How I Grew from 0 to 250,000 Subscribers in 1 Year (Nobody Teaches This)

[00:02] I just hit 250,000 subscribers on YouTube. 0 to 250K in just 12 months. And here's the honest truth. To do that, I did not follow the conventional along the way, I figured out a bunch of new tactics and strategies that really

[00:16] I'm going to break all of them down. These are my eight biggest non-obvious lessons for growing from 0 to 250,000 telling you, if you want to grow your

[00:28] pay attention. All right, tip number one is about how to structure your videos. so that people get hooked sooner and cannot stop watching. Everybody talks about the idea, title, and thumbnail, but almost nobody focuses on the

[00:42] would say that every video should be heard that before, and this is actually great advice because humans best consume smaller chunks. But knowing your videos should be structured as a list is not

[00:56] super helpful on its own. Here's what is super helpful. There are three list principles that virtually guarantee your videos get watched for longer. So, yes, a set order, but you also have to make sure you do these three things if you

[01:10] want people to stay. The first one is called speed to list. And this one is super tactical. Of all the thousands of videos I've studied, the time it takes to go from intro to your first point matters way more than people think. And

[01:22] the reason is because of speed to value. When a person starts watching a video, imagine an hourglass gets flipped over in their head. This is their attention clock. If that hourglass runs out before you start your first list point, they're

[01:34] going to bounce and you lose. So, here's the tactic. You must start the first point in your list in under 55 seconds. That's just what the data says. If you delay the first point beyond 55 seconds, way fewer people are going to stay.

[01:46] Okay. Now, the second must do in your list is called walk away value. And this one is also very simple, but super important. Your videos will hold viewer attention based on how well you can transfer knowledge that they can

[01:58] teach someone a complex marketing method, but they can't actually figure is really just procrastination in disguise. The more people think they can take your words, apply them on their own, and experience the desired result,

[02:12] the more they're going to stay and keep watching. This is called perceived away and apply what you've shared or first point in your list is framed in a way that they can tactically apply. So,

[02:25] make sure to add enough granular details and tactics that they can walk away and actually use it. That 55 second thing about the list, pure walkway value. Now, ordering. And you're going to love this one. This is pure blackmagic psychology.

[02:39] their hero single listed third in the track list? The first song is usually an intro. The second song is good, but then usually the third song is their hero banger that's going to top all the charts. Have you ever wondered why they

[02:52] psychology. And you're going to want to steal this tactic for when you order your own track list. Here's how it works. The first intro song is like your intro in the video, so no changes needed there. But the second song is like your

[03:04] first point in the list. And remember, the second song is never the hero. So you want your first list point to be your second best piece of information. still novel, still high walkway value, but not your haymaker. Your haymaker

[03:16] should go second on the list, intro, two, and then one. This is so that when the viewer consumes the first two points in your video, it feels like the value is going up from second best to best instead of down from best to second

[03:28] best. When they hear two points in a row with increasing value, they're going to because they feel like the trend will continue. It works every time. So, whatever you think your most valuable point is, put it second in your list.

[03:41] growth is all about bingeability. If you want to grow super fast and rack up you could work on is increasing your that first view to turn into three, five, or even 10 views in a row on your

[03:56] much higher likelihood of turning a stranger into a subscriber, and it will act like gasoline for your channel. The YouTube algorithm loves when these binge sessions happen. So, how do you actually increase bingeability? The first way is

[04:09] to keep your topic coverage super consistent and super narrow. Imagine the circle are a bunch of dots that represent subtopics or interest topics that could be covered. Towards the middle are the topics that are extremely

[04:22] the bullseye. Towards the edges are more niche or experimental topics that some people may love but others might not. The goal is to make more videos in a row about the topics in the center. The more you do this, the more your content will

[04:35] topics in the middle, you already know that your ideal avatar will be interested in them. In a way, they're more validated interest topics. Now, to originality, the topics on the outside of the circle are more

[04:48] compelling. But when it comes to bingeability, broader is not better. The for your core viewer avatar, the more they're going to want to come back and second way to increase bingeability is to increase value density. Value density

[05:03] is the ratio between value and nonvalue in your video. The more fluff, the less value dense it is. If you make videos with extremely high value density, viewers will learn you're a source of non-obvious value and look to see what

[05:15] super value dense, well, they're not going to look to binge them because they Because of this, it's worth taking the extra time in the script writing process to make sure you cut all the fluff and increase the uniqueness of your points.

[05:29] important for bingeability. When I make a video, I actively try for it to be the best one ever made on that topic. This sets an incredibly high bar for value density and drives a lot more binging from new viewers. Now, the last way to

[05:43] drive bingeability is designing what I call a forever loop. This is actually very powerful. At the end of your videos, make a literal statement transitioning from one to another one in your catalog. And then pop up that

[05:56] clickable end card of that video in YouTube. So you might say, "If you like X topic, I recommend you watch this video next because it will help complete the circle." This is like building an intentional ramp from one video to the

[06:09] next. And what you're doing is turning disconnected videos into episodes of a series. It seems silly, but if you rig up your videos in this way, it will create a chain reaction that literally drives the binging from one to the next.

[06:21] systems. And if you're trying to build a business from YouTube like I was, this year, not only did I grow from 0 to 250,000 subscribers, but I also went from zero to over a million in profit from this channel alone. And the main

[06:37] reason I grew so fast and was able to monetize so well was because of the systems I built to make it easier to stay in the game. When I started, my week for a year. But the only way I could feasibly do that and run two

[06:51] 7-figure businesses at the same time was to build a world-class system that workflow. So that's exactly what I did. Instead of listening to the YouTube gurus, I built a better formula from first principles using data and

[07:04] psychology. And this became my YouTube operating system for everything I did. The truth is, I only spend four to five hours per week on this channel. And that's how it's been since day one. Everything else is handled by my systems

[07:16] secret weapon for being able to grow so fast without having to spend 40 hours per week. Now, if you want my YouTube system that's just turnkey, ready to go, And I put everything in there. It's all the docs we use, the checklist,

[07:30] processes, workflows, SOPs for hiring my team, literally everything. What I a business owner trying to do YouTube, you must have a system in place or it's you'll never be able to stay in the game. I couldn't find a system that

[07:43] my own. If you want it, it's below. All right, tip number four is really the mega tip, and this is the foundational bedrock for how I approach YouTube. Nobody teaches this. YouTube is really just one giant game of viewer

[07:56] understand what people are thinking when they're scrolling, clicking, and watching, it becomes a hundred times easier to make winning videos. Now, psychology is a little bit foreign to most people. So, to make it easier for

[08:09] you, I'm going to break down the exact psychological arc that a viewer goes through when deciding which videos to watch. Knowing this alone will help you So, here's exactly what happens. This is the psychology of a viewer. First, the

[08:22] baseline. Viewers walk around with problems they want solved. When they scroll YouTube and they see a title, if that title promises a compelling problems, they're going to click on it. As long as the thumbnail is executed at

[08:35] a high visual quality. In other words, if you tell me you have a solve, I'm long as I don't get spooked that it might be a bait and switch. And that spooking comes from unclear or poor thumbnail design. Now, when they click

[08:48] to be very skeptical initially, especially if they've never seen you they haven't been able to solve this problem before. And so they're video from a stranger actually get me over the hump?" That's the battle going

[09:02] start watching. They're trying to assess if it's going to be worth their time. Your job as soon as the video begins is to diffuse their skepticism and get them to trust you. The whole YouTube game is about trust. If they trust you, they

[09:15] will keep watching. Now, it turns out there are four main trust moments that happen in the first 3 minutes of a YouTube video. I call this the trust YouTube, you need to get the viewer through all four of these stages and

[09:28] you. Now, here's how the trust ladder plays out. The first stage is called crowd verification. And the truth is, could have, but not everybody's going to have it. If you have a large number of

[09:41] subscribers or huge views on the video already, well, this is a massive trust get someone to trust you because most people outsource their trust verification to the crowd. We all do it. You click a video, you look down, you

[09:54] see how many subs or views it has, you trust it, and you look back up. It's just how it goes. This is why big channels continue to get bigger, even if their content gets worse. It's from the same group think logic as the, "Well, if

[10:06] Now, I already hear the groans in the nosebleleeds. I'm a beginner. I only many views. I know. I'm just laying out the milestones for where trust gets acred. If you don't have high views or high subs, it doesn't mean your video is

[10:20] that much more pressure on the next three stages. Now, the second trust acrual moment happens in the intro, and this is called proof signaling. If you views, then you need to communicate relevant proof as soon as possible.

[10:34] Proof is you stating or showing that you have legitimate results in solving whatever problem you're talking about. The bigger the results, the better. The more atypical the results, the better. It is so much easier to grow on YouTube

[10:46] when you actually have the proof to support what you're saying. Go figure. might not be enough to get them to trust you for the whole video because proof about it. How many times have you clicked on a video where someone

[10:59] signaled an insane proof stat, but you look down and the video had like 400 a few minutes, but you're not going to default trust them for the entire thing. So once you signal proof, you have to then rapidly show that you also have the

[11:12] sauce on top of that proof. And that's where we get into steps three and four. the 60-second mark. This is called the first dopamine hit. After you finish the intro, you want to race to get the viewer their first hit of non-obvious

[11:25] value as soon as possible. You're literally racing against their boredom. Now, the sooner you can shock them by revealing some non-obvious insight, the the more they'll trust you. Because people trust others that tell them

[11:38] strong reason to believe are true. So the faster you deliver one of these hits, the more likely you are to earn yourself another 60 seconds of attention. The final trust step is step number four. This is the second dopamine

[11:50] you have to do is deliver a second hit of non-obvious value and they will be video. Because one golden nugget is a fluke, but two golden nuggets is a non-obvious insight machine, they're

[12:04] the funnel. And this is why to bring it together, you should structure your list using the album strategy. Second, best point first, best point second. If you prove the pattern of value is ascending, their brain literally cannot stop

[12:17] watching. Now, the entire game of YouTube really boils down to how fast stages. For example, if you're watching this video to this point, you already trust me. So, if we think about exactly what I did to build that trust in you.

[12:30] And depending on when you're watching this video, it probably already has tens of thousands of views. So, crowd verification check number one. Second, there's not much more I could have done than say I went from 0 to 250,000

[12:44] subscribers in year 1. You then probably looked down and saw that I had 315,000 subscribers, which implied I grew a lot in the last few months. Check number two. Then I hit you with the three-point rapidfire non-obvious value about lists.

[12:57] Speed to list in 55 seconds, the point about walk away value, and then the 213 album strategy. And that all came in the first 90 seconds. Check, check, check. non-obvious pieces about bingeability. Check number four. And for good measure,

[13:11] reiterated that I went from 0 to a million dollars in profit in my first 12 months. Check made. All of that was intentional. Every word, every sentence. really wanted to prove how powerful this trust psychology really is. The whole

[13:26] goal of YouTube is hammering trust and then controlling the flow of information to maximally want someone to keep watching. This is the psychology of really is the most important thing. But I had to bury it 15 minutes in so I

[13:39] could set up that example. If you master this this one thing, you will grow All right, tip number five is about time allocation. Specifically, how much time do you spend working on which parts of the video? Now, this is a typical

[13:52] Immediate decay in the first 30 seconds really means is that the seconds at the beginning of the video are worth way more than the seconds at the end. Think of the intro like beachfront property

[14:05] and the end like rural farmland in the middle of nowhere. Shout out to farmers. true, the intro is worth more than the end, they apply work on the video they end with the outro, and they apply effort fairly even throughout the entire

[14:20] video. This makes no sense. You could argue that you should spend over 50% of your work time on the idea, title, packaging, and the first 2 minutes. Also, to build on this point, most people record their intros first and

[14:32] write their intros first, both when they're coldest in the creative process. Not optimal. You want to write, record, and edit your intros when you're in peak at least is to start out by brain dumping the outline for the body of the

[14:45] script. And then once I'm warmed up, I go back and spend a lot of time on the improve without having to spend any incremental time, just shift more of your time towards the early part of the video and it will pay outsized returns.

[14:58] And this brings us to tip number six, the intro itself. The intros of videos are so much more important than people realize. And the good news is for YouTube, all you have to do is follow the core five-step intro framework and

[15:10] you'll win every single time. The five steps are context, relevance, contrast, these five things in your intro, you should be golden. The first piece is is actually going to be about. This

[15:24] expectation almost immediately. People will not opt in to staying for the video if they're unclear on what the topic is. The second piece is relevance or stakes. You have to remind the viewer why the topic or promise discussed in the video

[15:38] maps back to the overall thing that they're trying to solve. When you do this, it amplifies the stakes in their mind for why they should keep watching. The third piece is contrast. All curiosity comes from contrast. And

[15:50] between what they already believe and some new reality you're proposing. So in the intro, you want to have some frame around their common beliefs to get them alternative could be. The fourth piece of the intro is proof. And we already

[16:04] talked about proof a little bit earlier. What proof do you have in validating true? The more proof, the better, because this helps derisk the perceived time investment that the viewer is making in the information. The fifth and

[16:17] final piece is the plan. What is the framework or plan you're going to use to The plan helps connect the intro to the body and again to come full circle is communicated as a list. These are the five core components you must hit in the

[16:30] intro to keep the viewer interested and want to watch. If you don't do this, pretty simple. Now, if you want a deeper dive into how to actually write these full script structure for the body, that's included in the script writing

[16:44] below. And again, you can probably tell I have this stuff dialed down to a science. All right, tip number seven is called native embeds. And this is what CTAs or call to actions. The goal of a YouTube video, obviously, is to keep

[16:58] someone watching. To make this happen, all you have to do is drop them into a on the video, but they're kind of like unaware of the world around them. Once you get a viewer into this hypnosis state, you win. And all you have to do

[17:11] is not break the hypnosis. Now, there are all sorts of helpful psychology tricks you can use to get viewers into that hypnotic state faster. If you guys and I'll know and I'll make a video in the future. But the biggest mistake I

[17:24] see, this huge mistake is that people break the hypnosis state by running disconnected ads or random CTAs that have nothing to do with the video. Quite simply, this is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. Instead, I recommend

[17:37] using native embeds as your CTAs. Native embeds are natural value ramps that talking about. So instead of making a randomly interrupting about an unrelated Squarespace ad, you make a video about

[17:51] something like, "Oh, if you want to get a template where I made that framework a lot easier to digest, it's at the link below." This is called a native embed. It's a smoother ramp that is non-hypnosis breaking and it still gets

[18:04] These are the single biggest hack when it comes from transitioning people from YouTube off platform to your own products and services without ruining the video metrics. And this is how I've driven over a 100,000 ontarget emails of

[18:18] seamlessly. I call these buyer activation flows, the exact ramps to use email. And again, those are all broken down in templates in the systems linked breaking point, cuz I'm so passionate about this, one more thing you shouldn't

[18:34] do is ask people to subscribe to your channel in the first 60 seconds of a video. Stop asking people to subscribe in the first 60 seconds. This makes no sense. Why would they subscribe before knowing what the video is about, if it's

[18:46] going to be valuable, and who you are. One of the worst things you can do to anyone is to ask before you give. Imagine going to buy a car and before guy's like, "Okay, can you just sign this letter of intent to buy the car?"

[18:58] yet. That's basically what you're doing when you're asking people to subscribe in the first 30 seconds. And here's the data that will prove that to you. 7.4% of the time when I get a unique viewer on my channel, they hit subscribe.

[19:11] That's 1 in4 people. For reference, YouTube advertises that an average channel has 5% conversion. Good channels are around 1.5% and elite channels are at 2%. Mine's at 7.4. What this means that my channel is one of the best at

[19:25] subscriber. And guess what? I never asked them to subscribe. But how could this be? It's because people know to subscribe if the value is good. Your hypnotic state and then never break it

[19:38] tip number eight is the final tip, and that is in order to win on YouTube, you must close the skill gap. The reason YouTube is so hard and why so many people fail is that there's just so many little micro skills you have to master.

[19:51] I call these known unknowns. You know, you have to learn titles, editing, thumbnails, but you just don't know how. On top of that, there's also a bunch of unknown things that you didn't know you had to learn, but realized pretty

[20:03] unknowns. And the only way to reveal those is to actually get into the videos yourself. So, you've got all these known unknowns and then all these has a surprisingly large amount of both categories. And so, the reason it's so

[20:17] zero, figure out how to close the gap on these, and then also figure out what these are, and then close the gap on those. There's just a lot to do. And so the big question is what is the easiest way to close the gap on both of these?

[20:30] And the truth is the easiest way is to have a full system, a road map, a blueprint, whatever you call it, laying out the step by step for what these are. And ideally having an A player team who have already figured out all of them. I

[20:43] started, but I just didn't. And so that's why I built the full system. I want to make it easier for you. There's so much ground to cover, so many unknown lays it out for you. Now, the system I

[20:56] specifically for business owners who don't have dozens of hours per week to spend on YouTube and just needs the full thing built out. It has everything. What to do, how to do it, why to do it, when to do it, and access to my specific

[21:09] expert team of a players to do it for you. If you want to make YouTube 100 linked below. All right, guys. That is all I've got for this video. As a recap, we covered the eight most non-obvious lessons for growing from 0 to 250,000

[21:22] subscribers and zero to over a million dollars in profit in my first year on is to try to climb this mountain on your own. That's why I packaged everything up. If you want it, it's below. If you don't want it, no worries at all. As

[21:35] best to give you the non-obvious stuff so that you can grow your content faster. If you're a business owner, this is the best channel for you, hands down. one. We will see you guys on the next one. Peace.