Podcast: Play in new window | Download
You don’t need a studio or content team to make YouTube drive revenue – you need a practical playbook for consistent growth that isn’t time consuming. Jerry Potter lays out a smart-time system for busy owners, to turn views into leads, in only 90 minutes per week.
How to Grow a YouTube Channel for Business (Without the Burnout)
We’ve all been there. You spend hours crafting the perfect LinkedIn post or editing a Reel, you hit publish, and you get that little dopamine hit from the likes. But two days later? That content is buried in the feed, never to be seen again.
You are feeding a machine that is constantly hungry.
This is why I was so excited to talk to Jerry Potter on the latest episode of The Agents of Change Podcast. Jerry isn’t trying to make you famous. He’s not telling you to become “MrBeast.” He’s a strategist who helps business owners—people like you and me—build lead-generating YouTube channels in just 90 minutes a week.
If you’ve been hesitant to jump into video because you lack time or think you missed the boat, this is for you.
The Mindset Shift: The Library vs. The Feed
The biggest mental block for most business owners is thinking YouTube is just another social network. It’s not.
On Instagram, you’re on a treadmill. On YouTube, you’re building an asset. Jerry put it perfectly: on YouTube, you are building an evergreen library of content. He shared that 85% of the views on his channel in any given month come from videos he made years ago.
Imagine that. Imagine a sales rep working for you 24/7, repeating your best pitch perfectly to qualified leads, without you paying them a dime. That’s what a good video does.
Training the Algorithm with the “Magnetic Eight”
So, how do you start without wasting time? You can’t just throw random spaghetti at the wall. You have to train the algorithm to know who your audience is.
Jerry suggests a framework called the Magnetic Eight.
These are eight specific videos designed to target the exact person you want to serve. But don’t just answer surface-level FAQs. You need to do a deep dive (Jerry uses ChatGPT for research) to find the questions that are literally keeping your customers up at night.
If you run a bathroom remodeling business, don’t just post “Look at this pretty shower.” Post “How to save $10,000 on your bathroom remodel” or “Should I replace my tub or do an overlay?”. These are high-intent topics. When someone clicks that, YouTube immediately knows, “Okay, this channel is for people looking to spend money on bathrooms.”
The “Need Magnet”
We love our lead magnets in marketing, don’t we? The 97-page PDFs and the comprehensive white papers.
The problem is, the average YouTube viewer is impatient. They don’t know you, they don’t trust you yet, and they definitely don’t want to listen to a 2-minute pitch for a generic ebook.
Jerry recommends a Need Magnet. This is something highly specific that solves an immediate pain point, which you can pitch in about five to eight seconds.
If you take too long to pitch, people click away, your retention drops, and YouTube stops showing your video. Keep it quick, make it valuable, and get back to the content.
Stop Obsessing Over Editing
Here is permission to stop worrying about your production value.
YouTube actually studied what creates viewer satisfaction. They hooked sensors up to people’s brains (scary, but useful). The result? Fancy editing, jump cuts, and B-roll had almost zero impact on satisfaction.
What mattered? An emotional connection with the person on screen and getting their problem solved.
If you have 90 minutes a week, spend it on writing a great script that helps people, not on trying to learn Adobe Premiere.
The “Shorts” Trap
Finally, a bit of contrarian advice. Everyone is hyping up YouTube Shorts right now. Jerry’s advice for business owners?
Don’t bother.
Shorts are like Polaroid pictures—instant gratification, but they end up in a drawer. The leads from Shorts are often lower quality because who hires a consultant or a contractor after a 60-second clip?
Stick to long-form video. It builds trust, it builds authority, and it builds relationships.
Next Steps
If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines of video marketing, I hope this kicks you into gear. You don’t need a film crew, and you don’t need 40 hours a week.
Start with your “Magnetic Eight.” What are the eight things your ideal client is terrified of or obsessed with right now? Write them down. That’s your content calendar for the next two months.
Go be an agent of change.
Transcript from Jerry Potter’s Episode
Rich: My next guest is on a mission to make YouTube growth accessible to all entrepreneurs, no matter how busy they are. That means you. And there’s no need to wait, because his signature program helps you grow a channel in 90 minutes a week, so you can start right now.
If you’re looking for a teaser to his YouTube acumen during your commute, your workout, or whatever you happen to be doing right now, you’re in luck because today we’re going to be looking at how to grow a YouTube channel for real world businesses like yours, with Jerry Potter. Jerry, welcome to the podcast.
Jerry: Thank you for having me, Rich. I’m excited to be here.
Rich: So how did you first get into YouTube, and when did you decide to make your thing helping other businesses grow via YouTube?
Jerry: So in 2017 I was the chief marketing officer and creative director at an agency, and mainly we focused on social media strategy. A lot of my friends that had small businesses, I was not yet an entrepreneur, were really struggling with social media, and so they’d ask me to coffee, they’d ask me to lunch, that kind of thing. And I, being a fan of food, I was like, sure, you can pick my brain over tacos.
And after a while, I realized it was the same questions over and over again. And I was not excited about writing a blog, even though that was a big thing at the time. And so I thought, oh, maybe I’ll start a YouTube channel. And so it started, honestly, as a hobby on the side just to see what would happen.
And I was teaching, it was called, Five Minute Social Media, and I was teaching all of the social media networks to small business owners, basically how to get the most done in the least amount of time. Because as you know, when you work with clients and small business owners, there’s only so many hours in the day.
And at the time, all of the marketing advice on YouTube seemed to be as though you were a full-time social media marketer. So it took off after about six months. I was as surprised as anybody, and I continued along that path for a long time. But this year, I really started focusing on helping business owners achieve time freedom, for lack of a better word for it.
And I realized that YouTube is the thing that gave me time freedom in my business. It’s the thing that means I can knock off after lunch if I want to. I can work less when we travel because I’m never worried about lead generation anymore. It’s this evergreen library of content that just keeps getting better and keeps sending me new warm leads on a regular basis. So I decided that was what business owners needed more than anything else. And so I went all in on that.
Rich: I love the promise of that sounds fantastic, and we’ll dive into that today. Now, you mentioned that you are here to help real world businesses, not influencers, with YouTube. And YouTube can feel overwhelming for many business owners and marketers. Especially those, as you mentioned, who are wearing multiple hats. So why should a business that sells metal awnings or offers account services even consider investing their time in YouTube?
Jerry: It’s going to be a little bit different for every business. And I know we’re going to go through some real-world examples here in just a second. But ultimately, YouTube has some great things going for it.
It’s been around now for over 20 years, which is crazy to think. But channels are going faster than ever because YouTube’s algorithm over the last couple of years, thanks to AI, is able to match up the right viewer with the right video. They’ve always wanted to do that, but they used to rely on keywords and descriptions and things like that.
But now the AI is so smart. I can see what the video’s about, who it’s for, the tone, the context, they can see what you say in your video, what you show in your video, all of those different things. So now videos can get views faster than they used to. Another reason is YouTube is where people are going for solutions that they can’t get from ChatGPT.
So I know a lot of people are worried right now about, my SEO is dying, my blog is not getting the traffic that it was anymore, but I get thousands of views a month from ChatGPT sending people to my YouTube channel. And I still think we’re a few years off from AI being able to generate the video tutorial for you, if that’s even coming.
And so things that require a visual or just things that people want to hear somebody say instead of reading it are great for YouTube. And I think the biggest thing to think about is when people think about YouTube, they think, okay, it’s just like Instagram or Facebook. I’ve got to start publishing content every day or every week, or whatever that might be. But I want to reframe how people look at YouTube.
I’ve done Facebook, I’ve done Instagram, I’ve done all of them, and they’re all, you’re feeding the machine forever. On YouTube, you are building an evergreen library of content. And to put that into context, if I go in at any time to my YouTube analytics and say, okay, how many of all the videos I’ve ever made have gotten viewed in this month? Now I’ve been making videos since 2017, and on average, about 85% of them have been viewed in the last 28 day rolling period.
So I started my channel the first year, it was August of 2017. I got about 1,100 views in that four and a half months. And then the next year I got 300,000. And the next year I got 900,000. And the next year I got 1.2 million. So what happens is your old videos get watched and your new videos get watched, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
Rich: I love that. I love the idea of evergreen content. As somebody who has learned to do woodworking by watching YouTube videos, once I find a creator who I like, I end up going backwards in time and seeing what else he or she has created as well. So that makes a lot of sense.
Jerry: I have a video I put out in 2017, it was December of 2017. It’s five social media writing tips. It got, I think, 19 views in its first month, and it’s getting 500 views a month now, eight years later. So that’s the power of YouTube.
Rich: Alright, you teased it up a little bit earlier. We are going to be taking a look at two real- world style businesses and walking through your process so we can understand how a business like that can succeed.
So the first one is going to be more of a, the first business sells and installs bathroom remodeling products like shower wall panels, bathtubs, shower doors, and enclosures, that sort of things. And in this example, this is a company that’s got a geographic footprint. It’s not everywhere in the United States, so I’m making it even more challenging for you, Jerry. Because you know we’re putting you on the spot here.
So let’s just go through some of the points. So how do we train, if this is our business and we’re jumping into YouTube with both feet, how do we train the YouTube algorithm to understand who our audience is?
Jerry: So when we’re looking at the 90 minutes a week thing, the first thing that I had to do when figuring out how to show people how to do this in 90 minutes a week is you have to ignore a lot of the shiny bells and whistles on YouTube. And we just do the things that have what I call the highest ROE, return on effort.
And so that’s going to come down to starting with training the algorithm, as you mentioned. So yes, you can put up videos, and YouTube is smarter than it’s ever been at matching them to viewers. If you have a channel that is about different topics, then it’s much harder for it to do that.
So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to publish a series of videos that help the same person solve the same general problem. And you can do this on an existing channel or a new channel. So the idea is that then YouTube can easily understand who this stuff is for. I’m talking very specific. So I told you my channel was originally Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. But the problem was somebody who came for a Facebook video one week, was not necessarily going to come back for a LinkedIn video the next week. So we really want to get specific, helping one person with the same thing to create these binge sessions.
And the training, I call the Magnetic Eight. First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to basically, I like to use ChatGPT, but you could use any platform to do a deep research project on your ideal customer or client. What are they thinking about? What are they worrying about? And if you’ve never seen it before, it’ll go out and read Reddit, it’ll read Quora, it’ll read public Facebook groups, and it’ll find out the things that I like to say are keeping them up at night.
If we were going to, and I don’t own a bath fitting or shower fitting company, but if we were going to use that as an example, you’d be doing research and finding out the things that they’re worrying about in a bathroom remodel. So for example, should I replace my tub? Or should I just do a new install over it? And how much does a bathroom remodel really cost? How can I save money on that? How do I pick the right contractor? Different things like that. And for the bath, are we calling them a bath fitting company? Is that what you said? Or shower fitting?
Rich: Sure. I think bathroom remodeling products, so they sell bathroom remodeling products and those bath covers, shower walls, all those sorts of things are all… And this is new to me, too. This is just a business that actually exists in the real world.
Jerry: Yeah. I love it. So we would start with that, and we would literally look at what are the questions that they’re asking. But not just the, “how do I”, more of the things that they’re worried about. YouTube is all about getting that click.
I think they say now only 20% of views come from search. We still want the search views too, but we’re going to start off training by the things that the right person’s going to click on, because that’s going to train YouTube’s algorithm who those people are. And so I call it the “magnetic eight”. We publish eight videos specifically around that in order to start.
Rich: Jerry, sorry to interrupt, but when you say, “around that”, are we talking about around that buyer persona that we developed, or around that specific, whether it’s bathtub fitting versus shower walls versus any other type of bathroom modeling. What is the focus of those eight videos?
Jerry: Without doing the actual research for this business, I would say it’s specifically what are the questions. Like imagine somebody is 90 days away from deciding to invest money in updating their bathroom. Then they would be thinking about, what are the questions they’re thinking about and worrying about. That’s where I would start.
And then within that we also.. oh, let me talk about the local business thing. Because that’s important too. This is more of a mindset shift than anything. Some people say it’s not worth investing on YouTube because I can only serve within a 50-mile radius, for example. And I would encourage people to think about this in two ways.
One, if it still brings you local customers, then who cares. And two, there’s always these secondary benefits. When you start talking about your thing on YouTube, you become seen more as an expert. You might be able to refer people in other markets to somebody else and maybe get a commission from that. You might be able to link to remodel products in an affiliate program on Amazon or any of these other ones and make money that way. That’s secondary. But even if you are only targeting locally, you still become known as the go-to expert for that in your area. So I think that’s important. So we start by training the algorithm.
The second thing that we want to do is we want to obviously find a way to turn these into leads. And with YouTube, a lot of businesses think traditional lead magnet, oh, download our free guide, or different things like that. I look at it a little differently. Because on YouTube, people tend to land on YouTube. They are impatient. Sometimes they’re looking for a quick fix. They do not know and trust you yet, hopefully because we want new people. And yet sometimes people are like, all right, download our 97-page guide and you can go get it and it’s totally free. And they talk about it for 30 seconds in the video and then people shut the video off.
So what I recommend is something that I call a “need magnet”. It is. Need based as opposed to oh, that’d be nice to have. And it is also something you can pitch in five to eight seconds. We don’t want a freebie or our lead generator to tank our watch time on YouTube or YouTube will stop showing people the video.
So an example for this business, I would think it’d be something like, “How to save $10,000 on your bathroom remodel”, or something like that. Just knowing that obviously some of these install overlay products save you a ton of money. Who doesn’t want to save $10,000 on their bathroom remodel? And I made that number up, but you start seeding that in every single video. And that would be that second part of that.
And then the last part of it is, once you train the algorithm, you would start making, I think, easy tutorials that are also bathroom related, “How to replace a faucet”, as well as story-based videos. Something like, “See how we modernized this 1980s bathroom for under $2,000” or $1,500, or whatever the numbers work out to be.
Rich: So if we’re creating these different styles of video, some being specifically around that magnetic eight, others being adjacent to bathroom stuff. Maybe we’re not even selling this stuff, but we’re just training the algorithm, training people like we are the bathroom experts in this particular case.
Do we – I assume the answer is ‘yes’ – but do we go into our analytics to start to see what type of these content formats worked best? Are we starting to take a look in at a certain point in saying these perform better, or these are getting more links to my website, whatever it may be, I’m going to create more of them. Or do we ignore that and just keep on cranking out in all the different categories?
Jerry: Oh, no, no. Yeah, if you start seeing winners, you immediately double down on that. In fact, one of the hardest parts about YouTube is you see a video take off and you’re like, oh, we got to make another one like that. But maybe you’ve batched and you’ve already scheduled your next three videos. So yeah, that’s one of the things we’re kind of doing.
So the magnetic eight serves a couple of purposes. One is to train the algorithm. But it’s also to have videos on your page all the time that are answering the questions that keep your customers up at night. So it’s not just about the views that they’re getting in that moment, in the beginning. On an ongoing basis, they basically take somebody who’s thinking about investing, to investing with you.
Rich: Alright. Can you give us any advice for this mythical company in terms of tactics around editing or thumbnails, or what we should be thinking about when we’re writing out the scripts?
Jerry: Yeah, so one of the things with YouTube in 90 minutes is again, we have to make some sacrifices. We can’t obsess over editing. We can’t spend 10 hours, for example, editing a video. That being said, it doesn’t mean you still can’t put out quality. So we focus on a couple of things with this.
One, you’re going to focus on the quality of the script more than the editing, for a couple of reasons. One, what you say in your video is going to be way more valuable than anything that came from fancy editing. YouTube did a big study last year to see what led to viewer satisfaction from people. And they didn’t just ask people, they actually connected sensors to their brains to monitor the pleasure centers or whatever it is while they were watching the video.
And the thing that resonated more than anything else was an emotional connection with the person on the screen. Now, how do you add emotion when somebody’s talking about installing a faucet or something like that? Valid objection to that. But really, that’s first of all why we make videos that are talking about the things they’re worried about. Because there’s already an emotional component. And if you solve the problem for the person on the screen, that satisfaction, that “oh wow, this works. this was easy to follow”, they’re going to be very happy about that.
But what they found was that adding jump cuts, fancy editing, B-roll, all of this other stuff meant nothing to viewer satisfaction. The only time it made a difference is if it helped with the emotional resonance. So if you were doing an emotional shower install video and you had a musical score, for example, maybe that would help. But otherwise, it’s just all about them feeling like wow, this was great, this was helpful, this made me smile, this made me satisfied.
So we let go of some of the fancy editing to really make that happen. If you’re going to put time into something, put it into the structure of the script.
Rich: Alright, so you mentioned earlier that only 20% of the views come from search, and the other 80%, I assume, approximately are coming from people seeing the related videos or things like that. Is that the case?
So usually when I’m, because I spend a lot of time on YouTube, when I’m looking at it on my desktop, I see all of the related or suggested videos. And obviously, some of those pop a little bit more than others. So that, in my opinion, comes down to the thumbnail.
How much energy should we be putting into the thumbnail? Is there a current best practices that you’re recommending for all of our videos, or is it an “it depends” kind of situation?
Jerry: There’s definitely some “it depends” to it, which I know is the most annoying answer to every question. But the thumbnail is really important. Let’s say you put 10% more effort into your thumbnail and it got 10% more clicks, that’s not going to lead to 10% more views. It will lead to 400% more views, because it’s this cycle where YouTube shows your thumbnail and title somewhere, and that’s an impression. And then when somebody clicks on it, that’s your click-through rate. Then as somebody watches a decent part of it, so they’re satisfied, then it goes back around, and YouTube gives you more impressions on the front end. So it is a really important piece.
As far as best practices go, this is the biggest thing that you can do on, I think there’s two main things you can think about with thumbnails to start. One is, somebody should at least have an idea that the video is for them without having to even see your title. So for example, let’s say that I was making a video. Let’s stick with our current example. If I was making something about bath fitting, and the thumbnail was a picture of me, and the text said, “How to save money”, nobody can tell what that’s about.
Rich: It could be for college, could be for anything, right?
Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. But if the picture was money going down a bathtub drain, for example, or even just a picture of a shower head, somebody’s going, “Oh, I’m thinking about remodeling my bathroom”, that catches my eye. So that’s one thing I like to really focus on with thumbnails. It’s just something so they know it’s for them.
When I made videos about podcasting, I made sure there was a microphone on there. I work with a client who, this was a challenging one, teaches French to Swedish speaking women. They don’t know French yet, so we couldn’t put French words on the thumbnail. So we put on like images of the Eiffel Tower or the French flag, or the word “Bonjour”, something that they would all know in Swedish, of course. And so that’s one thing.
The second thing though, is you just want them to read your title. That’s your biggest goal, is to create curiosity so someone will actually read your title. So if you were doing a, let’s say the video was called, “How We Remodeled a 1980s Bathroom for under $1,500.” I think that was the example I gave. Then the thumbnail might be a photo of the 1980s bathroom or one that you generated with AI, and the text might say something like, “we saved $2,000”, or something along those lines. So then somebody’s like oh, wait, what is this? What is this about? Or obviously with remodels, before and after photos are always great.
Rich: All of that makes sense. I’m still a little bit hung up on the guy who decided his ideal buyer persona were Swedish women. And had I had that idea when I first started my business, I might be in a completely different industry.
Alright. I think we’ve given enough detention and time to the bathroom remodeler. Let’s pretend we’re running a digital agency and we’re doing branding work and web design work, and we’re doing marketing work. So let’s go through the same process. If I wanted to start a channel on that today, what would I start with to start training up the algorithm and these other things that we’ve covered so far?
Jerry: So the first thing that I would start with would be a little bit different with a digital agency, and I would actually create content. I would do the deep research project again, because this is just a great, easy, free starting point. You can even do this on a free ChatGPT account now to find out the things that are keeping them up at night.
But I would look for topics somebody would ask when they are maybe within six months of outsourcing or hiring an agency. So we’re thinking like bottom of funnel for a lot of this stuff, just like we did with the bathroom remodeling.
Some, I would just be blatant, like why cheap agencies end up costing you more in the long run. Or agency versus freelancer, which should you start with? Something like that. And then also some stuff too, where they’re worrying about if they’re running Facebook ads, why your Facebook ads aren’t working, and how to fix them without spending more. Something like that.
So when we add that stuff in, then we’re speaking to somebody who is currently marketing their business. They’re spending money, right? That’s why I chose a Facebook ads example. So they’re willing to spend money as opposed to the person who’s just like, “I’ll just make five Instagram posts today and see what happens”. And so we’re looking bottom of funnel for those people. So that’s where I’d start with them.
And then after that. I would branch out to more general tutorials with case studies. Case studies, the word “case study” is a very boring word, right? Unless somebody’s ready to invest in a $10,000 product, it just doesn’t sound interesting. But if you could start making videos that are case studies about this agency’s clients where it’s like how they, or how I, or how we like that stuff does really well on YouTube because the curiosity is so far, so high. You can’t, you can make a video about how to save money on your Facebook ads and it’s oh, I can ask ChatGPT that. But if it was how we cut our ads budget by $10,000 and doubled our sales, you can’t Google that. You can’t ask ChatGPT that. So that would be that next phase to go with.
And one more thing I think too, like you said, you’re talking about web design and maybe social media, all these different things that an agency does. I would recommend going all in on one, solving like one major problem for businesses to start. And I would just do that for a while because the algorithm will understand you better and that audience, that problem could be growing your audience or generating leads, but they’re going to understand it better. And then once you’ve established that, if it’s going well, maybe you don’t change it and you just go, hey, we’re getting leads, who cares? Or then you maybe branch out and start to give out web design tips or other things like that.
Rich: So let’s say that is the issue. So like a lot of agencies, you might offer multiple solutions. And this isn’t just true with agencies, it’s really any service-based company. So like you said, we focus on just one, and in this case maybe we just focus on web design, and we set branding and digital marketing aside for right now.
But there will come a point where we may want to expand into that. Do we set up a second channel for that? Do we start creating playlists around these different topics? How might we approach integrating a secondary or a tertiary, or even 10 more offerings into the mix?
Jerry: Yeah, excellent question. The official answer from YouTube is if it’s the same audience, put it on the same channel. That being said, depending on your business model, if I was an agency, I would do something slightly different than what I’m doing right now.
So in my business now, I’m only posting stuff about YouTube. It includes video editing, but it’s all about growing a lead generating channel for entrepreneurs. Because I want people to come back every week, or at least come back every week until they buy something.
If I was an agency model and I was offering these different services and I had a team and different things like that, in that case, I would start with one thing, like we said, but then I would start to add new stuff, but I would keep it on the same channel. And the difference is, once somebody hires you as an agency client, they’re not likely to keep going and watching your channel, right? They hired you so they don’t have to do that. So I think that’s a subtle difference, but I think it makes a big difference in the long run. So that’s how I would do it.
Running more than one channel is just a lot more work. And even if you’ve got your systems streamlined, it’s a lot more mental energy to just think about. Imagine if you had one that was about websites, and you had one that was about sales conversions, and then you wanted to make a video about how to get more sales from your website. And you’re like, okay which channel do I put this on? Like that alone all of a sudden is just extra mental work.
Rich: Absolutely. I’m also curious about, we talked before we started recording about whether or not this was going to be a video or not. And obviously, we’ve got all of this content because we’ve been doing these on Zoom and other platforms over the years.
If I or anybody who’s creating audio or video content like this wants to put this content up on YouTube, do you have recommendations for how to do that? If we’ve got a backlog of content, do we dump it all at once? Do we start putting up, if we’ve got a couple years where the content do we start just putting it up on a more aggressive scale, like once a week or once every third day or something, so we get that content up over time?
Jerry: I would start by looking at the content and really deciding if it’s valuable or not. One of the things that I’d heard for years when I’d start working with somebody on YouTube it’s, “I’ve just been uploading my Facebook Lives there every week and I’m not growing”. And so while YouTube is probably the best content dumping playground in the world, because a lot of people just use it as a place to host their videos for free. that’s not where I would start.
I would really think about whether or not they need to be on there and if they are perfect for YouTube. Even just for your own peace of mind, I would probably start off just scheduling them out. I would say if you had a lot of content, you could schedule maybe three a week to start, but two is fine. One is the minimum that I recommend for getting going, because that’s how YouTube is going to learn exactly what you do and how you’re helping everybody. So that’s how I would approach it.
There’s no reason to put up 200 videos at once. If they’re all relevant and could work well on YouTube, I would spend more time dripping them out and then working on your thumbnail and your title at that point.
Rich: Makes sense. So for those of us who may have longer form content, either because we’ve got a podcast or a video show that we’re going to put up to YouTube, or we do webinars and so we’ve got a 45 minute webinar and stuff – and I’ve gone to plenty of things on YouTube where I see it’s got six views, and God knows I have a few of those myself where I just dump something.
I’m wondering about the editing process, or should we consider pulling shorts from those and using the YouTube shorts to drive traffic to the longer form video. Have you had any experience with that?
Jerry: I have experience with it. I haven’t had any success with it. What YouTube found in all of their… I’ve had some success with it. Lemme come back to that in a second. What YouTube has found in all of their content, or in all of their studies, is that shorts viewers and long viewers, or as they call them “videos on demand”, VAD viewers, are not necessarily the same viewers.
So some businesses have started age search channel and a VADs channel, so that they’re separate and they can each find their own audience. Now you can put up a YouTube short and you can link to a long form video within that. Which is really neat. I do think it’s going to get better, but you know what it’s like when you open your phone, if you open YouTube, you’re either thinking, I’m going to swipe through some shorts while I’m in the checkout line, or “I’m going to look up something or watch something longer maybe on my TV. It’s not the same thing. You don’t just open your phone and go, all right, am I going to watch shorts or VADs today? So that’s been the struggle. But as I said, you can link them up.
YouTube is actually rolling out some new AI features where it will take your long form videos and it will automatically. Cut out pieces of it and make it into a short, and then you can approve it or make a couple of edits and then publish it. So they want more content, obviously. As it gets easier, maybe it becomes worth it. I don’t feel like shorts are worth it for business owners right now, simply because of the trust factor. Who’s going to hire you after 60 seconds? Nobody.
But I will say, you mentioned podcasting. A couple things around that. One, when I was really focused on growing my audio podcast, I did pull out a recorded video, and I pulled out shorts, and I published them as shorts and reels. And I did get people who would see the reel on Instagram, go and listen to the podcast and become a client. I also got people who saw the reel on Instagram, went to my profile, went to my website, watched a webinar, became a client. It all works. But if we’re really thinking about that ROE, it’s just not the lowest hanging fruit for that.
Rich: Jerry, there’s a lot of YouTube experts out there. What is one thing that you hear from a lot of other experts that you just completely disagree with?
Jerry: Oh, I sort of gave it away already, but shorts aren’t worth the time.
Rich: I love it. That’s a good one.
Rich: Yeah, they’re just not. Because what I found was, I did some brand deals where, you know, and this is one of those perks when you grow a bigger channel, is people will sponsor your channel. And I was like, okay, I’ve got to add more value. Agency owners can relate to this, or any service provider, or we’ll throw in this and we’ll throw in this. So I was like, I’ll make a long form video, which is my bread and butter, and then we’ll do two shorts and then I’ll email my list.
A good short, to me, is just as much work as a long form video. But the majority of them die within a couple of weeks, just like an Instagram or a Facebook reel or a TikTok. And meanwhile, like I said, 85% of my long form videos that I’ve ever made have been seen in the last month. And so that’s where it’s just not worth investing the time. It’s a very shiny object. Some of my clients go, “I posted a short, I got 300 views, and it’s cool”. Then what? Oh, I don’t know. I got 300 views. You didn’t get any leads. You can’t have links in shorts. There’s just so many limitations there. It’s just a different model.
Rich: It feels like maybe shorts are the Polaroid pictures of the YouTube world. Instant gratification, and then in the drawer for the next 20 years.
Jerry: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great analogy. And I think they’re good for influencers and creators perhaps, on that side, but not for business owners.
Rich: Jerry, this has been great. If people want to learn more about you and your services and maybe get some help on their own YouTube growth, where can we send them?
Jerry: You can certainly search for my name, Jerry Potter on YouTube, and it should come up. And then if you want to learn more about YouTube in 90 minutes, my system is called the YT90 system. And if you go to YT90roadmap.com, there’s a thing you can get for free that really maps out how to do this strategically in less time.
Rich: Awesome. Jerry, it’s been great. Thank you so much for your time today.
Jerry: Yeah, thanks for having me, Rich.
Show Notes:
Jerry Potter helps entrepreneurs and small businesses grow revenue with YouTube in just 90 minutes a week. Creator of the YT90 system, he focuses on algorithm training, clear scripting, and simple lead capture to turn videos into a steady pipeline without the full-time content grind.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.