, right? We’ve got inflation, it’s high, it’s a little bit lower. Interest rates are changing. We’ve got war in different parts of the country.

14:50
So I’m going to do a video on things that don’t change. Amidst all of the chaos and the change, there are some fundamental investing principles that in my view never change. Simple straightforward video. I can record it in 20 minutes when we’re done and have it uploaded within the hour. And so that helps me a lot. Just get through and get the videos up. I’m not trying to play a volume game where I produce tons of videos every week.

15:18
I don’t, you some people I talk to, spend a couple of days just with a script. I don’t do a script. I don’t have a script. I don’t read from anything. That’s why I just going ask you. So you just kind of go in cold and you flip on the camera or do you already have like an outline of what you want to say? Just like our conversation now. I rarely, rarely do an outline. Sometimes I will if just there’s one thing I just don’t want to, I’m afraid I’m going to forget something, you know, a point. And sometimes I’ll just, you know,

15:48
jot down a few notes on a card. And I don’t mind the audience seeing it, right? Might even point it out, right? I got a card here with seven good things to know about whatever. So sometimes I’ll do that, but most of time I don’t. I will show my computer screen a lot, which is here to my left. And I can just hit a button here on my monitor. I can do it now. There you go. You see my computer screen. So there’s no post-production editing. gets filmed that way.

16:18
And so if I’m going to show them whatever eight tabs could be a financial tool, article I found, whatever, I’ll kind of line them up in the order that I’m going to talk about them. And so they kind of act like an outline for me. Uh, but yeah, I don’t, other than that, no, I don’t have a script. I don’t normally do an outline. That’s a, that’s incredible. I’m just thinking to myself now. I I don’t know. You don’t take an outline to dinner with you so you can talk to your friends. It’s that kind of concept. You know what I mean?

16:46
Hang on. What’s going on in your life? Hang on. I’ve got I’ve got seven things I want to share with you tonight. Dinner number one. Well, you know, what’s funny about this particular episode is usually I have an outline for these interviews. But with you, I don’t I don’t have an outline just because I know it’s not going to great. You’re doing great. You don’t have an outline. You don’t need one. All right. So your YouTube channel is kind of more like a video podcast in a way, right?

17:17
In a way, yeah. mean, yes, there’s some similarities there. Which begs the question, you stopped the Doe Roller podcasts. Could you use the same content that you use on YouTube on your podcast and would that work well? So a lot of people want me to take the YouTube videos, strip out the audio and just publish that as a podcast. And I do that for the Rob Berger show on YouTube. I have someone that does it for me.

17:45
It’s kind of a hassle, even though someone else does it for me, it’s kind of a hassle in the sense that it’s just another thing I’ve got to think about and I’d rather just not. If you’re trying to build a business and make as much money as possible, you can literally work 24 hours a day. There’s other, I could write more books. I could build an online course that I think people would probably buy. There’s always something more you can do.

18:14
You know, but you got to sort of balance your time out, you know, and what is it you want to do? And then people say, well, you know, you can hire assistants and have all these people around you doing all these things for you. And then you can optimize. Yeah. Or I could just go to yoga and practice yoga for an hour. That’s what I prefer to do. You know, I played a game of chess before online speed chess before just 10 minutes before we started our call. know, so to me, it’s just a balance. But yeah, I do have

18:43
a Rob Berger podcast that we upload the audio from. I tell people, just listen to the YouTube. You don’t have to watch the video. You can listen to YouTube in your car. But I do get that some people just prefer a podcast format.

19:01
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19:30
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:42
So why do you think your channel works the way it does? It’s so funny. I’m in a YouTube mastermind group and a lot of times, and there’s guys in there with like 5 million subs and whatnot, and they spend a lot of time on the scripting, the post-production takes almost all the time, thumbnail and title and all that stuff. And I can see why they’re successful, but to me, that’s very intimidating. I don’t have the desire to.

20:08
go that route, nor do I want to hire a team to do that. yeah. I think it depends on the channel. mean, can’t ever fathom my channel getting, I mean, I don’t know, can I get to a million? That would be amazing. 5 million, I forget about it. Part of it depends on your topic, right? So in the personal finance space, the channels that get

20:36
say more than a million subscribers. I’ll call it an entertainment value to what they do and they produce excellent videos. But my goal is a lot different than that. And if you’re going to sit down and do an educational video, which is really kind what mine are, it’s going to help people understand how much money you can spend in retirement without going broke.

21:05
and you’re gonna really get into the nitty gritty. It’s not the kind of video that’s gonna go viral, you know, and it’s not the kind of channel that’s gonna get 5 million subscribers. But what it is gonna get are very, very loyal subscribers. And so, you I went to the Bogle Heads Conference, if you’re familiar, you know, with investing conference, and I probably had 30 or 40 people come up to me and say, hey, I watch you on YouTube, appreciate it. We had a great conversation. The last two years, a big group has gone out to dinner.

21:35
I get tons and tons of email from folks. do a live show every other Monday night where people can ask me whatever they want. And that gets a lot of good response, a great group of people that watch it live, and then another 10 to 20,000 people that watch it the following week or so. And it builds a relationship with your audience.

22:03
that I’m not sure I would get otherwise. Let me ask you this. How do you build that relationship? Is it just through the lives or are you in the comments? So I do try to respond to comments, but as you probably know, after a while it’s impossible. But I do try to, you know, when I put up a new video a couple hours in, I’ll go through and look at the comments and try to respond. I do put out a newsletter every Sunday morning. It’s free. It makes a little bit of money.

22:33
Although it didn’t make any for the first year, it’s not really the point of the newsletter. It’s basically to share content. And most of the content I share is not mine, just content I find on the internet about investing in retirement. all of the subscribers to that come from the YouTube channel. That’s how I market the newsletter. And I get tons and tons of replies and I encourage people, know, reply back to the email. I may not be able to answer you, but I read all of all of your email.

23:01
So I think that helps build a relationship. The live streams build a relationship. So yeah, it’s kind of a little bit of all those things. On your YouTube stats, what percentage of your visitors are returning versus new? I have no idea, but I can look it up. Yeah, I think you have it right in front of you. That’s why I was asking. me- Well, it’s not, yeah, do have it. Yeah, it’d take me a second to get there, but- Yeah, yeah.

23:28
And while you’re looking it up, I’ll just tell you a minor for me. It’s like 70 % are new and 30 % are returning. I would imagine for yours, it’s probably flipped, right? Well, it looks like it just over 50 % are returning viewers. Yeah. In the last. This is for the last 28 days. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Incidentally, that’s like one thing I’ve struggled with, which is why I’m kind of asking you that question.

23:56
If you were to choose one thing that has allowed you to build community the most, would you say it’d be the lives that you do? Yes. And I’ll talk about that, but I’m just looking at my stats. The stats are, it’s interesting because it’s a little distorted. If when I publish a video, like I published a video on, um, actually I published three videos on Monday, which is very rare, but I had, um, you know,

24:23
A good 80 to 90 % of the views that day were returning viewers. So it’s only when I go days without any new content, the view, it’s actually, it’s, it’s more like 70 % are returning. Yeah. I think the live Q and A goes a long way. People like that interaction. Uh, it gives them a chance to, you know, ask me a question. mean, unfortunately, I never get

24:52
to the vast majority of the questions. there’s so many people on the live stream, I go for an hour and a half and I can only answer so many questions. But I do think it builds a relationship and a connection with people that they’re not gonna get otherwise. So I think for folks considering the YouTube channel or that have one, it can be a little intimidating.

25:19
the first live stream, I was pretty nervous first time I did. I was nervous one, because what if I get this live stream going and only two people show up? But that’s easy enough. That’s like, yeah, well, then two people show up and they get to ask you questions and you just need to park your ego, you know, to the side. And if that’s what happens, what happens. It didn’t happen that way. But then the other thing that, you know, it’s like, well, am I gonna…

25:44
Am I going to look like a fool? Like, they going to ask me all these questions that I just don’t know the answer to and I can’t help, I can’t provide any useful information. And that by, mean, there’s certainly questions I get asked that I don’t have any helpful response to. But I think for the most part, I, I, it’s not that I have the answer to everything they ask, but I think I can point them in the right direction or give them some useful information. What is your post frequency? You mentioned you posted three videos on a Monday.

26:14
Well, yeah, that was unusual because I did a video, then I did a short, which I haven’t done in a while. And then that was also my evening. I did the live stream. So that’s why there were three. Oh, I see. before then I hadn’t done one in two weeks. Wow. OK, so that’s unusual, too. I like to at least do I do the live stream every other Monday. And then I like to be on that do at least one video a week. But, you know, part of

26:43
Part of the issue for me has been dough rollers taking up so much of my time. And I’m now fighting back to that, because really I don’t like working on dough roller. I want to work on YouTube. So in a perfect world, I would probably do two or three videos a week. And that’s what I’m trying to get back to now. And you count shorts as a video? No, I don’t. I would say two to three long videos. long for me is typically a 10 to 20 minute video. And then

27:11
Shorts have done well for me. I don’t do as many again. It’s that whole question of time and you know, but I’d like to do more because they’re fun. And again, I do them the same way. I don’t do any heavy editing. I record. I use the software just to cut off the front and the end and upload it to YouTube. And that’s it. And I’ve got a little schtick, a little, you know, format that I follow now for all my shorts.

27:41
because they’re only 60 seconds. you don’t have time to collect your thoughts. Yeah. Can you walk me through your process for creating the video? And I know part of this has to do with your talent and the way you speak. I mean, you’re a very polished speaker. I don’t hear any ums or ahs or anything like that. That’s the last compliment you’re going to get out of me on this show. Thank you. I’m going to play it on a loop on my computer. I can’t imagine. And this is, I’ve been doing YouTube for four years now.

28:11
I can’t imagine just flipping on the camera, talking for 10 to 20 minutes and turning it off without any prep. Walk me through your prep. Do you do any prep? Yeah, I do some prep. Sure. So like the one I’m talking that I mentioned earlier, I’m going to talk about the basic idea. I’ll tell you the title. My working title right now for the, my next video is something like the seven golden rules of successful investing that never change. Right. And to me, this is an important video.

28:40
Because you’ve got to be well grounded. can’t just let the daily news throw you about, oh, should I sell? Should I invest in crypto? How about this and back and forth? You got to be grounded. And amidst all of the chaos in our world, I think there are things that you can hold onto that don’t change. Right. Okay. So that’s the idea of the video. I’m holding a card, by the way, that doesn’t really say anything on it. It’s actually got one line on it, but anyway.

29:10
Uh, so I’ll probably write the seven things on this card. Uh, and one, like one, the first one will be that successful investing is long-term. You need to have a long-term mindset. And I’ll just talk about that for a minute. Right. And I won’t, I won’t have more preparation than that. Like I won’t script out what I would say. Okay. So for me, it might be something I’ll just, I can do it now. So, know, so that’s what that’s saying. It needs to be long-term. need to think long-term. need to think here.

29:39
We’re not talking years, we’re talking decades. And the reason for that is, you know, we go through economic cycles, that’s just normal. And that’s always gonna happen. We’re gonna have recessions, then we’re gonna have growth. We’re gonna be in times of war, in times of peace. These are just the things that happen in the world. You can’t avoid them, you can’t invest around them. And, you know, there’s gonna be times when whatever you invest in, it’s not doing well.

30:04
And if you allow that to cause you to sell or change your strategy, you’re going to end up much worse off than if you just stayed the course. So you need to think about investing 10, 20, 30 years. And in fact, as an example, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s company, it’s been around forever. People like to talk about how it’s made millionaires and billionaires. But you know, if you invested in it, you know, back in the sixties or seventies and held onto it, you made a lot of money. But did you know that at two or three different times in that time period,

30:33
It fell by 50%. So you actually only had that pot of gold at the end if you could live through those sorts of downturns. so number one, you got to think long-term. Amazing. Right. And then I’ll go to number two. just pulled all that out of your butt just now. Very eloquently, no pauses, nothing. You have such a way with words, mean, really, you can paint a visual picture that’s amazing.

31:01
No, that was really well done. if I stumble a little bit, that’s OK. In fact, I try to slow myself down. One of the mistakes I made at the beginning is I was in such a hurry because I felt that my audience was impatient. Go, Rob. Go, go, go, go. And it’s funny. I got to tell you, I think this is funny. At one point in Final Cut Pro, I thought, know, I do sort of talk on the slow side sometimes. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to increase the speed of the video.

31:30
before I upload it. But I’m thinking no one will notice I did it like 1.1 or 1.15 uploaded. mean, the comments were brutal. Rob, what do you do? What do you do? Speed up this video? What is wrong with you? And the thing is, is, you know, people can speed up the video on their own. They don’t need me to do it for them. They’re probably speeding up this interview right now. Probably true. People like to listen to me at 2x from what I hear.

32:01
All right, so Rob, let me ask you this. There’s some people listening out there that wanna start a YouTube channel. just given that you defied all the rules, or the best practices I should say that are commonly taught, and you always seem to find your own way of doing things, and it always works out for you, what’s some advice for someone just starting a YouTube channel?

32:22
Well, the first thing I would say is, you know, there’s all kinds of equipment and setup and all this stuff that you can do and it may or may not make sense for you. But I, my, I would, the focus would be on producing videos and getting them published. You can use your iPhone, just use your iPhone to start with. There’s a guy whose name now I forget, but I can find him on YouTube. He does retirement videos and he’s got his iPhone and

32:47
Every video is him walking somewhere down a path in the woods somewhere, just looking at his phone, talking. He’s got like 80,000 subscribers in just a few months. His videos get tens of thousands of views. So, you you don’t need all of the fancy equipment at some point. It may make sense. I’ve got some fancy equipment. You can’t see it, but, you don’t need it. So the focus should be on producing videos because here’s the thing. You’re not going to know really what you should be doing.

33:17
until you’ve been publishing videos for six months or more. You’re going to learn this as you go. There were plenty of videos that I published in the first year that today I would never publish. I wouldn’t publish the topic. It’s not relevant because I didn’t quite know what my focus was going to be. And even in the context of money, you know, I mean, there’s obviously a lot of different ways you can tackle that subject. And so

33:44
I think the first thing is to figure out the least expensive and fastest way you can produce videos and just start producing them and then kind of figure it out as you go. That personal finance YouTuber that you just talked about, does he use the Rob Berger lop off method of editing? Well, that’s a good for the Rob Berger. It’s got an official name. His videos are not edited that I can tell. Wow. Maybe there’s some cuts here and there.

34:12
But for the most part, at least, I mean, I don’t know that I’ve watched one of his videos literally from start to finish, but yeah, they’re not heavily edited. And then can you tell me what equipment you have? What did you start out with and what are you using now? Well, so I had some money to invest. So my first setup, a friend of mine helped me with it he was a videographer, but the problem is, the problem was he wasn’t a YouTuber.

34:40
So he kind of set me up like I was shooting regular videos. So I had all these fancy lights on tripods and the whole wireless mic thing that clipped to my shirt with the thing tucked in here to transmit the audio wirelessly. So I had to figure all that set up. I don’t do that now. have, it’s too bad I don’t have my iPad down here. could wait. I’ve got, I can’t, can’t show you. But in any event, I have two key lights here. They just attach.

35:07
to the desk. I got them at Micro Center for a hundred bucks. I’ll lift this up. If anything gets unplugged, I’ve got this video switcher, streamer, to mixer, I guess. It’s a Roland. And it allows me to just go from me to my computer screen. I can also connect an iPad to it or an iPhone and show that. And then I’ve got two computers. My iMac is the one that you see when I show what’s on my screen.

35:35
The other one’s just a gaming PC where I actually record the video. I do have a teleprompter. I don’t use it for a script, but I use it for things like this. So it allows me to see you while I’m also looking at the camera. If you were on my computer over here, I’d either just be looking at the camera or I’d be looking over here at you and then not looking at the camera. I do have a monitor. know if I can show you just a little. This just shows me whether I’m on camera or it’s the…

36:05
because sometimes you forget. And this, I can just look down here and say, oh, it’s me right now versus my computer. And then I have a shotgun mic right up here. I do have another- What is your shotgun mic? I can actually send you a link. Oh yeah, I’ll just post this. I know people are always interested in what gear- I do have the fancy microphone and I can turn it on. Now I’ve heard this one sounds better, but sometimes there can be a back- There’s a buzzing right now. Yeah.

36:33
I haven’t figured that out. Let’s not use that one. I use a Sony camera. Nothing fancy. Yeah, I think that’s it. I think I’m looking around to see if I’ve got anything else on the desk. I think that’s everything. I’ve got a mouse. Yeah, Tony and I, teach a class and we do cover YouTube. And I think there’s a lot of mental hurdles to getting started. And people usually spend a lot of time on the gear. And in my opinion, the only thing that really matters is the audio.

37:01
And I do use the wireless mic because I sometimes I actually I rarely move around, but sometimes I do. Yeah. And it gives me more freedom to do that. Yeah. My goal was to make things as seamless as possible. So for example, on my camera, I have one of those things you stick into the battery compartment, but you plug it in. Yeah, I got that too. I leave my camera on 24. My camera hasn’t been turned off in two years.

37:27
And so I can literally, I’ve got the mic, know, everything’s set up. I just come in here, I sit down and I can record. It’s that simple. That brief demo that you gave of some of your sample YouTube content. Yeah. It’s probably not something that 90 % of the people can do.

37:45
That may be. I everyone’s different. I mean, I will say that I was a litigator for 25 years. And so I didn’t actually try a lot of cases, a handful, but I took hundreds and hundreds of depositions. some lawyers will have these massive outlines and they’ll literally read question after question in a deposition. I don’t know how they do it. I was never that way. I would have documents that I wanted to ask the witness about, but I was just going off the top of my head, question after question after question.

38:14
So, you know, that training probably helps me a little bit, but like with anything else, it’s just a question of practice. And there are times when I’ll start a video and I’ll have to start at like nine different times because I mess up in the first couple of minutes. So there are times when I get frustrated and have to start over. just, some would edit that out, but that’s more work for me. I’d just rather start over. yeah, I do think the work as an attorney probably helped me.

38:45
I didn’t really think about it at the time, but probably helps me with my style of videos. I mean, that’s your superpower in my opinion. Let me ask you this. So if you could, let’s say double your views with the editing that you used to do and stopped, would you do that today or would you, you still wouldn’t? Okay. I wouldn’t do the editing. don’t know if I would maybe hire someone. Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know that I would. Interesting.

39:10
Because then that’s process. I want to get the video published. Now I got to send it off. I got to wait. They get back to me in two days. It’s just a hassle. And I’ll tell you, I did an edited video once and it even had a little background music and my audience hated it. I mean, the comments were brutal. They want to have a conversation.

39:32
but you can’t have a conversation on YouTube unless you’re doing a live, right? Well, you can’t have a conversation like we’re having. Let’s talk about the content here. Are you asking questions? I’ve only watched a couple of your videos in its entirety. Are you asking questions and asking people to post questions and comments?

39:52
Well, no, I don’t normally ask a question. You’re talking about my regular videos, not the regular ones. No, I would say I don’t ask questions. I invite them. Sometimes I do. Sometimes, you know, like I did a video. This is for a different. This is for the door roller YouTube channel. I published a video today. Do remember Mint.com, the old budgeting app? Yeah, of course. You know, they’re closing down. I did not know that. Yeah, they’re having all their migrating all their users to credit Karma. Oh, my goodness. OK. I think it’s kind of weird. Anyway.

40:21
I did a video about that. And so at the end I asked folks, I gave them what I thought were good alternatives to mint.com, but I said, Hey, you know, I love learning about new apps. if you have any, if you use a budgeting app, haven’t mentioned, you think it’s great. Leave it in the comments below. Sometimes I’ll do something like that. haven’t checked the comments yet, but yeah. guess what I’m trying to ask is to your original question. I don’t think I would change my style just to get more, more views.

40:51
You keep mentioning having a conversation. What are some examples of that in your content or the way you kind of just structure your videos that are intentional for creating this? so one is the pacing of the video. You know, you’ll see a lot of videos where it’s a very fast pace cuts. They’re close to the camera. They’re farther away. Some B roll. That’s not a conversation. By the way, it can be a wonderful video and people might like those kind of videos more than mine. That’s OK. But.

41:20
It’s not how you talk when you’re out with friends having dinner. And so I like to try to make mine a little more, I guess conversational would be the way I would describe mine. Obviously, it’s just me in my basement looking at a camera. no, you day when I start to hear people talking back to me, I’m in big trouble. Well, what is your retention rate average? Just curious. I don’t know. You don’t know. Okay.

41:48
I can look it up for you. See, this is the interesting thing about different YouTubers. Some people are all over their stats and their analytics and what can I do? How do I keep them watching longer? I’ll talk about seven items, but I’ll tell them, you know, stay to the end because the seventh one is the best and all these sort of strategies. I, by and large, just don’t do that. It’s like, you know, watch the video if you want to. If you don’t, don’t. I know it’s refreshing and it’s working and it’s low energy, which is why I like it.

42:15
Well, I guess it’s not like I don’t have any strategies, but they’re just not all that advanced. don’t know. Let’s see. don’t even know where to look. By the way, a lot of the retention stats, so you got to be careful because a lot of them depend on the length of the video to begin with. If someone sees an eight minute video, they’re more likely to maybe watch the whole thing than if it’s 28 minutes. That’s correct. That’s correct. Yes. I got the answer right.

42:44
mailed it. What was the answer? Oh, no, the percentage. I’m still waiting for the percentage. I know what mine is. And I’m just kind of here’s the question, Steve. At this point, is anyone still watching this interview? Well, if they want to, I mean, we’re just having a conversation here. I’m following the Rob Berger method of the raw. That’s right. We are. I’ll show you the stat. This is my last video. Where do I go for retention audience? Probably. It’s engagement. So click on you don’t even have to look at your own stats. This is amazing.

43:14
Audio? Oh, it hasn’t, we don’t have data yet. You pick an older one. You gotta pick an older one. All right, hang on. too new. Yeah. All right.

43:23
Here we go. This is exciting. How and why to build a tips ladder. mean, who doesn’t want to learn about that? I don’t even know what that is. okay. Do know what a tips bond is? inflation protected security? Nope. Sorry. Maybe I should be following your channel. You don’t know what tips are, huh? Okay. I’m a T-bill and chill type of guy right now. T-bill and chill. Oh, that’s great. T-bill and chill. I like it. All right. Let’s see. Average view was six minutes. Average percentage view is 25%. 25%. Is that bad?

43:53
How long is the video? This video was I don’t even remember. It says right there. Oh, it does. Yeah. It’s a 20 something minutes. I can’t see that small and far sighted now. I don’t even see where it shows that it’s just in the upper like the thumbnail. See the thumbnail. Oh, you’re right. That’s funny. Um, this YouTube stuff is confusing. 25. Okay, yeah, that’s that’s what I’m good. That’s very good actually for a video that long, I think.

44:21
I can find a shorter one. Let’s find a shorter one. No, I was just curious. I don’t want to bore the audience with with with the ads too late for that. Yes. Let me ask you another question. What is your typical click through rate that you can see? You’re asking me all this data. Yeah, by the way, let me ask you a question. I’ll ask you a question and then I’ll answer yours. OK, in the context of YouTube, what does click through rate mean? It means your ability.

44:49
to maximize the amount of views on your channel based on the number of times YouTube shows your thumbnail to somebody. And this is why we’re trying to convince you to make custom thumbnails because that’ll increase the number of views, which is generally a goal that most people have when they start a channel. Well, here’s what I found. And I don’t know if I’m looking, I may have to look at an older one again, is that when I have a thumbnail that has words on it,

45:18
which is what I do now. That does have an effect on views. Shocking. But I don’t know that I, do I need to do anything else? Do I need the crazy thumbnail where it looks like I’ve just run over a dog? No, I think for your audience, which I believe is like people like my mom or even myself, maybe, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to take financial advice from someone who does funny facial expressions, right?

45:48
I mean, I want someone I can trust. want someone with gray hair and a beard that talks very eloquently. Who’s got gray hair and a beard and two thumbs? This guy. So my impression click through rate on my current video is 5%. Okay. Our stats are actually quite similar. Okay. Yeah.

46:10
Now, I will say when my views, as views go up, I’ve seen click through rate go down. Correct. Because YouTube, I guess, is showing it to more and more people and they’re sort of moving beyond the obvious demographic or whatever of people that would want to watch it, I guess. I don’t know the algorithm, but. Yeah. Well, okay. A couple more questions. You mentioned before money is a vast space to be talking about, and you started out talking about different things. How did you hone in on the

46:40
on the topics that work? Well, that’s a great question. when I started, of course, you want views, you want subscribers. And so I was trying to create videos that I thought would get a lot of views. So this was in 2020. I did the stimulus check videos, the student loan forgiveness videos. And by the way, important topics, right? But they just weren’t interesting to me. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of important topics out there that I just don’t have any interest in creating videos for.

47:08
And I found myself creating them just because I wanted to try to get views. So finally, just said, it was kind of about the same time about the whole editing thing and thumbnail and all that. said, you know, forget that. I’m going to write, I’m going to do, I’m going to pick topics that I’m interested in that I think will be useful to people. Well, you may not have noticed, but I’m on the older side. so topics that are interesting of interest to me in finance have to do with investing and retirement planning for people in or near retirement.

47:38
That’s what’s interesting to me. And so I started producing videos on that. And then that’s how it just sort of over time, it started to work. People started to associate me and the channel to that kind of topic. And that’s what I do. That’s actually a really good answer. And you know what’s funny is we have a mutual friend that did stimulus check videos during the pandemic and that actually ruined his entire channel.

48:05
because all of a sudden he was attracting all these people with no money who wanted stimulus check information. That became the majority of his audience because those videos did so well and they’re not interested in investing. Yeah, there are some channels that did well with it that continued to do well after. Some didn’t. I mean, the issue is you can get a lot of subscribers pretty quickly if you have a few viral videos.

48:30
they may be subscribers who aren’t interested in the kind of content you want to create long-term. Because obviously a stimulus check video isn’t the kind of content you’re going to create for 10 years. Correct. And so you can have all these subscribers who don’t really have any interest in what your main topic is. So I, you know, that’s just sort of the way, I mean, in my case, I’ve had one viral, what I would call viral video. That’s it. So most of my subscribers have been built up, you know, relatively slowly over time.

49:01
You know, there’s something I’ve always really liked about you, and this is maybe the last compliment that I’ll give you, is that we go in these mastermind meetings, and we all talk about our strategies and whatnot, and even if there’s a strategy that’s working for almost everyone in the group, you always pick your own path, and you say, hey, you know, that might be work for you guys, but I’m just gonna go my own way, and whatever you choose always seems to work also.

49:29
Which just goes to show, I think, that you really have to find your own way in anything that you do and not just take one of these best practices as gospel. I I bet if you started following some of the best practices that other YouTubers teach for your channel, it would probably have a negative effect based on the audience that you particularly have, right? Yeah, I think it’s good to sort of question everything. Not for the sake of, the thing you want to avoid is you don’t want to question everything just because you want to be different.

49:59
Not that different is bad or good. It’s just, but question everything because you know, if you really spend some time looking around YouTube, you will realize that there is no one formula. There are some incredible channels that have huge followings that are just crazy. I would have never thought they would have worked. And that’s true outside the money space. It’s true within the money space.

50:28
There’s just a variety, there’s just a great variety of interests and what people like and don’t like. And, you know, I think if you’re as true to yourself as you can be, and there’s always some performance, right? I mean, but if you’re as true to yourself as you can be, one, you’ll enjoy the process the most. And you’ll find people that like what you have to offer.

50:55
I mean, you just will. mean, you may not have a channel with five million subscribers, but, know, can you build a channel that either helps support your business or if YouTube is your business that generates a full-time income? I think you absolutely can. And so if you can do that while doing it in a way that resonates with who you are, you really can’t ask for anything more. I mean, that’s like, to me, like the perfect sweet spot to be in. Yeah, Rob.

51:24
We’ve been talking about your channel a lot, where can people actually find this channel and follow you? Well, if you go to YouTube and just search for Rob Berger, you’ll find me. OK. If you look at any of my videos, you’ll see a link below to my newsletter. It’s free. It’s it’s it’s for primarily people interested in investing and retirement planning. What’s that? Which is like everybody, basically. It’s a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah.

51:50
I include a section in there that has stuff that I just find interesting that’s not related to money necessarily. But yeah, it goes out once a week. that’s probably the, those two, don’t, you know, I have a Twitter account, I don’t, I’m not a social media junkie. I rarely post on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or, so those are probably the two best ways to connect. Cool. What’s ironic is Facebook is your demographic, isn’t it?

52:16
I guess it is. you know, when I do a live stream, I stream it to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, even Twitch. I’ve got like two followers on Twitch. on Twitch. Amazing. Yeah. think the two followers are probably, they probably think I’m somebody else, but yeah. You know, when I stream, can, you know, I use different streaming services you can use, but they stream me to all those platforms. Yeah. Yeah. I’m on Twitch.

52:40
I want to have a Twitch account where I play speed chess. That’s a big thing actually on Twitch. Yes, I follow the Botez twins actually. Oh yeah, yeah. They’re a riot. I don’t watch a lot of their videos, but they’re very entertaining and great chess players actually, you very good. I mean, they’ve made chess really popular. They did. I think Nakamura did who’s the world reigning speed chess player. You Magnus Carlsen’s done a lot. Yeah, he’s got a social media presence too. Yeah, he does. I think it’s a little more well,

53:10
what you’ll find him doing. You can now find him on streaming his speed chess, which if you’re a chess player is a great thing to watch. You can actually learn a lot and his mind is just ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. Yeah. His ability to play chess, but yeah. So, but so maybe I should turn my Twitch channel into a chess streaming thing, but in any event.

53:35
I don’t have time for that right now. I got to stay focused, Steve. I got to stay focused. Okay, here are my key takeaways for this episode, just for anyone listening. So one, stay focused. You could be doing a million things, but just do the things that move the needle the most. That’s the Rob Berger philosophy. The second philosophy for Rob Berger is just do what it takes to get the video out there. Don’t focus on the equipment or whatnot. Just focus on the process for producing videos on a consistent basis. And then figure out what works and then

54:05
on the topics that you’re actually interested in covering in the long run. Play the long game. Absolutely. Yeah, and you got to lean into what you like because whatever you start with, there’s going to be a point where it doesn’t seem like it’s working because this is a slow process to begin with. And what people end up doing is trying to change their approach too frequently. Stick with it for a year. Consistent videos.

54:30
That’s the only way to know if what you’re doing is going to work. You can’t do it for two months. That’s not going to be enough time. It’s kind of like investing. Kind of like investing. That’s right. Long term. Well, Rob, thanks a lot for coming on. I always learn something from you. Usually you give me more smart ass comments back. So maybe since we’re recording. to be nice today. But I appreciate you. I enjoy having in the mastermind group and meeting up with you.

55:00
once or twice a year. And I’m looking forward to the next one.

55:07
Hope you enjoy that episode. Rob’s story just goes to show that if you’ve got great content, you can grow a YouTube channel very quickly, even if you don’t follow best practices. For more information about this episode, go to mywebcoupterjob.com slash episode 516. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go over to sellersummit.com.

55:37
If you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifecoderjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and they’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.