565: Why Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working—and How to Fix It

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Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Today, we’re going to conclude our four part series on creating content to promote your business. In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to build an audience with social media. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit.

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is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

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I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people. So tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

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Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. And finally, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 38 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still get my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube, and podcasting. When you grab the book over,

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at MyWifeQuitherJob.com slash book. So go to MyWifeQuitherJob.com slash book, fill out the form, and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Drop podcast. Today we are covering the last segment in our four or five part series, however you look at it, on content creation. And today we’re gonna cover social media. But before we begin, I know you just got back from one of the events that I’ve gone to almost every year since its existence, FinCon, and I had to miss this year. How was it? It wasn’t the same without you. It wasn’t the same. I wanted to be there, but it was all the way in Atlanta and I’ve got duties now.

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as the father of two teenage kids. Total side note, Atlanta has what’s called the MARTA, which is their public transportation, and they have a station at the airport that basically drops you off underneath the hotel. However, it’s not quite as like a- It’s not like the New York subway. I was trying to find a better word. I didn’t hear anyone have a bad experience with it. I decided that an Uber was like $40.

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and the Marta was 250. So I was like, I’m gonna take the Marta. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, like I’ll be fine. So I took the Marta, I was fine. And then I was like so emboldened because I took the Marta. I was like, I’m gonna take it back too. Like, look at me, I have saved $100. And then I proceeded to basically spend that on my dinner at the airport. Because everything is, because I didn’t want like fast food. I wanted to like sit down and eat something. Because you know, when you’re at conferences, you’re like,

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like not eating great the whole time. I was like, no, I want like a real meal. So I was like, you know, $60 later, I was like, oh, well, there was my Marta savings all eaten away by my nice meal. But FinCon was really good. We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. I will say that the biggest lesson out of FinCon is everyone’s doing video. And if you’re not, it’s not too late. It doesn’t matter when you start as long as you start.

04:09
Yeah, so that my mastermind group, which I’ve been in for, I want to say eight years. I feel like all those guys, it may be longer than that. I mean, I’ve known those guys for over a decade for sure. Yeah. We didn’t actually form the mastermind group till a little later, but anyway, all those guys for as long as I’ve known them over a decade have relied on SEO and affiliate marketing with their blog, making millions of dollars, millions of dollars, lots of employees, writers, everything.

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just because of the last couple years with what Google has done, we’re all hurting in the blogging department, for the most part. And so I think that’s why this series is important, because there were some of those guys who pivoted to video early are doing okay. Like I count myself as one of those, right? I started YouTube during the pandemic and it’s been four years, almost five years now. And I’m fine because almost all of my leads and everything have transferred over to video.

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But if you stayed on blogging, and we’ve covered this in a past episode before, Google has, I don’t know what’s going on with Google, but because of AI, I mean, they’ve shifted all their traffic over to Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, mostly well-known sites. And the little guys, or the smaller publishers, I should say, have been hurting for the most part. So yeah, so I would say that that was one of the biggest themes at FinCon this year.

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I thought it was pretty encouraging, because I know a lot of people are like, well, it’s too late, right? It’s too late for me to get on YouTube. It’s too late for me to start making videos. That’s absolutely false. The common thread with everybody, either the sessions that I went to or the people that I talked to at the event was, as long as you get started and are consistent, you will see success at some point. And I don’t wanna give away, I’m doing a talk on office hours today about it, but I don’t wanna give away all that stuff, because that’s for the course.

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There is something to be said about that investment that you make early on in creating the content in the video space. I mean, what I found with video and social media, which is what we’re gonna be talking about today, it’s all a state of mind. Yeah. Like for the longest time with video, was like, I don’t think I can do it. I don’t wanna do it. But then as soon as you do it, it’s actually not as big of a deal as you thought. And today it’s kinda like, I don’t even think about it.

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I just sit down and I just pump it out. It’s actually not a big deal. So it’s really just framing your state of mind to look at it in a different way. And I’m trying to do that with social media right now. So I’m interested what we’re going to be talking about today. So I think I’ll give one nugget that I’m going to about today in the course. But the biggest thing that I took away from our friend Tay’s talk, Financial Tortoise, he told the story about how he went to FinCon in 2019.

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And he had a job in like financial services industry, went to FinCon because he was like, oh, this is interesting. this align with something that I’m doing? And heard a talk, I think from Miss Be Helpful, I think that’s her name, on video creation. And he was like, could I do this? I don’t know. It seems interesting. And then sat on it for two years. So didn’t make his first video. He went to FinCon in 2019, didn’t make his first video until 2021, June of 2021.

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and had no subscribers, no audience, right? He didn’t have anything to lean on. And he talked about the fact that he made a decision that he was just going to make. He decided to make two videos a week, two long form videos a week. was his schedule, right? And he said, and I just decided that no matter what, I was gonna do this. Like I was gonna create the content. And one thing that he did initially, which I thought was so fascinating is we talk a lot about like, you don’t need a lot of tools to get started in YouTube. You don’t need equipment.

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He didn’t even have a microphone. He just used the microphone on his phone because he was facing, like he was shooting directly at the phone. wasn’t walking around or anything like that. And also our friend Jim Wang does not use a microphone when he makes his TikTok. Yes, he does not use a microphone. But he was like, you don’t even need a microphone. So if that is the hurdle that is stopping you from creating video content, make the content on your phone without a mic, just get started.

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And he went on to talk more about that journey and how he’s now at almost 300,000 subscribers only three years later, right? And had no audience, right? Had no way to promote this outside of YouTube promoting it in itself. So I think, and this goes for social media because so much of social media now is video. And I think if you need to change your mindset,

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Don’t think about the fact that like, oh, I need to get this special vlogger camera or oh, I need to get that little mic that people hold or I need to do X, Y, Literally, you can just get started with your phone. Everybody has one. Everybody listening to this has one. make it remove as many hurdles as possible so that you can get going and be consistent. And that is like a, that’s a truth with any format, right? That’s a truth with video creation. It’s a truth with social media. It’s a truth if you’re still wanting to write.

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podcast, whatever, remove all those hurdles to get going. Yeah. And with that, let’s talk about the state of mind required for social media. so let’s get the big negative out of the way. Let’s just talk about the elephant in the room. The thing that sucks about social media is that it’s not a set it and forget it. You have to continually be putting content on whatever platform you choose, whether it’s X,

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whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, it is a numbers game. The more content you put out, the better you will do. But here’s the thing I was thinking about this morning when I was thinking about this podcast today is that a lot of people that we talk to that join our course, that we meet at events, they have more money than time. No, they have more time than money. Right. They don’t have the money.

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Maybe their kids are a little bit older. Maybe they have their Saturdays free now, something like that. You probably have the time to play the social media game. And I will say, if you do it correctly, you can grow pretty quickly on social media and you can leverage that audience to something bigger if you’re willing to put in the work and be consistent. Did you know our mutual friend AJ Bufumo? Have you seen him?

10:45
Oh my gosh, I was just going to tell you about him. He was on the Tonight Show. I he was on the Tonight Show. The Chargers did his dance in the end zone or the Rams or somebody did. Yes, and they posted it on their, I guess it was the Chargers, they posted it on their official TikTok and tagged him doing the boom dance. Exactly. What the heck? AJ is someone, we invited him to Seller Summit, I think, one year and he came out, we hung out. Yes, yes. He just decided to make TikToks with his son.

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one day. Yeah, big justice. Look, big justice. I don’t know who the Rizzler is, but I know AJ and Big Justice. And they have this bring the boom dance, which if you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen it. What’s funny is I kept seeing their videos and I was like, what is he doing? And then all of a sudden I see the Chargers video and they’re all in the end zone.

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doing the like boom dance and they tagged him and I was like, holy crap, what’s going on? And then I go to his page, he’s on the Tonight Show, he’s at the Yankees game, like, yeah, two million followers on TikTok. It was just crazy. And it just goes to show that you can do this at any time. He was making TikToks about insurance. No, no, no, wait, refi. Mortgages. Yeah, refinance. Mortgages.

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He’s a man. just shifted to his son and then he hit something big. And yeah, he’s on Valen now. It’s crazy. Yeah. So and that’s where I think the like and if you actually what is it is is channel AJ and Big Justice. If you search that it’ll come up. Go watch what they’re doing. It’s fascinating because it’s like we talk about like it’s it’s better to provide value and like teach something on social media. But you can also just bring the boom. And obviously.

12:34
Okay, he’s got like an amazing personality. Like if you meet him in person, he’s like larger than life, right? Like awesome dude. It was great to have him at Seller Summit. I felt like he was like the hype man for Seller Summit when he was there. So like, obviously I think that you can have a personality driven social media presence, but you better have a personality. Whatever it is, you’ve got to, and if you watch anything that he has done, you’ll see his personality. Like they were,

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they were doing an ad for some sort of protein rap, making a video, a sponsored video. And it’s him and in big little big justice, who’s his son. And it’s like, have you seen these dad? And his son’s got like the same personality. And he’s like, there’s 20 grams of protein. And his dad’s like, yeah, and it’s just all like, I’m like, I’m clearly watching an ad, but I’m not scrolling off because I like want to see how animated he is about

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these protein chicken wraps, you know, kind of thing. So yeah, he’s a perfect example of someone. Well, he was doing coloring. They’re making coloring videos. a long time, So I mean, so yeah, so I think the bad thing about social media is it is a numbers game. You’ve got to be creating content all the time and you will get burnt out at some point, which means if you want to play the social media game, you have to have a long-term strategy for this.

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Clearly AJ’s got a long-term strategy going, right? Like he’s picking up brand deals, the amount of like notoriety, things like that. When I went to that pet summit earlier this year, a lot of these people were trying to move into the physical product space, a pet-based product because they had an audience of two million people. We look at our seller summit speaker, Eugenia, who was creating TikTok content about her little dog.

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and moved into, I think she sold the dog outfits, right? Didn’t she move into that as well as just like leveraging her TikTok expertise to offer, I think she offered a course about TikTok. So you have to have a long-term plan. can’t just be, let me just make TikToks for the rest of my life five times a week. Yeah. That’s the problem. That’s the thing I struggled with for a long time. I think if you want to do it well, we’re talking one post a day.

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Yeah, one post a day, for sure. But my friends who are doing it really well, they post like three times a day, which is something that I just am having problems getting myself to do. And that’s the biggest hurdle really, I think, of all social media. So I got on a rabbit. I was like halfway through this and I was like, oh, please let me not be logged into your channel when I’m watching this video. What were you watching?

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This girl who exposes influencers for inconsistencies in their video. Here’s what I spent in a day as a stay-at-home mom, but then she’ll zoom in on the receipts and be like, this is one day and this is a different day. Anyway, I got halfway through it. I will say when you think, okay, one post a day, you don’t have to make one video a day. You can make seven videos on Sunday.

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and then drip them out throughout the week. Change your shirt, whatever, depends on what you’re talking about, right? It doesn’t matter. It’s not like you have to be creating content every single day, but you do have to be willing to invest a good amount of time in that batch content creation and then committing to posting it every day. The other thing to think about is each platform has its own strategy. So I know you are sort of a proponent of using a tool to post the same thing everywhere.

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Yeah, I mean, it’s the easy way out, right? Otherwise, you have to produce three extra content. Yes. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad idea. But I will say if you really want to grow quickly and you want to really focus on like, OK, I’m going to I’m going all in on Instagram. Right. There’s nothing wrong with promoting putting your Instagram reels on TikTok, but you’re not probably going to see the same results. And here’s why. So.

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TikTok is a platform of you literally, how many TikToks have you seen where someone’s literally the start of video is them like their finger moving away from the record button on the phone. Or someone just popping into the screen. know someone who uses that. in as if, as someone does, it’s so cringy. But whereas Instagram is far more curated, far more edited. A lot of people put stuff on TikTok that’s not edited at all.

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or edited by, you push the button like Jim does. You push the button, record, you talk, you let the button off, you do that. So it’s choppy, but it’s not, there’s no really post-production in it. Whereas if you wanna go in on all in on Instagram, the users on Instagram want a more curated feel to the content. So while you can set the phone up and make your bed and show people how to fold the right corners,

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it’s gonna look a lot better if you do a voiceover with that and you sort of have the, morning what I like to do is get up and make my bed first thing, blah, blah, blah. It’s like that kind of thing. Whereas on TikTok, you’re like, gotta make the bed. You’re like throwing stuff. So I think if you wanna go platform specific, there is a strategy to do that.

17:59
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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.

18:39
Yeah. And here’s what I’ve done. And I just focus on TikTok because that was the original short form, you know, platform and they don’t, they don’t do as well on Instagram. But then again, I don’t have a big fall on Instagram either. And when I got big on TikTok was when I literally posted, uh, I think four times a week, I couldn’t get myself to do five times a week. It was like three or four times a week for an entire year. No, but I hit a hundred thousand pretty quickly. think. Yeah.

19:09
Yeah. And so it really just is a consistency play. Yeah. I feel. And this is why we talked about this in the beginning. Forget the mic. I actually stopped using my mic recently. Yeah. Just whatever, like, whenever you can just pick up your phone and film something. And you are absolutely correct about batching. I think that is the only way to stay sane doing this. Yeah. So if you look at right now, I spend about 90 minutes or so on a YouTube script.

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And then the filming part is really quick. It’s usually like 15 minutes since I use a teleprompter. But with short form, if I devoted that same 90 minutes to short form, I could probably pump out 10 or so. easily. Which is like two weeks worth of content. So it’s really just a mindset. For me, like I focus more on long form because that is, I know it’s already generating me results. It’s not only generating money, a lot of money actually, like a full-time salary in addition to email subs.

20:07
So that’s, you gotta choose. So what I’ve chosen to do is to break up my long form into short form using AI tools. Not a great solution, but it allows me to post every day. And that was the overwhelming consensus at FinCon as well for people who were breaking up their long form into short form, is that using AI, the results were not the same. It is better to film organically.

20:34
You can use the same exact content as the long form and just break it up into bite-sized pieces, but doing it from the original video is always going to be less effective. But if that’s the only thing that you can do, then do it, right? Like you might as well spread the net wide if you’re already working on the long form. I think if you’re starting with short form, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad place to start because you will probably experience some quick wins, which then if that’s what motivates you to do the next thing, then I think that’s great.

21:04
you definitely want to be filming those on their own. Yeah, for sure. And then for short form, the first three seconds are like the most important. And we talked about popping in with your finger and whatever it is that you do. gross thing you do. That’s why I think the AI version doesn’t work as well. Because if you’re taking clips from your video, and granted, people like Joe Rogan can pull it off, right? Because if you see Joe Rogan, you’re going to watch it.

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for a regular person, it’s not gonna work as well. But if that’s all you’ve got, then it’s better than nothing. Like some of my videos that have been just clipped off of AI, some of them have hit like 100,000 views. So not bad, but the frequency of that happening is obviously gonna be a lot less than if you just record from scratch. And you already have a following on TikTok. like if that’s your getting started method, I don’t recommend it. And I have a good example of growth on TikTok. So our friend Liz,

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who created the Chrome extension influencer fruit for Amazon influencers had a little bit of downtime this fall. She didn’t have a lot of updates to the extension. And so she found herself with like some extra hours in her workday. So she just said, I’m gonna create content on TikTok. And she created all sorts of content. She wasn’t even niched down. And I think niching down is really important at some point.

22:26
But I think when you’re just getting started, it’s better to put content out there than to be, because we get a lot of people that are like, I don’t know, should I do this or that or this? Do it all and see what hits, right? And she was, a lot of it was around her, she likes to lift heavy weight. So a lot of it was on weightlifting, but a lot of it was also on stuff around that, but then also like, oh, where did you get that plant in the back of the video that you just made? And she was putting up, I wanna say, maybe one to two videos a day, right, on TikTok.

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And she went from about 1,500 followers to 10,000 in about four and a half weeks. So like a huge gain, right? Like that’s an enormous change in your account, right? Over a very short period of time. So I think that consistency and frequency is really important. And now she’s sort of figured out what works, what doesn’t work, and she’s honing it a little bit more based on what she’s seen with her audience.

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There’s this girl I follow and it’s completely random. It’s a story about her taking care of her pool. And it starts out disgusting. Like there’s algae, the pool is like black. And it’s just the adventure of her cleaning up her pool. And for some reason, whenever it comes up on TikTok, like you want to see the end result. And she’s got a ton of followers. It’s crazy.

23:54
So I think consistency, frequency, I don’t think you have to worry about anything else at this point. I don’t think you need a microphone. think you just need to start creating the content. I do think if you’re doing Instagram, you might wanna focus a little more on the editing side, but in general, I think once again, it’s a frequency consistency game as well. Now, go on. No, I was just gonna say, make sure whatever you do, like the first three seconds, like the first sentence that you say should be interesting.

24:23
Outside of that, yeah, create content every day. Yeah. Don’t start with your first sentence, hey, I’m Tony from Profitable Audience. Hey, I’m Steve from My Wife Quit Her Job. No one cares. Just start, get them in with a hook on the first sentence. The next thing I want to talk about is the platform formerly known as Twitter, now known as X because you did a big experiment with X. I did. What, two years ago? It was Twitter.

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before X. did the experiment for a full year, actually. know, I do things in years. And Twitter at one point became, think, my third largest contributor to email subs. Yeah. And I kind of cheated. I hired someone to post for me. Probably like six times a day, three to six times a day. So a lot of content going out. A lot of content going out. He just basically took my blog posts and

25:22
you know, wrote little jingles is what I used to call them, right? Jingles. And then occasionally put like a link for an email form or something like that to my lead magnet. And you grew your subscribers pretty significantly over that time. Yes, I grew from like, I don’t remember, I think I started out with 4K and ended up at 40 something in a year. Yeah.

25:51
So once again, sort of the similarity is frequency, consistency. Now, I’m curious because you weren’t doing this yourself, but did you interact on Twitter at all with people? Or did he interact as you? How did that work? So he told me that if someone replies to me, I should reply back. So I just had notifications on my phone. And so whenever someone replied, I wouldn’t even reply with a complete answer. Sometimes I’d just be like, hey, thanks.

26:20
Or I agree or, know, something like that. But yes, it is important, unfortunately. So I feel like X has kind of gone through a little awkward adolescence phase right now. And I feel like it’s either people love it or hate it. Right. There are still people using it and seeing success and using it to get leads and get traction for their brand. But I don’t think my personal opinion is that it’s not as

26:49
powerful as it once was to do those things. I don’t think that’s true. It is as powerful as it once was. The difference now is you have to be on it. Well, I’ve always I mean, I never outsourced my Twitter. I mean, you have to participate with the app on in other people’s threads. And that’s where my whole strategy fell to crap because I’m not on it. I’m not really an ex user. I was just posting stuff.

27:15
and responding and you can’t really get by doing that anymore unless you’re someone really famous with a huge following already. Right. So if you don’t have a huge following, I do think one strategy with X that you can use is to be active in like other people’s com content. Right. So commenting, retweeting, I don’t know what they call it now, but like, you know, sharing people’s content and getting into debates. And we know that from like one of our students, Charles has sort of used this strategy on Twitter.

27:45
He has a, talks kind of current events type stuff. So his, his content is very relevant to a lot of what’s happening on Twitter. Cause to me, X Twitter, I’ll never call it X. I’m always going to call it. It’s like, I can’t call convert kit kit. I was sitting there with dinner with them, still calling it convert kit. And the one guy was like, I still call it convert kit. was like, okay, I don’t feel bad. I have a friend named kit. That’s why I can’t do it. But like he, Charles has had a lot of success with involving himself in the conversation. Right? So I think.

28:16
Once again, if you have time, if you’re one of these people that sits in bed and watches a Netflix show every night, be on Twitter too. Be on your phone responding, engaging with people, and you’ll see some growth there and you’ll probably see some results, but you gotta once again commit to it. See, that’s the problem, right? So as these platforms move towards engagement, there’s only so much time and you kinda have to focus on a platform.

28:44
And TikTok is not one of those engagement type of platforms for the most part. Like you post something good, you know. Yeah, yeah. Whereas Instagram is one of those engagement ones, Not for real so much, Yeah, for posts. For posts, the more engagement you get, the better. Yeah. So threads, which was really annoying me because what

29:12
Threads did was, they came out as a competitor to basically Twitter. What they do, I don’t know if you noticed on Instagram, is they post the first sentence of a thread and then they hit read more, but instead of dropping down and having it on Instagram, you have to go over to threads and read the rest of it, which I find maddening. For the last year, I’ve not clicked over, because I’m like, no, I’m not doing it. Then I was so interested in one of these articles

29:42
I clicked over, had to start an account on threads. I guess I already had an account because I already had a, I don’t know, it connects to your stuff. So I opened it up. But that same week, I had a conversation with our friend Deacon Hayes who was taking his transcripts of his short form videos and putting them on threads and getting a, as like a, I don’t know what they call it on threads, but you know how on Twitter you can do the Twitter.

30:11
thread where it’s Yeah, it ironically, it was called threads on Twitter. Oh, it called thread? Oh, yeah. So I don’t know if threads is called thread threads or whatever, but he’s basically taking his short form transcript and putting it on threads and getting a lot of traction with the content. So I’d never heard of that strategy. I actually think it’s pretty interesting. I wonder if it would work on Twitter too. But if you have that short form content, you can feed it into a transcriber.

30:39
And that would actually be a very fast thing that you could do or even have a VA do that for you to get that content to put on either X or threads. It’s funny you mentioned that. That actually was the secret to growing on Twitter. And for a long time. The threads. Yeah, but he’s not creating any new content. He’s just using his videos. Yeah, it’s funny. Deacon was trying to convince me to join threads actually. Actually, I’m on threads. I just don’t post there.

31:09
Because he was telling me it’s like the wild, wild west, like what Twitter used to be and how easy it could be.

31:17
And one of the reasons why I was like reluctant to post this episode or record this episode Tony’s because a lot of times like I’m a little reluctant to do something. Yeah. You know, I only have so much time in the day. So for me, it’s basically long form and short form breaking up and podcasting to be committed or on the hook of doing something every single day is hard for me. Yeah. Even if you batch record something.

31:45
You still have to post it manually. That’s the kicker here. Like most of these platforms, you can’t use a scheduler. Well, you kind of can, but it’s always better to post it yourself. So and I know that’s why you didn’t want to record this episode, but I think we’re talking as people who have been in this space for a very, very long time. And there’s a lot of people listening who want to get into this space and don’t know what to do first. Right. Right. And so I think

32:14
All of these things are options to getting started. And if you are already creating that short form video, I would test that out as a thread or whatever they call it on threads. But anyway, I would try that because Deacon’s actually, that’s where he said he’s having the most success with like written content is doing that on threads. He’s not doing it on X and I didn’t ask him if he wasn’t doing it or if he wasn’t having success. I think he said he wasn’t doing it.

32:42
looked up. think he did tell me it wasn’t working on X. OK. From what I remember. And this is like a month ago or a couple of months ago when I chatted with him. So. But the overwhelming theme at FinCon was that Threads is the Wild Wild West. Like there’s still a lot of opportunity there and a lot of like ability to capture an audience. I think because it’s still newer. Right. And there’s a lot of people like us that are like, oh, I don’t want to download one more thing on my phone. Right. Like I don’t want to.

33:12
I don’t want to have to engage in one more thing. But if you haven’t engaged in anything yet, that might be something worth looking into because it sounds like there’s still a lot of growth opportunity there. So let’s talk about this. So we’ve gone over a lot of things in these last four episodes. Like if you’re just starting out, which one do you go with? Because there’s just too much choice now, right? So where do you start? Where would you start right now? I know where I would start, but I’m curious what your My answer always changes on this.

33:42
I think this is such a personality based question. Like I know in my heart where you need to start is long form YouTube. Like to me that’s not even a debatable topic. But if you’re someone who needs some quick wins, like if you need to see results quicker or if you know that in your personality, if you don’t see a little bit of traction, you will give up, you should start on TikTok.

34:13
and make short form because it’s still fairly easy to grow on TikTok and you will get some wins. But the best strategic like if this was your money and I told you to invest your money somewhere, invest it in long form video. What is your definition of success here? Is it getting more subscribers or is it money? Well, I think it’s getting the views, which leads to subscribers, which leads to money. And I think the reality on YouTube, unless you are

34:42
sort of this very rare overnight sensation, which is still possible. It is still possible, I think, to blow up on any channel overnight. But the reality is, and most people that we know and have talked to, and if you are starting with zero, you’re looking at a year to 18 months on YouTube before you see results on long form. I would agree with that. Yeah. Whereas short form, could haven’t met someone, yeah. Yeah. You could blow up, but what does blowing up mean? Right? Money wise.

35:13
I mean, Jim made, Jim’s making some money on TikTok. Did you know that? No, I didn’t know that actually. He’s got 40,000 followers right now. And he has like one or two videos that have made him close to two grand, which isn’t- Oh, on the creator program? Yes, on the creator program. And that to me, that is a very doable- Wow, means those videos have gotten about 20 million views then. They’ve gotten millions of views, right? Okay.

35:42
And so, but I feel like for that, like Jim’s only been on TikTok for five or six months. So when we talk to people and people that are interested in creating content, are interested in doing something online, like to say, hey, in five or six months, if you work really hard and do a lot of things right, and you have the right type of content, you could be making a thousand to $2,000 a month. That’s a lot of money.

36:08
Right, that’s a lot of money for, like most regular businesses, you can’t start and make that kind of money that quickly. So if you don’t like the grind, like your personality is one that you’re like, I’ll do it for however long, five years. You say five years and then you make a decision. Most people don’t have that five year mentality. So if you know that like after a year you would quit, then I would say start with short form.

36:37
Learn how to make video, get better on camera, invest in better equipment, and then move over to long form. Because I think Jim can move over to long form and see a lot of success. Because now he understands the game. And so if that’s where you are, then that’s probably a better path. However, the smartest path is to start on long form. And here’s why. I’m giving away too many nuggets from the lesson today. Those videos that you create in the beginning that no one watches,

37:05
they’re not always gonna stay at 50 views. Like once you build up a subscriber base, once you build up some traction, people will go back and watch that. Those videos will end up making you money at some point. Not all of them, but a lot of them will. And so every video that you make in the beginning that you feel like, it only got 60 views, it only got 100 views, and you’re feeling kinda down about that, that video has the potential to make you money long-term. And our friend Andy,

37:31
from Marriage, Kids and Money talked about this video that I think in the first six months only got like 600 views and he was really like kind of down because he thought it was a great video. Well, now that video has like 80,000 views and has made him several thousand dollars over time. But the first six months he was like, this video stinks, right? Because it didn’t do anything. So that investment that you’re making in the beginning where you feel like, oh, this isn’t working.

37:57
You’re just investing. You’re investing in your channel. You’re investing in your skills. You’re investing in your ability to make content. And it will pay off further down the road. So YouTube is what blogging once was. Yes. So one of the analogies I used to give with blogging was it’s like a stock that can only go up with more content. Right? mean, before all these Google updates, that was true. The more content you put out, the more traffic you’re to get because you’re building up this portfolio. YouTube is that way.

38:25
Like I have a lot of videos exactly with what you described. They started out like a dud, couple hundred views. And I look back now and when I started, some people would just go through your entire portfolio. As you grow, Google will start distributing out the content to people who follow you. And a lot of those videos have tens of thousands of views now, over like four years. And you think about it, you made this video three years ago.

38:51
and this video is still making you money today and probably making you more money today than it did three years ago. So it’s truly something that will make you money, not forever and ever, but over a long period of time.

39:06
Actually, you know, it’s funny, I was just going through this because I was debating whether to sign up for Mr. Beast’s tool, view stats. And I was just kind of looking through the progressions of my videos. I think almost all of, like almost 90 % of them still get views today. Some get only a trickle, but people are watching them. And it just all adds up over time. The more you have, the more people will go through your portfolio. It’s almost like an exponential factor in play. Yes.

39:33
And that’s what I’m actually gonna show that today in the office hours. The other thing to think about, and I think about this in terms of the old days of blogging, right, where you talk about this video still getting a trickle of views. I can remember often in my blogging days where a brand or a news station or something would come across a piece of content that I had written two to three years previously, right, and contact me based on that piece of content that.

40:01
wasn’t getting a lot of traffic anymore, right? But they found it either through like a search or a pin or just however, right? They’re browsing through my content, searching my site and it led to some sort of brand deal, some sort of opportunity, some sort of trip, whatever it was, those old pieces of content still really mattered.

40:22
And I think that is the same with what you’re saying. That’s what happens on YouTube today. Those older pieces of content that you made in the beginning that were like causing you depression, because they weren’t getting any views, they weren’t making you any money, are now doing the exact opposite. They’re still getting views and they’re still making you money. Yeah, so my answer to that question is similar to yours. If you’re having problems, just pick up the camera and you need some quick wins. And just to let yourself know that there are people watching out there, start with short form.

40:52
It’s a gateway drug to long form. And once you kind of get addicted to it and enjoy creating the content in itself, then the long form really isn’t a problem. I think when I started with short form, even if it was a thing, but it wasn’t like a big thing when I first started YouTube. It was not like it is today at all. mean, because TikTok had just become TikTok for musically. Right. And this was 2020 during the pandemic. So I can’t remember back that far. But I know I wasn’t on TikTok during that time.

41:22
If it even was to call it TikTok, you’re right. It could have been called Musically back then. So long form was all I had and maybe that was a benefit to me. Cause if I started in short form, one other thing that’s a negative is you’re used to getting all these views in short form and then you move to long form where it takes more time to create a video and then you’re not getting the same number of views and you’re like, you know, I’m not getting that dopamine hit from the short form.

41:51
If you can start with long form, would, I would start with long form and it just really depends on your personality. And you’re, right. Maybe I’ve come to know that maybe I am a little unique. Like I’m willing to do something for three years and not see any results. That’s just the way I am. Like it’s like, okay, this is when my wife and I watch a series on Netflix. She watches the first episode and goes, Oh, I hated this first episode. I’m not going to watch a series. I will watch half the season before I make that determination.

42:21
I know a lot of people like both of you. I know people that are like, they don’t like the first episode, they will not watch it. I know people that are like, but there were a lot of like, remember the show Peaky Blinders? Yes. Okay. One of my friends recommended that to me. I feel like this was during my TV era of COVID. I watched the first episode and I was like, nope, this is not for me. This is definitely not a show that I want to watch.

42:51
whatever friend recommended it was like, you got to watch like the first three episodes to really get into it. I was like, I don’t know if I can do like to me, that’s a big time investment. Like I’m going to watch two more hours of something I don’t like. But I did. And it ended up getting really, really good and ended up being a really great show. So I agree. I agree that that sometimes you’ve got to suffer through the first bit to get to the good stuff. It’s just yeah, just like YouTube, you know, it’s going to suck in the beginning. I can already tell you it’s going to suck in the beginning. I’ve gone through it.

43:20
with every platform that I’ve ever done. It sucks in the beginning. Blogging was even worse, honestly. I think the moral of the story with all content creation, if you’ve listened to all these podcasts in the series, or in the threads we should say, in the threads of our content creation, the real key is, as you like to say, embracing the suck, getting it done, creating the content no matter what medium you’re creating and being consistent with

43:51
Hope you enjoyed this episode. As you can probably tell, I’ve always been a little reluctant to pursue social media, but I think it’s one of the best ways to build an audience going forward. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitherjob.com slash episode 565. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 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.

44:20
Then come to my event, go to SellersSummit.com, and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuitherJob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.