[00:00] I've made fewer than 50 videos on this channel and I have over 50,000 subscribers. And now I don't type any single one of those scripts, not a single one. I talk them out loud into a document, then I cut that transcript down until it's an actual video.
[00:14] The whole thing takes me about 20 to 30 minutes probably, depending on the video length. It usually takes me about two times the running length of the script. But if you're writing your script by typing them into a document, I think you're writing in the wrong language and it's costing you a lot of time and quality.
[00:28] I've been making content for over a decade now across multiple channels, and on this one, I actually switched to this method. And around my fourth or fifth video, my views started blowing up after that. This is the exact process start to finish, and if you've never scripted a video before, you can copy it directly.
[00:44] So first of all, the spoken and written languages are two different languages. This is the entire philosophy this process is built on. So when you type a script, you're doing two translations, which is thought to text, then text to speech. The ending variation of your script gets spoken out anyways, so why are we going through that middle step at all?
[01:01] Speaking it out loud skips a step, so it's faster. You go from thought to speech, and a tool captures it. And the speed difference is actually astronomically better. So, when an average person types, they type around 50 words per minute.
[01:13] But you can speak at a rate of 150 on average, so you're getting three times the coverage in the same amount of time. Which 100% matters when scripting, especially because that's my longest part of my creative process, is actually the scripting.
[01:25] And also what I think actually matters a lot is what's happening when you're speaking out loud. First of all, you have to think in real time. You're in the middle of a sentence and you can't just stop and backspace and retype it, so your brain keeps the argument moving forward.
[01:38] When you're typing, you have to stall on one sentence for another couple of minutes and another couple of minutes until you actually have a polished thought. And also, you kind of want to perfect it when it's written down, and you want it to read smooth or beautifully.
[01:50] But you're actually losing the point you were building on entirely. entirely. Typed final drafts are full of gorgeous sentences that honestly don't really connect to anything at all. Talking may give you a messier language, but it gives you better thinking. And
[02:04] mess is easy to fix later, but when your script is not really coherent, it's a lot harder. Also, in the age of AI, the written language is kind of dead. Everyone's going to sound like a bot. You're going to sound like you're reading off an AI written script, but when you do it in the
[02:18] spoken language, you sound authentically yourself. You don't filter out your inside jokes. You don't filter out your slang, your script is going to be in a form that is more natural when coming out of your mouth. When I first started this channel, actually, my scripts actually didn't really sound
[02:32] like me at all. And that's a massive delivery problem. And I learned it the hard way. I actually used to make documentary style videos, very story driven videos for an old gaming channel I had years ago. So those were easier to script written because the content was kind of already in a
[02:46] chronological order. I never really had to reorganize any of it. I typed the script out, read it out loud, check if it sounded okay, and that's it. Even though it was my own writing, it didn't really sound like me. I'd get three sentences in and already feel like I was giving
[03:00] some sort of presentation or some facade. And that's a massive telling sign that your script is not authentically you. If recording feels like you're being performative, your scripts were probably generated in the wrong language. Written first scripts have a specific sound to
[03:14] them. They have clauses stacked too neatly, sentences that are dramatically perfect and impossible to actually say out loud, and I'm sure you've heard it before. You just might not have known what you were hearing. When you generate the raw material by talking, your cadence is baked in
[03:28] from the start. The pauses, the way you emphasize things, the natural breaths, the words you actually reach for, you're not performing in any specific way. You're just actually being yourself. So here's my process of actually recording a video. There's four main stages. First of all is the idea, and
[03:44] then I storyboard that idea. Sometimes I get a title variation. Sometimes I don't even do that until after I record because I'm already so invested in the idea. But then I go to a brain dump. And this brain dump is pretty much actually the first variation of my script, you want to say.
[03:58] And then I refine it. I take out some parts that I may have just rambled on too long. I don't retype the whole thing from scratch. I just cut and paste in a different order. I also try and look over what I actually said and be like, did I miss a point?
[04:10] Okay, then I just insert it quickly right there. And after the whole thing, I spend about double the runtime of the video on a script. So if I have a 10-minute video, it takes me about 20 minutes to make the script because it's that much quicker. And when I write down the script, I have to go through the entire thing because I don't remember what I wrote the entire time.
[04:27] But when I spoke it out loud, for me personally, I just memorized where and what I actually said something. So it's much more easier to find as well. Now, before you're actually writing your script, you should storyboard out your video.
[04:39] You should have a general outline of what you actually want to say in that video, even if you are speaking your script out. And this can just be a short bulleted list. Or if it's just one main topic and you're just rambling on that topic because maybe that's the type of channel you have and it's a very personally opinionated one, then just have that main topic sentence written out.
[04:57] Or if it's a personal story, you can at least go through the chapters of your own story. You can actually even go through the story mountain. So like I know a lot of channels talk about their own personal lives and stories So you can go through the story mountain which is like setting the scene Then you have the rising action the climax the falling action and then the resolution at the end of it
[05:15] I don't want you writing full entire paragraphs. I actually just want you writing down bullet points for each thing that you need to hit on in your video. If it's fragmented, that's completely fine, as long as there's some resolution to it and it ties to the actual title of the video.
[05:27] And then always make sure there's a payoff at the end of the video instead of just stopping, because you actually want to deliver on what you're actually titling your video about. You want to deliver insight and value. And if it's not informative value, it might just be education value, entertainment value.
[05:43] And before you move on, I want you to check, does it actually make sense in the order that you're saying it? Also, if it's a story, is it in chronological order? Because that's the easiest way to tell a story. This is how you make your scripts actually coherent. And I also actually want to make sure that each storyboarded point has a full point to it
[05:59] instead of just putting a topic. Like if you just put a bulleted list of just topics, that's going to produce a lot of rambling and a lot of extra garbage in your script that you actually don't even want. And also, your viewer is going to get lost along the journey if you are trying to take them on that path.
[06:12] But if you actually have valid points, they produce arguments or direction for your script. You should be able to state them as a claim. And if the storyboard is taking you like 45 minutes to do, I don't actually think you have a perfectionism problem or an outlining problem.
[06:25] I actually really think you don't know what your video is about yet. You have to have a very clear image and idea of what you're actually going to be talking about before you even start this process. You should have a title already in mind. You should have a payoff already in mind.
[06:38] And those are the first two things you're going to write. You're going to have the title on top. You're going to have the payoff at the end. Okay, how can you get from the title to the payoff and how can you link them all together? After that, you're going to go to stage two, which is the brain dumping method.
[06:50] And this is actually where you're going to be doing the talking and the speech to text. I use those two applications I actually use. I alternate between both of them because they both have limits. Lists for Flow, they give you 2,000 free words a week. But there is like a kind of like a free version that just has like less accuracy,
[07:04] but you can still like talk and use it. And then there's TypeList, which gives you 8,000 words a week. So in total, you have about 10,000 words a week for your script. That's a lot of coverage. And I actually don't think the majority of you guys are going to be using all of it.
[07:16] But there is also free open source software out there if you want to do it yourself and use your own API keys, but that's just complicated. Just use these. They're on your phone. They're on your computer. It's just a one-click install. You can also do this in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or if you have a MacBook, there's a
[07:29] speech-to-text button, but it's super inaccurate, so I like to use one of these dedicated apps for it. So pretty much you can go into any text field you have open and just speech-to-text. And nobody watching your video knows or cares what app you're using.
[07:41] Just pick one. They're just going to notice whether your script is actually good, and please do not get lost on the optimizing portion. Also, one thing before I press the hotkey to start recording, which is function on my MacBook, I decide on the tone of the video.
[07:54] So for example, I have actually two tones, two main tones that I do on this video, on this channel. One is the authoritative tone. And this is where I'm teaching you something or walking you through something that I have already been through. And then there's also the explaining to a friend or talking to a friend.
[08:08] So the talking to a friend is I'm talking to you like I'm on the journey myself. And I'm talking to you like I'm no smarter than you, like we're equals. But authoritative, I do come from at an angle where I know what I'm talking about and you're learning from me.
[08:22] because it's like I'm the teacher and you're the student. I like to distinguish between these two tones because if you try to sound authoritative in a personal journey or a documentation style of video, you're going to sound very cocky.
[08:35] You're going to sound kind of like an ass. But if you talk to them on a peer-to-peer level, it's going to come a lot more digestible to them. Some venues I even use a mix, actually. Some just lean authoritative because maybe you're learning something from me,
[08:48] but I'm also like learning in other stages. but deciding that whole thing up front changes the entire brain dump and how it comes out and also the tone you're actually going to be speaking in it and then also I have the outline visible on my screen I have the tool running and you just talk through the bullet points like you're explaining
[09:03] the entire video to one specific person I like to frame it as a slightly younger version of myself someone who's curious and a little bit skeptical about the topic that frame changes kind of how you talk you're going to try and be less impressive and performative and you're also going to try to
[09:17] start being more clear and explain your points a lot more further or on a deeper level. And also, I have a couple of rules for this stage as well. So I actually don't like to stop. I will take a pause and a breath if I need to, but I don't stop to six sentences. I don't go to check a fact. I
[09:33] don't try and reread or re-explain something. I don't try to pivot to a completely different idea. Once this has already started, I should already be like, just keep going. Like you're having an entire full point together. I feel like the moment you start editing while you're talking, you kind
[09:48] of lost the advantage of this entire thing, and you're trying to go back and take extra steps that are not necessary. And if you say something wrong, you can say like bracket, or you can say dot dot dot, and one of these apps will actually put that into your thing, and then you can just go back and
[10:01] go to all those points and quickly clean them up at the end of when you shoot. And also, I actually think overshooting here is your friend. Say more than you actually need, and also say a version that it's kind of like too personal
[10:13] because it much easier to turn a 30 brain dump into an eight usable material instead of 8 minutes into a 12 runtime video Like realistically you not going to be able to hit that
[10:25] So I actually built a small piece of software for myself that does one thing. It calculates how many words I need for a given video length. This is just a simple mathematical tool because you speak at a certain cadence, words per minute.
[10:37] and let's say for 14 minutes I need 3,000 words of coverage, then I'm going to try and speak a little bit more than the 3,000. I usually go 20% more. So it goes for 3,600 words of coverage. Nothing sophisticated, it's just really simple math.
[10:50] And in my videos personally, in the final version, you guys actually hear a faster, more cut-up version because I take a lot of the breath takes out, I take some pauses out, I take mouth clicks out. So my videos are actually very dense and very packed with words per minute.
[11:04] And having that extra coverage going in actually means I can aggressively delete during my refining process without running short of my desired runtime because I do have kind of a general framework of how long I want a video to be.
[11:17] And when you finish the dump, you're going to have a few thousand words of messy, repetitive, occasionally incoherent text with some genuinely good ideas buried in it. And some stuff that felt brilliant in the moment but makes no sense on the page. That you're just going to get better with
[11:30] time. And that's exactly what it's supposed to look like actually as well. So if you finish and you think it's a clean version and you're just ready to record, that's cap. I call heavy amounts of cap on you. Being able to talk for one topic or one video title for about 15 to 20 minutes
[11:45] is a massive skill and it's very hard at first. You are going to take pauses. You are going to take breaks and actually thinking about whether what you're saying is coherent or adds value to the video. Trust me, I've done it enough times now to where I still do these things. I'm no
[12:01] professional at this. I've just done it over what 45 videos now but I'm still refining this process. I'm still refining my own voice and how I talk and deliver. So after you have the entire brain dump you are going to want to refine it and this is pretty much going to take your video from 80%
[12:14] complete or your script 80% complete to finishing that final 20% and it's where the massive quality gap between creators really show up because most people just do one pass to be honest I'm kind of guilty of this and decide it's fine and just record it. I do that a lot not gonna lie just
[12:29] because I don't want to overspend time or over optimize because then that will hinder my creation process and I won't be consistent as I am right now. But I pretty much want you to go through the script line by line speaking it out loud and also ask yourself while you're saying it out loud,
[12:43] does this pertain to the video? Does it add actual value? Plenty of sentences are going to be on topic and still pretty worthless to the video. Maybe you've restated what you just said, maybe you're warming up a point like way too long and it's okay if not every single sentence fully
[12:58] delivers. I still keep a lot of extra rambling in my video because it makes you more human. It makes you authentic that way. If I over optimize and over analyze everything I said in my videos, I will sound like a robot. I might even be monotone because you're taking away my authentic
[13:14] language, my slang, my personal jokes, my personal stories, my antidotes. And actually, I may have even went on a massive irrelevant tangent. But sometimes I do keep those because, again, it might add personality into my videos. You kind of just have to keep some of it if it adds taste or if
[13:29] it's tasteful to the video and cut the ones that are absolutely completely off topic or random. And some of the things that I absolutely protect in this brain dump, there are specifics. If it's numbers, if it's like exact paraphrasing of something, even the unplanned, oddly worded
[13:45] lines that kind of just hit me like authentically in the moment are sometimes some of the best moments of the video. You don't want to smooth them out and sound normal because there is no normal. It should just be you. I actually think that's the one edit a lot of people probably
[13:59] over refine and it makes the scripts horrendous. And I know if you've seen a lot of my other videos or even just listening to this video, you know I'm a yapper. I love over explaining things because someone may not have understood it the first time. So I explain it in a different manner. I use
[14:14] different examples. I used to see that as a downfall, but now I actually see that as a buff because if I explain something five different ways, I can reach five different types of people. Your version of that is your superpower as well. And over-refining until the video feels mechanically explained
[14:29] is kind of how you lose that. Yes, I want you to cut rambles and fluffiness you've added, but you want to keep a taste of that tangent because that is you. So that's actually what I do on the first pass. And then I actually do a second pass.
[14:42] Pass two is more reordering and structure because once I got rid of all the junk and all the things I actually don't want in the video, pass two just make sure it actually makes sense in a coherent order and then the third pass is just me reading it out loud the last one isn't optional it's actually you recording it sometimes
[14:57] when I'm recording it I actually do find out that oh maybe I should have actually fixed this I should have done that and sometimes I do go back and do that but a lot of the times I just power through it because I just got to believe in myself to be able to deliver I don't want to spend hours and
[15:10] hours perfecting the script that's at that point never going to see the end of day because you can always keep perfecting. You can always keep refining, and that's an issue. And also, when I reading my script out loud I also let myself deviate If a better phrasing comes out in a live recording session that amazing Because your script is a starting point Yes it already in your language but if you can improve it and say it in a more natural tone or authentic tone especially if something better comes along in the moment
[15:36] you don't want to break that. It's kind of like you entering the flow state when you're recording. And one thing I actually do want you to watch for is massive energy drop-offs in long sessions. So let's say you have like a 20 to 30 minute video. It might take you a long time to record that audio
[15:49] and that's completely fine. That's normal, especially when you're first starting. You're going to get tired because this is a high energy consuming task and there might be peaks and valleys in this. Sometimes you might need to stop, save the Audacity file and come back the next day or
[16:03] just go back in a later session or just take a breather for a second. I do that as well. Sometimes I have a glass of water next to me and that's actually why you hear a lot of mouth clicks in my video. I try and take as many out as possible, which you're supposed to be recording with a dry
[16:16] mouth. I don't really listen to that because I get a dry throat often and I'm sure you guys have heard in my videos if you actually have listened to multiple of them. And there's also one more thing I really want to say, and it's something that actually might cause you to lose some people
[16:29] because it's against all the advice that's already out there. And I don't really care about my hooks on YouTube. I see these as a form of speech because I know what I'm sharing is valuable. My delusional mindset is that if someone clicks off early, they didn't need the thing that I'm
[16:43] sharing or they just don't get to hear the value that I'm spitting. And that's completely fine. That's probably a high level, very high level of delusion. But I think it makes me a better creator because I have a real trust in my content and my ideas.
[16:56] And that trust is what lets me disregard trying to force someone to watch the entire thing. I don't care about the retention curves if my script doesn't fully meet the expectations of somebody or it's not fully optimized. Does it make me a worse creator?
[17:09] Probably. I could refine the hooks. I could over optimize. I could make the video super engaging. But that's not my goal. That goal isn't to trick you into staying. It's to find the people I actually align with. Because that builds a more honest community than trying to hack the algorithm.
[17:25] And this is a piece of advice to the short-form creators out there. If you are watching this and trying to better your scripts for short-form content, I personally would use a variation of this. I would not just take everything I just said and take it to little. Because I actually think the hook is the most important part of a short-form piece of content.
[17:41] So my process could be long form. But this is what I do personally as somebody who makes long-form content first. I don't do short-form content really at all. I made one short-form video on this channel, and I never made another one again.
[17:53] So here's what a lot of my creator friends do. They open up their notes app, they brainstorm a bunch of hooks, and they actually record all of those different variations. And the hook writing process, actually most of their time spent probably, they try and create catchy phrases or really pattern interruption creating hooks.
[18:10] Like, for example, leading with a massive net worth number may stop a scroll, may cause curiosity. And you pair it with a visual hook and sometimes just text on screen even, because when you are trading for short-form content, you have to stop a scroll.
[18:22] But long-form content, you don't really have to do that. We're competing with the suggested bar on the side, yes, but I already have you. You already clicked into my video. You chose to be here. I'm not forcing you to be here. But for short-form content, I feel like it's the other way around.
[18:35] And short-form content is a completely different craft, and it works for a lot of people. And if I was making short-form content personally, I probably wouldn't even script at all. I'd just go off the top of my head at that point until it became second nature.
[18:47] Because I can easily talk for a minute on any topic that I probably cover on this channel. But 20 minutes is the hard part for me, and that's what this process is for. So please, try this on your next video. Let me know how it goes for you.
[18:59] Turn on whatever speech-to-text tool that you desire. Talk for like 25 minutes without stopping, and do not be performative. You go through it line by line. You cut anything that doesn't pertain or add value. And you do it again, you reorder, you tighten the script, then you read out loud and record your session.
[19:14] It's going to be really bad at the beginning. It's going to be a very hard process to get into. I was even really bad at this. I actually honestly kind of just clicked for me, I feel like, more recently. But you can trust me when I'm saying this. I genuinely think this process is much more quicker for me as somebody who is a massive procrastinator,
[19:31] somebody who has a very busy life, who works a nine-to-five, who gets very exhausted easily, who doesn't want to write a script for two hours. I may only want to spend 20 to 30 minutes on it. This is the process that has worked for me. This is what has made me so consistent in this past year,
[19:45] achieving over 50,000 subscribers and less than 50 videos. It might feel ridiculous. It might be really bad at it. It might even take you an hour to do that. That's completely okay. It's just how you get started. So if you enjoyed this video, click the like button,
[19:58] subscribe if you're new and you enjoyed the video. And if you want to join our Discord community, we have over 5,000 people in it actually, a bunch of creators, people that want to talk about personal finances as well. I kind of do both on this channel already.
[20:10] The link's in the description down below. It's a very welcoming community. And if you want to watch this on Spotify while you're commuting or at the gym, we're on there too. Link's in the description. And if you want to support the channel, just a step further, I have like a one-time or a subscription tier at joinearlyexit.com.
[20:24] Either way, you get access to tools, exclusive videos, feedback on your own channel or what you're building. That's completely optional though. My end goal for this entire channel is to just deliver continuous amounts of value. And I'll see you all in the next one.
[20:36] And peace out.