589: Still Not on Camera? Here’s What It’s Costing Your Business in 2025

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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. In this episode, Tony and I reflect on YouTube’s 20 year anniversary and why not doing video is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in 2025. We share personal regrets, real success stories from our students and the exact strategies we’re using to grow new channels from scratch. Whether you’re selling physical products, digital courses, or just building a brand, hopefully this episode will be a wake up call. But before we begin,

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I wanted to let you know that this is the last call for tickets for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit 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.

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entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s 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,

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We also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellerssummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:50
Welcome back to the My Wife, Put Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to talk about YouTube’s 20 year anniversary where over I think a trillion videos have been uploaded. No, 20 trillion videos have been uploaded. Which is crazy. And yours could be one of the 20 trillion. One in 20 trillion. I think I have like 500 videos uploaded or something crazy like that at this point. Maybe more than that actually. I haven’t looked. So it’s 2025. So it’s the 20th. So that means…

02:21
2005 was the start of YouTube. I guess so, yes. Your math is correct, Tony. Congratulations. Right, I had to think about it for second. Well, because I think I put my first video on YouTube in 2008 or nine, and I will say this until the day that I die, not continuing with YouTube is one of my biggest business regrets.

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that I have because when I started doing it in 2008 or nine, like people, wasn’t like it is today obviously, right? And pretty much anything you put up on YouTube got a decent amount of traction. it wasn’t, you didn’t have to play the game that I think you have to play with all, you know, content creation these days. It’s like if you just put up something that was interesting or you taught people something, people watched it. And…

03:10
to this day, I’m like, why didn’t I keep going? Why didn’t I keep posting in my pajamas? Like, big mistake. I mean, it’s evolved so much. Like, back in the day, your subscribers meant a lot more. Yeah. So if you had like a huge subscriber base and you would put out a video, it would probably do well no matter what. But, and people were just putting out these short little clips, right? Right, right. In a lot of cases, and they were doing well. Now it’s all about watch time and

03:39
And I like it better because it’s merit based, right? Your subscribers don’t matter as much. If you put out something good, it’ll do well. And I think TikTok helped to transform this model. agree. And actually we have the perfect example of this that we just learned about last week. I know we talk about Kevin a lot on the podcast, but Kevin is a student in our courses and he has been just churning away at YouTube for probably, I want to say we’re like 18 months.

04:07
Yeah, it’s been a year and half, I want to say. And putting out content consistently has dabbled in the long form, which we’ve been encouraging him to. And a couple of weeks ago, he had a long form piece of content go viral. And just to show you like the impact of that for him, it doubled his subscribers.

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and it put him, I forget what it did for his watch time, but I want to say it doubled or even more his watch time from this one video that he put out a couple weeks ago. That’s exactly the pattern that I saw with my channel. I was getting 1,000 views or less for probably a year. Then I remember there’s one video that got like

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20,000 views and I was like, oh my God, what’s going on here? And then I remember when I hit 100,000 views, like that next video hit a million views. So I think it’s almost like YouTube needs you to prove yourself first to show that you’re gonna be consistent. And during that time, as long as you’re consistent, one of those videos is gonna pop. And then once one pops, it’s almost like YouTube gives you this momentum.

05:26
where all your subsequent videos will do well. So I think the first question is, and we’re gonna talk primarily about physical products, but let’s talk a little bit about the digital side, because I think, first of all, if you are selling any sort of digital product, course, membership, coaching, you should be on YouTube, right? This is an absolute no-brainer. You have to be on YouTube, I would say. Or you have to show your face somehow. You have to be on some sort of video platform. Yeah.

05:54
To me, if you’re not doing this, it’s a big mistake. I know who talks about this is Tay from Financial Tortoise. He talks about the same thing when he got started. The first, I think he said year to 18 months, it was like 100 views, 500 views, 1,000. Step one is how do you keep going when, like Kevin, right? You’re getting 100 views and you feel like you’re putting so much time. Kevin’s videos are good.

06:23
Right. He does great editing, really good content. If he talks about like computer and technical stuff. So it’s not my cup of tea, but like it’s good content, right. That you can learn from. So how do you keep going when you’re on like month nine and you’re still getting a hundred views, a hundred and thirty views? I mean, this is my mindset for everything. And I don’t know if we’ve repeated enough on this podcast, but don’t do anything unless I’m going to like do it. And I give myself a five year time frame.

06:52
Yeah. Like if I can’t get it any traction in five years, then something’s wrong, I think. Well, five years is we’ve talked. Now, I know we’ve had this conversation. Well, so let’s not do five years. Let’s say three years. Let’s just say three years. Right. I think anyone can do something for three years. You disagree? Maybe not in this day and age when Gen Z feel like yes, if you’re a Gen X or you can. But then I feel like it might lose its momentum for.

07:22
the Gen Zers, I don’t know. You know what I hate? It’s like all these stories have spoiled it for everyone. Like there’s of course there’s gonna be outliers, right? That get successful within like two months or three months or six months. But those are the only stories you hear out there, pretty much. And so everyone thinks that it’s gonna happen fast, but I would guarantee you that 99 % of the people out there takes a long time for stuff to happen.

07:47
So it’s so interesting that you say that because I think it was last night you were messaging me or it might’ve been sometime this week and you’re like, know, we’re, I’m doing a talk on YouTube at Seller Summit and I’m using one of my clients as a case study for e-commerce and you were like, well, what’s the big, you know, like you wanted like a big, you know, showboat moment. And I was like, we don’t have one. We have slow and steady growth. have email list growth. We have sales, we have subscribe. You know, it’s like,

08:14
But nothing has we have not had a home run. We actually haven’t had a video go viral. We just have slow and steady growth every single week. OK, so let’s put this in perspective, because I looked at the channel before I emailed you. And you’ve only been at this for what, three months, three a half months? yeah, right, three and a half months, right? You already have videos consistently doing one to two thousand views. Yes, I definitely did not have that in my first three months.

08:43
I was lucky to break a thousand. Yeah. Well, we had a real like a real strategy. And obviously, I’m not going to give away my talk. But so you’re still time to buy a ticket. Come here. Wednesday, May 7th. I’ll let you on all the secrets. We had a real strategy to the growth. And I will say I am very pleased with how the channel is coming for a variety of reasons.

09:10
But I think the biggest one and moving into e-commerce a little bit, I think this is one of the best ways to help people bond with your brand, right? Now we have the founder of the company who has, it’s a curriculum company. So she’s written a lot of the curriculum. Like she’s very involved, not as much today, but still very involved in what is published. And so I think, and I actually was looking through the comments earlier.

09:38
this morning and it’s like people really, really identify with her, right? And they really, so it’s like it takes what, mean curriculum, right? It’s very competitive. There’s a lot of curriculum out there that you can buy for your kids if you’re homeschooler. But like how do you set yourself apart from all the competitors? This is a really, I don’t wanna say easy because it’s not easy but it’s a simple way to do it, right? Because all you’re doing is getting on camera.

10:06
See, I would argue that if you’re selling curriculum, you have to have content. So prior to this YouTube channel, which is only three and a half months old, how was she selling her curriculum? Through blog posts. Blog posts, okay. So just written, no video at all? No video. She had some video. So whenever she launched a product, there was usually a video of like how to use this product. So if you purchased the product, you got that video in like a post purchase flow. But really that was the only video content out there. And then we did challenges, right? So it’s like,

10:35
a homeschool planning bootcamp, a chore challenge, things like that. So there was some sporadic video content, but it wasn’t that consistent weekly content that’s getting put out today. You know what’s funny about that is no one reads anymore. No one in, I should rephrase that, no one in the younger generation reads anymore. Like my kids, like if you have them read something, they inevitably miss like these little details because they just scan the thing. But you put a video in front of them and they watch the whole thing. I’m the opposite. I much prefer reading.

11:05
Me too. Than watching a video. So yeah, it’s great that she decided to start the channel because I mean, at some point, I think the whole blogging method is not nearly going to be as effective. Right. And I would say the good news is if you are an e-commerce brand and you have a blog or a content site that you’ve been building, I mean, a lot of people that have been in the e-commerce world for several years have a blog, right? They have some type of content that they’ve been using.

11:35
So when we started the channel, we basically took some of the most popular blog posts and turned them into, using Claude, turned them into scripts. So most of the content on her channel, because she does have the blog, is based in content from the blog. So I would say that’s another benefit if you’re in e-commerce and you do have some content that you’ve already created.

12:02
It even makes it easier to turn that content, especially today with all the AI tools, it makes it really easy to turn that content into video. Actually, when I started my channel, I did it like the super lazy way and I literally just read my blog posts. But I mean, it got me started. It got me on this consistent clip. And then I slowly made modifications first to the intro to make it more enticing. And then later I would cut the content down to make it less verbose.

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but it’s a process, like whatever it takes for you to get started is what you gotta do. Well, and I think that’s a really key point is that it’s more important to get started and put out beginner type content, right? Probably not your best content because no one’s gonna be watching you initially anyway, like you’re not gonna have a lot of views. So it’s better to get all the kinks out early and sort of find your footing and figure out how you’re gonna have a brand voice on video.

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as opposed to what I see some people do is they spend so much time planning and they come up with this elaborate package to put out there and it’s actually not what the brand needs. And then you’re fumbling, you’re trying to redo and figure it out. I would say just start putting the content out there and see what resonates with people. Yeah, mean, totally. It’s easier said than done. So I’m about to launch

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a YouTube channel for Bumblebee linens. And I had dragged on about this for probably two or three years, I would say. It’s been a while. For doing it, mainly because I didn’t think that I should be the one on camera. But finally, I was just like, okay, I got to be the one on camera or and you suggested I remember hiring someone. Yes, I did. Right to be the face of the brand. And I was against that because I mean, just I think of what happened to Ezra, like the face of his brand.

13:59
She died. Passed away suddenly, actually. He was scrambling to find someone else. I don’t I was available. I was available for middle-aged makeup. What are you talking about? I think just to find someone reliable that will stay with your company for a long time, it’s just a risky thing, in my opinion. A perfect, yes, you’re right. Ezra had that experience. I look at someone like Tiffany Ivanovsky who

14:27
has tried for years to find people who can do live selling. So similar, a face on a video. And she has run into a lot of issues with that. The main one being once people learn how to live sell and get good at it, they want to sell their own stuff. They don’t want to get… And I think she’s offered fairly lucrative packages to people. They’re getting paid an hourly plus they’re getting some commission.

14:55
But what happens is people think, oh, this is so easy. And don’t realize, especially today, all the risk. And dealing with now tariffs and all the uncertainty and even things like shipping container. It’s like there’s just so much stuff I think people think, oh, this is so easy. Look at me making videos. But she’s had that happen several times where she’s basically raised, trained up people. And then they leave and think they can do it themselves better. Yeah.

15:25
Which is a risk if you hire someone to do that for any, you know, even making your content, right? Well, the only reason I bring this up is because I’m pretty much starting on ground zero again with Bumble Bee Linens. Like my wife, Critter Jai, was well established. I have this flow. It kind of works like clockwork. But Bumble Bee Linens, though, I need I pretty much started from scratch and I needed a method. And so what I decided to do was tell this like reach out to customers and tell their stories since we sell

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commemorative handkerchiefs and linens. Like I want to hear the stories behind those products, like how people got together, know, stories of friendship and whatnot. And so that’s the route that I’m taking. And this is so much easier now because I can take like a form that a customer fills out about their story and turn it and fill in all the little blanks and whatnot and make it sound really good with AI. And this is something that I probably would not have been able to do until AI came out.

16:24
True. So I would say, this is actually, this is a great question for you because there’s probably a lot of people, like you’re a middle-aged man selling lace handkerchiefs, right? It sounds so terrible. It does sound terrible. a white van luring children. That’s what it sounds like. You could have made me sell candy. Hey little girl, you want some candy? He has puppies and ice cream in the back of the van. But no, like I think there’s a lot of people out there who have

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successful e-commerce stores that are looking for another channel, looking for another avenue to build their brand, but they’re like, hey, I’m a middle-aged guy selling hair accessories, or something that you just feel like doesn’t match. So you came up with this angle of storytelling. What would you say to people? Because I know that was one of the biggest struggles for you, and you and I talked about this all the time. It’s like you were like, I don’t want to be the face of Bumblebee.

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I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

17:49
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.

18:01
You know what’s funny about this is I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for e-commerce brands doing short form content. And there are middle-aged people out there selling effectively. It’s not all Gen Z is basically what I’m trying to say. And you know, I’m starting to talk like my kids now, but I actually find a lot of the Gen Z content cringy. Right? It’s like the selling content cringy. Like just a short form, like

18:29
how they gush over the whole makeup. That does not appeal to someone my age. Incidentally, for our products, people who are buying it are my age. I would say women over the age of 40. I don’t think that that Gen Z stuff will relate to them. I don’t think it works. I don’t think it works for everybody. Another example of this is Paul Ivanovsky, Tiffany’s husband.

18:58
So back when they first started making video about their products, right? Selling online, selling live, which is a little bit different than creating YouTube content, but still the same like middle-aged man selling women’s clothing, right? So he had a, I mean, this is brilliant, right? This, mean, I don’t wanna give Paul a lot of credit, because I know Tiffany is definitely the backbone of that business, but, and Paul will take it and run if he hears me say these things, but.

19:26
He got on live video and put the clothes on. He was trying on dresses and shirts and cardigans. It was fun and it was funny. People tuned in. I would tune in just like it was like, I could watch an episode of Friends or I could watch Paul try on a dress. I’m watching Paul try on a dress. Obviously, Paul’s got a great personality.

19:54
But the other thing that Paul figured out really quickly, which I think this is important, right? Find your angle is that Paul realized that a lot of women that were shopping were lonely, right? They’re up late at night because they’re going live at like 1030 at night, right? So these women are lonely. They don’t have anything to do. They are replacing Netflix for these people, right? And so when Paul sees their name up and he’s like, Rachel, beautiful, how are you doing? Right. Complimenting them, calling them by their name.

20:23
Some of these women probably haven’t been called by their name, right? Like he, I mean, seriously though, like it was such a genius idea, right? To basically become this person’s like companion virtually, right? And I mean, I’ve seen their numbers and some of those customers have spent, like, I’m like, do they have another house for all this clothes? Right? Like where are they storing? Cause they have customers that have spent six figures.

20:50
and their clothing is not expensive, right? But that angle worked, right? He found an angle for the business where he could be the, I mean, they both are the face of the brand, obviously, but where he could go on and do that and it worked. So I think sometimes you just have to think out of the box like you with the stories, right? It makes sense and it’s something that would appeal to the demographic of who buys your products. Well, so the way I’m approaching it is we’re going to have three different types of content. One is going to be a story. I don’t know which one’s going to work.

21:20
Yeah, but another one is just gonna be like life running a business as a husband and wife and those are probably gonna be mainly be shorts. Those are the ones I gonna do the best. I agree because they’re gonna be off the cuff. I’ll bring something up. Yeah, I’ll something stupid The only question really is whether you know, she’s actually gonna be really mad at me which could could happen. Yes, we’ll have a calendar day Steve sleeps on the couch

21:47
But I think it’s gonna be a combination of both. There’s gonna be some people who wanna hear the stories. There’s gonna be some people who wanna see behind the scenes. So you just gotta throw things out there and see what works. And Paul, wearing women’s clothing is what worked. the other problem that I think people have aside from feeling like I can’t be the face of my brand, which I think you just have to get creative with that. The problem that my client had was the technology problem, right? And she just couldn’t.

22:16
I mean, and I like some people just don’t, you know, I’m the same way. Like when I film video, I have Brian set everything up for me. I mean, can I do it myself? Yes. Do I want to? No. And is that a hurdle for me? Absolutely. So like that’s the way I’ve overcome the hurdle. Right. He’s my tech guy. And that was her problem. Right. Like she was just like, I don’t know what kind of camera I need. I don’t know this. And I sent her all of our YouTube lessons. Right. Like which I feel like our YouTube lessons in profitable audience are

22:45
10 out of 10. If you know nothing about YouTube, you could go through those 20 lessons and you could absolutely start a YouTube channel tomorrow. Bench watch, start the channel. It has equipment, outlining, how to film, everything. She was like, I can’t. There was this huge hurdle for her. So she hired someone to basically come into her house and set up a studio and set up a…

23:11
So it doesn’t ever move, like it’s in her office, it’s, you the camera’s set up, everything is, so all she has to do is go in and turn it on. And that was her hurdle. So yes, it costs money to have someone come in your house and set up a studio, obviously, but it was worth it because that was what kept her from making, because we’ve been talking about this for over a year, right? And it just wasn’t happening. She didn’t know, she didn’t have this, blah, blah, blah.

23:36
And then as soon as our friend is our friend, Leslie Samuel, I don’t think he does this for everybody. So don’t don’t message him. He went up there and basically gave her like a two day boot camp in YouTube. He’s a YouTube expert and then set everything up for him, basically told her this is exactly what you need to do. Here’s how you and then showed her how to use a eye to help her with scripts. like basically, I think he just taught her everything we teach in the course, but she didn’t have to watch the videos. Right.

24:04
That’s another option for you. There are people that will do this for you. If you have children, they will do it for you for free. I don’t think tech is the hurdle for most people though. I really don’t think tech is It was a hurdle for a lot of people in our course. Are you kidding me? I think just the act of filming is the biggest hurdle. Like being on camera and then editing is the other big hurdle. Editing is one of those things where

24:34
I don’t think we have a great answer on this. You edit yourself until you want to pay someone else to edit for you. That’s kind of the solution. That is the solution. Yeah. Yeah. Or you just don’t edit like our friend Rob Berger, who still does not edit. he has 200. Actually, he’s catching up to me. think he’s at 300,000 views right now. So I would say we always joke about the Rob Berger method of no editing. I would say it’s a little harder if you’re a brand, like if you are selling a physical product.

25:03
I think you might need slightly more edit work than what he does, which is nothing. You know, I was thinking about this because I want a low energy way of doing our short form. So I don’t think we’re going to edit those. Like one question would be like, what do you do? Do enjoy working with your spouse in this business? And we’ll just give our answers off the cut. I don’t think that requires much editing. Oh, it will once you hear her answer. Well, no, that’s the beauty of it, right?

25:34
You’ll have to edit out all the F-bombs.

25:40
I think to an extent, yes. I actually think that if you’re struggling with an angle, the behind the scenes, real life, that content is very popular right now. I would say it’s definitely trending. I think that type of content is a great way to talk about your business even if you don’t fit your customer avatar.

26:06
I think that people get very interested in like the inner workings of small businesses. I mean, I’m just following the model of some other companies and what they do also is they’ll call out customers in their videos too. Just like what you said with Paul, except not in a live environment. Yeah. They’ll just bring up an order and this our products are perfect for this, right? Because if it’s someone who is like, you know, has a special message and provided you get their permission, of course you call out their personalization and you know,

26:36
You talk about, this such and such has embroidered a handkerchief for her wedding. Best of luck. I hope everything goes well. Shout out. That works really well. There’s a lot of videos on this one store that I watch where those videos are the ones that perform the best. Or someone just had a baby. Or maybe even someone passed away, actually, and they embroidered something. Those stories do the best. Are you doing the Pope’s hankies?

27:06
Did you get that order? No? No? No, unfortunately not. You’ve had some famous clients, but I won’t name any names, but I wasn’t sure how famous we were getting you over there at Bumblebee. We did have Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I know. She was a client of ours. I like the call-out idea. That works because if people see that they got called out, they share that with everybody they know because they’re excited about it and it helps.

27:35
you know, sort of boost the virality of the video itself. Not just that, but people will buy because they want to get called out. Yes. I think that’s the idea. that they will get. Yeah, it’s that whole concept of like, which I still to this day find absolutely absurd is on like lives and stuff like that where you can send, basically you’re paying people to say your name on a live, right? Which I think is absolutely crazy, but it’s a big deal, right?

28:04
But yeah, it’s the same concept. You’re just not asking people to pay you in that way. They’re buying from you. I speaking of lives, I follow this guy. He covers like Warriors basketball live after every game. And people are literally tipping him like 100 bucks, 20 bucks just so they answer his. He answers their question. Yeah. And it’s always some stupid question like, do you think Steph shots were lucky in the Houston game? I don’t know. But you know.

28:34
Someone will pay that amount of money just for the attention. Yes. Capitalize on people’s need to have attention. The crazy world we live in, I wouldn’t even pay a dollar for that. No, I wouldn’t either. I remember back in the day, you could call into the radio. That’s really dating myself. It was free. You could call in and ask questions I used to dedicate songs to girls I liked. Yes, song request. goes out to you, Justine.

29:04
It was always like a heart song. I think anything that shows, if you have an interesting process, so you have an embroider machine, I think that’s interesting. I realized last year we went to the Yingling Bottling Factory in Pennsylvania with my sis, we did a tour. I could have watched that bottle machine all day long.

29:31
It was just fascinating to watch them come off the line and everything, all the little things that have to happen for it to be bottled and packaged up. But I think if you have any production or something like that that’s really interesting, making that type of content, really, and people will watch that forever and ever and ever.

29:51
They will and you know what’s funny is we were eating at this faux restaurant once and there was this camera on the fish tank, live streaming the fish tank all day long. And I was like, what’s up with that? He’s like, oh, you know, get money from this. I’m like, what? You just set up a camera on your fish tank? He’s like, yeah, people like the fish. Yeah. So our friend, don’t get it. I don’t get it either because we were, this was a couple of months ago and she’s like,

30:21
have you heard about the eagles? And I was like, of course I watched the Super Bowl, right? And she’s like, no, no, no, the eagles, their eggs are about to hatch. She had like on a separate screen on her computer was like watching eagle eggs that were getting ready to hatch. And she was committed to these like eagle eglets, right? I think that’s what they’re called. And I was like, no, I haven’t heard of the eagles that are.

30:47
about to have baby, I don’t know. But it’s true, people remember when that giraffe was pregnant and like millions of people were waiting for this thing to have a baby. I’m like, that was I don’t understand, but it definitely works. And I would say if it works, try it and see if it works for your business. So my wife buys a lot of stuff from video and she’ll buy stuff just because she likes the creator. Yes. I mean, yeah.

31:16
Like I remember one time she bought this makeup that she didn’t like 100 % like, she just wanted to support the creator. And that’s what it’s come to, I think, in today’s day and age. This is why you can’t just list your products on a store, because, and you know, maybe these tariffs will turn the tide because there’s always these Chinese knockoffs. Maybe that’ll be mitigated going forward, but you still need to stand out somehow. And oftentimes the way you stand out has nothing to do with your packaging or

31:47
know, images or ads or your website anymore. It’s really from people wanting to know who the owner of the store is and what they stand for, what their personality is like. Yeah. Okay. So next, changing gears just a little bit, but I don’t want to not talk about this. One of our goals for my client’s channel is to get emails from the videos. Okay. Because I think, I think in general, especially for something like curriculum, which people do

32:16
think about, right? They don’t just buy, it’s not like an impulse buy, right? There are definitely products out there that are impulse buys and I think you can probably do anything, right? Or the price point is right. So we wanna get emails from people. Is that your strategy for Bumblebee? Like do you have an email strategy or what are you thinking when it comes to that component? I’m not sure, like I don’t wanna put multiple calls to actions in the videos. Right. However,

32:44
I think our products kind of fall under that impulse buy. They do, yeah, for sure. So like having a link directly to the site might make sense. The other thing I was thinking was including a form where you could just tell a story, period, right? And that would get email addresses as well. I’m torn because, mean, we haven’t launched this all yet. And so I think depending on what happens is going to change the trajectory of what I actually do. What do you think, actually?

33:14
Yeah, I feel like for you, could probably do a link right to the store. That makes sense. I mean, that’s what Eric Bandholz does. Yeah. And we do link to products all the time in videos because usually the video does talk about a product in some way. It’s not the main part of the video, but there’s a reference. We still use a lot of lead magnets. So like I think there’s a video that just came out or it’s coming out. It’s about like teaching your kid to read, right? Phonics, which is a hot topic.

33:43
This is surprisingly surprising to you. But a lot of people freak out when their kids aren’t reading right at kindergarten. And it’s like, oh, what’s wrong with my kid? Blah, blah, blah. So it’s a whole video on like, hey, this is actually the true statistics on kids reading and what it means if they read later or whatever. And we obviously have a reading curriculum that we’re selling, but it’s actually not here yet. Right. So we’ve been seeding it with this reading content. We’ve been starting to put reading content on YouTube. So we have a lead magnet.

34:12
that’s basically like a sight word game that you can play with your kids. So we try to come up with ideas that correlate with the video so that, you if you want to learn more, if you want to test your kid, if you want to see where they are, like, you know, download the lead magnet. And obviously that directly gets people on the email list because that’s how they get the download. But that’s been our main strategy. I think for curriculum, that has to be the way you go. Right. People aren’t just going to buy a curriculum after they see one video, right?

34:42
Absolutely not. I they buy a hanky, but yeah. I would question their parenting skills. Do some research. And just for the record, people get worried when their kids aren’t reading by age three, right? Yes. I think it’s at one. If they’re not doing multiplication tables by age two and a half, something’s wrong. Yes, exactly. Yes. We have all the all the warning signs. Our video has bright red flashing lights. So that’s been our main

35:12
our main mechanism for getting emails. And it’s worked, I would say it’s worked okay. I don’t really have a lot to compare it to, right? Because I don’t, I actually don’t only know one other curriculum company that’s making a lot of YouTube content and they don’t seem to be asking for emails at all. So I’m not quite sure, like they have a large following and things like that, but I don’t really have a bar to measure it with. But.

35:39
To me, feels like the people that are getting on the list are eventually making purchases. So to me, it’s a win, right? We’re getting the right people on the list and eventually they’re making a purchase decision. I will say that one of the areas I think we need to improve in is we separate people who come from YouTube versus people that come from an ad or finding us through search or referral type thing. I think we need to do a better job talking to the YouTube people in a different way.

36:09
Because when we got started, we kind of just cloned a bunch of things and it wasn’t we didn’t really do like a full like this is a YouTube customer. And I do think if you’re going to take all the time to do that, that’s definitely something that you should think about doing is talking to those people a little bit differently, because they might have found a lot of their traffic actually comes from YouTube recommended videos. Right. So, yeah, which is interesting to me. Like that was actually a pretty surprising statistic.

36:38
So to me, they probably follow other homeschoolers or other curriculum type companies and got the video recommended. And so they might not know at all who this company is. So we need to do a better job of letting them know like the credentials and why you should buy from them and why their curriculum is different and better. Yeah.

37:00
I think I would have a lot more problems marketing a religion. Maybe it’s because I’m not in that industry, but I wouldn’t be able to… You kind of have to be a little bit more straight-laced, right? I want to buy a curriculum from someone who’s competent. Yeah. And I think that is important, making people aware that credentialed people are writing this curriculum, right? It’s not just bunch of people in the basement putting together…

37:27
Correct. Stuff from a high. can’t act like a goofball like what I plan on acting like for my videos to a certain extent. No. And so the last thing I’m to say on this, which is sort of like, this is not a way to get emails, but it’s a way we use the emails is, and this is actually a great way to get your watch time up, is doing webinars on YouTube. Now there’s a bunch of negatives to this, right? Because

37:54
like you’re not using a webinar software, it’s public on YouTube. I mean, we’re running it public on YouTube, but what I saw when we did this was the watch time went up pretty dramatically overall for the account, not only that, YouTube favors live streaming, right? So it looks good to YouTube. And then as well, the average watch time went up. So the average time of most of our videos are between 10 and 13 minutes.

38:23
Well, the webinar was an hour, right? There were, think, about 100 people on the webinar live. was about basically homeschooling through high school. But the average view time on that webinar was in like the 15 to 20 minute, the view time, whereas her average view time normally is like four and a half minutes, right? So the view time went up pretty significantly because of the webinar. So boosted the overall average as well. So that’s another thing that you could think about doing

38:53
if you have any type of product that needs an instruction. I think about actually the person who came to mind with this is Meg, who sells hermit crab food or something like that. That’s something where you could do a webinar on how to set up a hermit crab tank. You could do a whole instructional and you would get people watching a lot longer because they would be learning about the environment and what they need and like

39:23
you know, use this, don’t use that. And then obviously talking about your own products in there. But anything where you need to give an instruction on something, I think you can figure out a way to make a free webinar, right? And just, and then you get people that come into the webinar because it’s live. So it’s available on YouTube. So people that don’t know that you exist, right, can find you as well. I mean, I do live webinars on YouTube. That’s the only way that I do them. And what my buddies have told me is in general, if you’re live,

39:52
You can do it to the public, but as soon as it’s over, you make it unlisted. Because the metrics for someone coming into a live video, especially in the beginning, when you’re waiting for people to come in and whatnot, the drop off rate is huge. So I would say if you’re going to do it, go live and then make it private later. Not private, but unlisted later. Yeah. Is that what you guys are doing? She actually didn’t get the drop off at all. Afterwards? Yeah.

40:21
I mean, people are still watching this video and I think it’s the topic, right? Homeschooling in high school. People are very intimidated about homeschooling in high school or it’s where you, it’s actually where you see people drop off homeschooling, right? They homeschool up until high school and they put their kid in high school because they wanted to do athletics or something like that. I thought, and I thought about making it unlisted afterwards, but we’re still getting a lot of traction on it. So I’m like, huh, maybe. I can see why that is because my wife was watching this,

40:51
live presentation on how to get your kid into Princeton or an Ivy League school. with that big of a topic with such wide interests, you’re probably willing to slog through a webinar, even if it was previously live. Yeah. And I think that the information, it’s pretty evergreen. I mean, at some point it’ll probably go and I’ll probably put it to unlisted. But for right now, we’re just still seeing people on it. So it’s kind of like, oh, I don’t really want to.

41:19
The reason why I put mine unlisted is because I give the same presentation like a month later. It’s never the exact same. It’s altered depending on what the environment is like. But I don’t want people mixing the old with the new. So are you guys planning on giving this one again? Probably not for a year. Oh, not for a year. Oh, I see. see. OK. one definite advantage that we have is that the owner of this company is also a speaker. She speaks at conventions.

41:48
And so I actually, after, this was sort of a test, right? Because I was like, this is either gonna be really great and people are gonna be excited about it or it’s gonna be an absolute bust, right? And it’s just people don’t have the attention span. And I wasn’t sure where we would fall, but because it worked so well, I said, you you have all these talks that are already done, right? because she does, she speaks at like probably 10 conventions a year and it’s the same talks, right? At almost every convention. Because it’s a different audience, it’s all geographical.

42:17
And I said, we need to do at least one webinar every two months, right? On one of the topics that you talk about, because you already have it. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to prepare. Right. Everything’s already done. She’s already given this talk 10 times. So and she’s like, well, do you think that will cannibalize me speaking at conventions? I’m like, these conventions are big enough to cannibalize. 100 % agree with that. Right. Like, I mean, I get I get the concern and that would be something to think about. But I’m like, but if you’re speaking like right this week, she’s speaking in like.

42:45
Podunk, or something, I don’t know, some tiny Massachusetts town. I’m like, I don’t think those people are gonna be like, well, I’m not subscribing to your YouTube channel, you know, or vice versa, you I heard her in Massachusetts. Okay, well, those 22 people will be fine. So yeah. You can also tell her that there’s some people that come to my same exact workshop like eight times in a row, and they tell me that they learn something new each time they come.

43:10
I honestly, so the first time I saw that with you, I thought that was absolutely insane. And then the more webinars I’ve done over the years, I’m like, you know what, that’s actually true. Like, feel like, because like when I watch a webinar, I have all intentions of like paying attention, but it never fails that like someone comes to the door or, you know, I have to take a phone call or like I miss something, right? Or I have to leave early. And so I do think that like people will watch if you are a good,

43:39
content creator or a good presenter, and she is, you will watch the same content a couple of times to get things that you’ve missed, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve got nothing to worry. She’s got nothing to be worried about there. But anyway, the key point in all of this is if you’re not doing video for your e-commerce store, and especially if you’re trying to sell anything digital, I would say it’s required now for anything digital.

44:07
some sort of video content, YouTube long form is still the best in my opinion. And then short form is good too to kind of supplement it. Yeah, I think you need to think about it as if you want people to become loyal to your brand, right? If you want people to build that know, like and trust factor with you, then video content is the quickest way to build that for your company.

44:38
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