Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: I'm here with Jeff Elkins. He just said something like, maybe I should do something with YouTube. Maybe I should maybe end. Because I, I. So you don't. You don't know me as much, but I'm saying the exact same thing right now. Maybe I should do something with YouTube. That's where we are.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: It feels like a really powerful channel that, like, oh, I like. This should be working better than it is, if that makes sense.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Hey, welcome.
We are Jeff Elkins here, who I've. I've known now eight minutes total, which is awesome. We go way back.
We go back to, you know, noon on Wednesday.
Yeah.
And I love already our unrecorded eight minutes, which is why I already hit record because we were already saying some good stuff. I'm like, we just got to hit record.
So what are we doing today? We are doing Jeff is a nonfiction author as well as a fiction author, as am I not. I'm mostly, mostly nonfiction.
Then it's some fiction. I am moving, like, not so slowly, actually, over to YouTube and more speaking and presenting and more video audio.
Jeff also does a podcast. Want to talk about that as well? And then we're talking, like, how does YouTube fit into this mix? So another. The reason we connected is that we are both presenting at Author Nation, which is the largest writers conference in the world, as far as I know, in November 2026 in. In beautiful downtown Las Vegas.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Have you been before?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Okay. This is my first time. I've never.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Yeah, I presented last year. I also, My presentation was also YouTube for authors, and I'm doing that again. I'm doing sort of like a 101 and a 301, like a Basics YouTube stuff for authors and then more advanced, like digging deeper. YouTube for authors. And what are you. What are you presenting on?
I'm.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: I am a craft focused presenter. So I'm talking about character voice and characterization and how to, like, create unique and dynamic character voices.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: So when you say, when you say voice, I always think that's such an interesting word, voice. It's not, is it? Is it just the words? Is it. How is it the character is.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: It's a great question because it's one of those words we use, but we don't actually know what it means.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: So you have your. Like, the reader wants to engage deeply with the characters, with the characters on the page. Right. Like, and what the reason readers come to your work is for the character's journey.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Like, they want the reader Takes an emotional journey with this character.
So the question is, like, how do you. What's the reader's primary way of getting to know your character?
And that's. And getting to understand your character's personality and how your character's changing and all of that. And as authors, like, if we were creating movies or comic books or whatever, we'd have all these different tools. We'd have, like, visual tools, we'd have audio tools. As others, we literally just have the words on the page. So how do you. The character voices, how those words on the page display and ignite your reader's imagination to align with your imagination so that they're seeing the same character you're seeing? So we break vo. I break voice down. Yeah, you have kind of five components. You've got the.
Sorry, my screen just flashed out there and I was like, oh, he disappeared. But you're back. You have the words they use, the topics they talk about, the body language that they do, the syntax of their sentences and then their pacing, like how often they come in and out of inner thought, how often they participate in a conversation of three or more. And we can use those five things to kind of craft a dynamic character voice and to make sure each of our characters sound different from each other and to, like, ignite the reader's imagination the way we want to. So, yeah, I get real technical and nerdy with.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: No, I love doing that.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That is so cool. I've never heard all that in such depth.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fun. And that's what I've been for. I've been doing that for the Dialogue Doctor. I've been doing that for about five years. So.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: And for me, it's about.
We're moving into this new age of technology and how things are changing in the world. And they tell us all the time, like, be the most human you can be, but they never tell us what that means.
They just say that and then they like, go about their day.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Figure that out.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, now go figure that out. So for me, it means mastering your tools and understanding what to do with your tools. So you can take what's in your imagination and actually sculpt something with the words that portrays your humanity in a new way. And so that's what. That's what the Dialogue Doctor is all about, is I build tools, craft based tools that help people craft fiction in the way they want to.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: And it's a lot of fun. I work with a ton of people. It's great.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: You know, it's so interesting because as I said, I've been moving. I've been going more sort of speaking, presenting, right? And I'm a. I'm a speaker coach, presenter coach, right? So I help you better on stage and as an author, right, I know when you just have the words. You just have the words and then you say, oh, you have to cover this and that and their body language and the syntax and all this. I'm like, oh. Whereas, like, I was given a presentation last week where I literally said, I stood, like, I'm present, you know, live, right? And I say, this is the best day of my life. I am so excited right now. I. I can't wait until tomorrow because tomorrow is going to be even better. I swear. I am overjoyed and ecstatic. Right?
No, the monotone, the staccato is all wrong. I'm standing still. I have no facial expressions, but I get to do it all with my body. And you've got to do it all with just the words on a page.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: But it's the same act. I was actually. So this is something I don't talk about a lot, but in a different life.
Before I became a writer, I was actually a preacher and would do a ton of public speaking. And again, that's a different life, a different world. But what I learned in seminary was that when you stand up to give a speech, you're taking the group you're speaking to on an emotional journey.
And that's all storytelling. This is you're taking people on an emotional journey. And so the. This. The art is the same, right? Like, giving a speech, writing a book, making a movie, you're crafting this emotional journey. You just have a different set of tools. And so, like, it's kind of like understanding your tools. But, yeah, it's the. It's this like. Like, you're talking about with, like, getting up and speaking and talking in a way that doesn't really take that emotional journey. Nobody ever gives a speech in which they're like, you know what I want to do? I want to bore the crap out of everybody here, right? Like, nobody does that. Nobody's like, you know what I do? I want to fail to connect. And I want this to be a bomb.
Everybody wants. And it's the same with authors. All authors want to have that emotional connection with the readers that gets the reader super excited about the story. They're on this journey, they're on with the characters. And often, like, you're talking about. It's most of the time A lack of knowledge of tools, of, like, how do you use, use. What are the tools I have and
[00:07:22] Speaker A: how do I. Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Because everywhere you. Whatever art you're practicing, you have a limited number of tools, right? So it's like, yeah, right. Sorry.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: I get ranty, man.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: You gotta cut me off because I'll just start ranting. You're gonna be like, jeff, stop. Yeah.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: No, but I love it. The tools. Like the tools you have as a writer.
It's so interesting now with the. More speaking in stage and all the. There are so many.
I don't know. I don't know if it's. Well, you do have more tools, right? I have audio. I have physical body movement. I have audience interaction, live, if it's live. Whereas book. I mean, I'm an author too. Book is word on page, typed letters on paper.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: That's is nice. Like, the. The advantage writers have over other forms of media is that it's. There is an isolation and intimacy where. With the consumer of our story that other medias don't have. Like, Robert McKee talks about this in his book Dialogue in that we have a direct. An author has a direct line to the imagination of the reader, so that, like, what we say goes directly into the reader's brain and then is fueled into their. Filtered into their imagination. Whereas, like, when you're speaking, there's a lot happening and there's their preconceived notion of how you look and their judgments of how you look. There's the. Like, you're using slides, and those slides might have been made by somebody else or, like, might have been made by you, but then you're limited by, like, what you're doing with those slides. And, like, the more tools you pile in, the more separated you get from the consumer of the story's imagination.
And what's nice about being a writer is that you. You get that direct. It is a pure line, right? Like, to the reader. And I. I think more than any other medium, it is that direct.
It has that direct line that other. Other forms. Like, you know, if you're making a movie, there's like a hundred people involved, right? So you as the creator, don't have that same direct line if you're making, like, even when I'm, like, I'm making a podcast, there's my voice. There's usually somebody else on there with me. There's, you know, different audio things I'm using. It's still not the direct hard line that I have as a writer where it's just like me, the words. Those words create a bridge to the reader, and it makes it ignites them.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: So I think it's a special art.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: That's one of the reasons I love it, is because I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. Really attack these Peters.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Okay. I'm gonna go back to childhood, and the first book I think I ever read where I was sort of.
It's a light bulb moment for me, probably why I wanted to become an author at some point, but it was Jaws by Peter Benchley. I remember it so clearly. Okay. And I'm reading Jaws. Reading the book, right?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: And it was the first time that I can remember anyway, where I'm reading the book, and it was almost like a magical moment. Like, wait a minute, wait a minute. That I have a visual in my head, but I'm just reading these words. How did that happen? I mean, I'm a kid, right? It's a new phenomenon. I mean, you know what's going on here?
How did that get into my head? How did I see whatever. The ocean and the shark and the boat or whatever in my head that
[00:10:38] Speaker B: was like, yeah, that's incredible. I love that you have that. Yeah. And I, I, I.
That's one of the reasons I love to read is I love going on this, like, journey with somebody that takes me. Like, I just read. So I started the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Have you read those?
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Nope. Those are crazy.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: I started those two weeks ago, and I've plowed through. I'm on book five in two weeks. It' and I. I love them, but the, the emotional journey of the character is so fun and wacky and, like, crazy and weird and loud, and you just love sitting in that, like, it's, like, transported to another world.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One more sort of analogy I like is, is I'm not a diver, but I snorkel. I like snorkeling. And what I like about snorkeling is you're right there on the edge of the water. Right. And if you just dunk your head down under, it's a. It's an entirely other world. You know, it sounds different.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: You got the bubbles illustration. Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: And then. Then you got the fish, and it's a whole. It's a whole other world. And then it's above water. Oh, yeah. Back to sun and sky and people.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: And that's a fantastic illustration. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: I love it. All right, okay, so let's talk YouTube a little bit. So what do you, what do you. Because that as. As we've been saying I'm presenting on YouTube in November. And so what I'm doing here is I want to gather just experiences, whether, you know, bad or good or success or not, or it's just like, what are you doing?
And, yeah, what do you. What do you plan? This is the before picture.
By November.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: You can hold. You can like, I'll come to your session and be like, hey, it works.
Yeah.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Whatever you do, don't do this.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. You could put my channel up and be like, let's look at this disaster.
Yeah, what do I do on YouTube? I started off on YouTube, so I do a podcast every Monday.
The podcast varies between two things.
Sometimes I'm on camera with an author editing live with them.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: So, like, about dialogue, you're talking about
[00:12:48] Speaker B: dialogue, craft dialogue, characterization, character growth. Like, all the things. Like, we really. We edit for, like, the emotional journey. It's like, how are we. How do we do this emotional journey?
[00:12:56] Speaker A: So, like, life, like, let's look at the page and read it.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: We pull up the page and this is part of the problem is I don't know if this is actually good for YouTube or for anything, but I think so.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: I'm fascinating.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: So I just did episode 331.
Yeah. So I sit with an author.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Hold on. Just. Just for those watching 330 episodes, you know that. That is 320 episodes more than most podcasts ever achieve, right? Because most podcasts never get to 10.
They never get to 10 episodes.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: That's pretty funny.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: So there you go.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: No, I've been. I've been doing it. Yeah, it's. It's. Consistency is not my problem.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Right. Me either.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Quality.
But quality, like, you know, intentionality, those are issues.
Yeah. So that's every other episode, right? Now, I used to do that for every episode, and then I started to kind of flavoring in other stuff, but that's every other episode. And then on the off episodes, I have kind of a rolling cast of friends that come on.
So, like, once a quarter, there's an editor named Tom Holbrook. He and I come on and have time with Tom where we talk about stuff. There's one of my dialogue doctor coaches because I've got two other people that coach with me. One of them comes on once a quarter JP and we look at a craft book. So I have, like, every other episode, I have a rolling.
Like, I actually got it from the novel. This is weird, but do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which is the Blade Runner novel.
There's a TV show in the background of that novel where it runs 24 7, and it's just one guy doing a talk show. And he has on, like, every hour he brings on a different returning character. They're like, there's, like, this set of characters that come on. I was like, oh, that's. I could do that with the podcast. So, like, two years ago, I was like, I want to start just bringing somebody on once a quarter. There's a woman named Lindsey Hughes who's the pitch master. She come on once a quarter, she takes pitches from the community, and then she, like, works through those pitches.
Yeah. So it's fun. I have a really good. The thing that makes 300 episodes possible is I have a really good time doing it. It's a lot of fun.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I'm. I'm. I'm fine right now. I'm learning. I'm learning stuff. We're having a chat, having a laugh. Right.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: So that goes up every Monday morning at 6am and then I take it and I cut it into shorts. I used to.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: It's okay if I share your screen, right? I'm going to share your.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Or do you. If you want me to share my screen, I'm happy to, too. If you want to look at the dashboard rather than the actual, like, channel.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah.
Well, you know what? One second. Because I'm a visitor, so I'm going to see things differently. Let's just look at.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Because immediately you're seeing different things that I have on mine.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So I bring that.
Oh, so then I cut it up. I use Opus Pro.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yep, me too.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Cut the episode into shorts.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: And then I post those. I schedule those shorts. Like, when I finish an episode, I'll sit down and schedule, like 20 shorts. And I usually have two shorts going a day.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: I used to spend a lot of time cutting those.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Me, too.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: And then I stopped.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: I no longer do. I stopped too.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: I was just like, you know what?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: It's just so time consuming.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And so now I'm just like, I'm just going to trust the AI to be like, hey, this is good. Yeah.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: So. And I think I get, like, I'll get like a new subscriber once a week maybe things get a couple likes here, there.
You know, videos get like, anywhere from 40 to. I think in the life of a video.
I can pull up my stats. I think this is not. YouTube is not where people engage with my content.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Okay. And where do they do that mostly
[00:17:02] Speaker B: on Spotify and Apple podcasts? I think that's because that's how I started, because I started as an audio podcast.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: So that's when they engage most with me.
But podcast has gone through a weird transition because it's much harder to get traction in podcasting now than it used to be.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So an episode in the first week on YouTube, an episode will get about 20ish views in a week. Whereas, like, in the first week of a podcast, I get like 200 listens.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: And then the first 90 days of a podcast, you know, I think my YouTube videos will go up to like 40 to 50. I don't know. I've never actually looked at what my most watched videos are, but they'll go up to like 40 or 50.
Whereas in like the audio, I can hit 500 to 600 in the first 90 days.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: So.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where it is.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
So you can see my screen, right?
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I can. Yeah.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: So I use a. I don't even have the pro version, but I use Vidiq because it's kind of fun and show some stats and stuff. Right. And see some basics. Yeah, I get some. Like, your keywords should come up here.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Do I have keywords? No, I do have keywords. Look at that.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: So you'll get like lifetime views and number of videos. See, you're right. You're not kidding. I also. You're not suffering from content creation. I'm the same. I just. I'm a machine.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah. There's.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: There's.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: I do a lot.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: It's the right stuff.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: This is so interesting. I've never looked at these stats before.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah, they're. They're fun. They're good. I mean, you can get more behind the scenes. This is just what, you know, is publicly available for if somebody using like a. Like a Vidiq here, which is even free, but.
Okay, so then what's interesting is like, for you, that's like, for me, for Bradley. Right. Why it's showing me. YouTube algorithm is telling me, Bradley, this is what I want to see on your site. That's always interesting, too.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: This one looks like the most recent one, I guess, right?
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the one that posted on Monday.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And because then this one's interesting, but then you get seven months ago. But that's. See this three times three. It's outperforming the channel's average. Right. So it's going to give me your latest one and it's going to give me a popular one.
So the Hidden Tools of Comedy. Right? I mean, that's already a catchy, catchy phrase there. The Hidden Tools of Comedy. That's. And you have a book just with
[00:19:36] Speaker B: J.P. yeah, that's us diagnosing somebody else's book.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Okay, that's cool.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: We're like, talking about. It's a book that's supposed to teach you to write. So we're like, breaking it down and like, reflecting on it.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting to see which ones get, get more, you know, I, I, so I watch a lot of YouTube stuff, like how to do YouTube stuff. And, and they're so, you know, they talk about the thumbnails endlessly and, and the text and the like, like here, like, if I just sort of close my eyes and then I quickly look, like, what do I see? I see that one. It says any second now.
Right. Because the text is bigger, it's bolder, it's a nice clean image. Any second now. Although I don't know what it means.
Yeah, right. Any second now.
It's going to rain. Any second now. I don't know what's going to happen any second now. But, but interesting.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: What's the, what's the. I've never even thought about the thumbnails. What's the, like, logic behind the thumbnails? What do.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: So it's very much like the writing world. Although I think you said, did you say earlier you don't really advertise your books or do you?
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Starting.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: I've read 10 years on it.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, okay, so I was, when I started writing, I was really, really poor.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Like, really poor.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: And so I, I didn't have any money to play. And this was like 10 years ago.
And so I just, I've been just kind of slow, organically building things. And now it's built to the place where it's like, okay, I've got money to play with for advertising. I'm trying to figure out where to be effective. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, but. So, sorry, what was.
You were talking about thumbnails?
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Well, because you were saying thumbnails. So it's very similar to the book purchase process. Right. Same thing with, like, you got the carousel on Amazon or whatever, bookstore, and then you got thumbnail. So the thumbnail is the very first thing they're going to see. And that's going to, is all these decision trees. Right. Is the thumbnail worth clicking on? Yes. Click. Then you, you get things like the title of the book, or in the YouTube case, the title of the EP video.
Is that. Is that worth clicking on? Click.
And then maybe there would be, like, the subtitle or the description, but probably not. Probably just click, start watching, and then this is the killer. That's more the case with video than books.
Video, you know, they talk about the goldfish, you know, attention span or whatever, but can you get me in the first 6 seconds or 20 seconds or whatever? Am I at all interested in what you're talking about? Do you have any kind of hook? I mean, it's very book like, right? It's very storytelling. Is there a hook? Is it interesting? Is it for me, is it appropriate for the time where I need this thing?
Because here, if I just glance at this.
So I think these editing sessions. So these are live editing dialogue. Dr. Coaches work with authors on their works in progress. Like, ooh, that's kind of cool, right? For me as an author, I think, oh, oh, I want to. I want to see. I want to see how that works.
So that's really interesting. So then if I were just browsing your site.
Okay. If you want me, if you want my feedback, please.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: That's why I'm here, man.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. That's why we're here.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: You're not going to hurt my feelings, I promise. I think about it worse than you do.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Okay, so this is a. This is a.
This is a nitpick, but, like your title. 1, 2, 3, 8, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You have, like, 14 characters that say episode 329.
Right. And that's the first thing I see. The only thing it does for me is show. It proves to me that you're not on episode four. Right. You've been around. Okay, that's great. But it's not that important to me. And you're taking up a lot of title space with those two episodes. A long word, relatively. Right. Because here. Creating a satisfying ending for your.
So for your what? I want to know what it is, but I can't see it because we're taking up the text with episode 330.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: And then there's just like a book again. The COVID can do one job and the title can do another job. So you could.
The recommended strategy is have your title, like, here. Okay. Writing Teenage Voices. Okay, that's cool.
That tells me a lot. It's. It's how to Write Teenage Voices with Laura. Okay, fine.
And. But then in your thumbnail, you're repeating the same title, whereas the thumbnail could be used for a more like, hooky thing.
Right. And so, and. And again, remember the one that I. My eyes just focused on?
It was that one that said any second now. Right. Just because it was big.
And so the text is kind of small.
I mean, I'm on a massive screen. I can read it fine. But it's this. Your thumbnail text is the same as your title text, so you're kind of wasting an opportunity to get a message across. Right. And then the thumbnail text, like, again, any second now is just the one that pops out. Right. Clearly. Because it's. I mean, it's. It's actually. It also looks like a well designed image. Right?
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's cool.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: But it. Any second message. And then there's a timer and a typewriter, but I still don't know what it's about. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. But it's pretty intriguing and I think. Oh, it's. It's kind of. I'm curious, but I'm probably not that curious to click because I'm like, any second now. What?
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Gotcha.
I never even thought about using these things as. As hooks or.
It didn't occur to me. What you're doing is looking at it from the perspective of somebody coming to this, which is a weird thing to say, but it's never actually occurred to me.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: I get it. I get it. Yeah.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: I'm like, yeah, it's episode 331. That's the episode we're doing. That's what we're doing here. Yeah. So it didn't occur to me that, like. No, no, people don't care that it's episode 331. They care what they're gonna get out of it. That's it. That's a.
Nor did I think about separating the thumbnail and the title. I started doing these thumbnails with, like, the. The words on them earlier this year because it kept giving me thumbnails where I was in weird facial positions.
And I was like, I don't like that.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Because it'd be like me being like, no, like. So I was like, I don't want to do that.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: What I do, like about the second one, episode 330, is that. Oh, now I know a little more. Oh, you're having a live conversation with that woman.
Oh, okay. That's interesting. And it's an hour long and so.
And because I'm in the section. Oh, I thought I was in the section. Editing sessions.
Oh, well, it's also in the editing sessions, so in the editing sessions. If I'm interested in dialogue or editing or whatever.
Whoa.
You're the dialogue doctor. And you're gonna help fix or work on her dialogue and a satisfying ending. See that one? I even want to know, create a satisfying ending. What is that? Satisfying ending for what?
For your reader. Okay. With Carol Painter. Okay.
And then here we've got.
Okay, then we've got your description. And of course, as I'm sure you could figure out, we could talk for hours and hours and hours of how to fix every little tiny thing.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: I'm learning so much. This is fantastic. So the more you talk, the better.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: So just again, if you think the newcomer in this episode, Jeff, sits down with Carol Painter to talk about the end of her book. Okay, but I already don't need it in this episode. I know it's in this episode. That's the one I'm clicked on. I'm watching that. Jeff sits down with awful Carol Painter.
So you could. I mean, there's all different strategies here, but you could get with the curiosity gap.
Speaking of Author Nation, last year at Author Nation, there's a guy, Drew Davis, and two years ago, he did a presentation called the Curiosity Gap.
And if you look up Drew Davis on YouTube, in fact, I'll try to remember to put the link in here. Drew Davis on YouTube, Curiosity Gap. It's such an awesome presentation. Speaking of presenters and professional presenters, he is fantastic.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: And so what he talks about is a curiosity gap. So I want to pique your curiosity here and then. And the answer then. So I'm going to pique your curiosity. I'm going to ask a question, or I'm going to tease you, or I'm going to tell you something's coming and you want to know what that answer is. Right? It's like you have a problem and I want to solve it. And then how long can you string me along that I'm still paying attention to get the answer?
And so here, like, the question is, okay, what is the. What is the problem Carol Painter is having? Right. Talk about the end of her book. Okay, but what's the problem?
Using. Using here, here you're telling us how to do it. Repeated scenes, character change, voice modulation. Okay.
Maintaining character agency, End of the story, building this, doing that.
Okay. So I have to. I have to work pretty hard to find the problem. I think the problem is how to write a satisfying ending for your reader.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: So what's the problem?
I don't know how to write a satisfying ending or my saddest My endings suck or my endings are not sad or whatever. So what's the problem?
And we want to clearly state, you know, who's our. We get the whole hero's journey, right? Who's the. The hero has a problem. Along comes a guide who has a plan with a call to action to avoid failure and achieve success.
Right. The seven steps of. In any case, Donald Miller story, brand version of hero's journey. And so here the hero.
The hero is probably the writer, right? Because the hero is not you. You're not the hero. Jeff here is the guide. So the hero doesn't know how to make a satisfying ending to the book.
That's my hero. So the hero is the. Is the writer who's looking to watch this video.
And along comes Jeff, who has a plan. And here's the plan. The plan is using repeated scenes, showing character chains, maintaining character agency, all these things.
And then what's your call to action?
Your call to action could be. Watch this video to learn how we do it.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: And then if I. If I complete the seven steps, avoid failure. What is failure? You look. What does failure look like? Failure looks like a not satisfying ending. Or we could even squeeze that even more and say, I don't know, super boring ending or a cliffhanger. Oh, I definitely don't want to do a cliffhanger. That's the worst thing ever. Like, what does failure look like? If you. I'm putting it kind of bluntly, like a blunt sales pitch here, but if you don't. If you don't hire Jeff to, you know, doctor your dialogue, this might happen to you.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Your endings are going to be boring or whatever, right? Yeah. And then finally, one last thing. And then success.
What does success look like? And so satisfying ending, I mean, that's. That's good. It's. It. It could be punchier. Maybe you're like, what. What is the. What is the emotion that the reader gets with a satisfying ending? Gotcha. Happy or joyful? Or maybe satisfying ending is fine. And maybe that's. Maybe that's a term in your world that people would understand, like, you know, happy ever after or whatever. Satisfying ending.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Anyway.
Yes, go ahead.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Can I repeat back to you what I just heard you say and kind of put it. So this video right now, I have, you know, episode 330, creating a satisfying ending for your reader, but when you look at the. At the, like, thumbnail, you're not really seeing any of that.
And then the title, I'm wasting a ton of space And I'm doing the same thing in the title and the video. So I need to think of this more as, like, a sales pitch for somebody to watch it.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: So the video, like, the screen of the video might have a picture of, like, me and Carol talking. So, you know, it's happening and then like, big words across the top that are like, you know, writing endings to books is hard.
Yeah. And then the title would be something like, how to create a satisfying ending for your reader.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: And then in the description, I need to be actually writing more sales copy and not just the, like, what is now just like a third together. Like, this is what it is.
I need to be writing more of a, like, sales copy of, like, you know, writing. You know, you've written this, you've worked really hard on this book. It's been this amazing journey for you, but now you're to the end and you have to bring all of these threads together.
You know, how do you do that? In this video? I'm going to help you understand how to create and do the whole, like, Donald Millie story brand.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Am I getting that right?
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so this is kind of fun. I think what you're doing here is super cool.
No, it's great. So I think this part right here is this for me. This is. Oh, wow. I mean, you're just. You're giving away the farm here. You are showing over your shoulders, you, the dialogue doctor, helping this author live.
Let's work on your book. If I were an author, I'm like, I want that. I want to hire that guy.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: That's the goal, is that you watch the. You listen to the podcast or watch the video. You're like, crap. I want coaching from Jeff, too.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Wow.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Okay, so.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: So I'm doing this all wrong.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: And I have been for 331 plus hours.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: No. Okay, so I'm gonna. I am gonna fully correct you there because I'm very much like you. I am very much, you know, Ready, aim, fire. I am much more. Fire, aim, ready. Right. Yeah, I just. I just do it. I've been doing. I've been doing my YouTube for. For years. I'm just. I feel like literally this year. I gave a presentation last year called YouTube for authors, but I feel like this year I'm like, oh, maybe I should take this seriously. Maybe. Maybe I should do something with this.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: So. So what I see here as the real juicy bits is the fact that you are live helping an author.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: With, you know, the problem and solve it. And you're the guide and you have a plan, and here's your call to action and all that, and avoid failure and achieve success. And that's what you're doing. You're doing it live right here. I mean, this could almost be. Be behind a paid firewall, really. Right. This is juicy stuff.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. I really am, like. So just to pause for a second and say, like, I really am honored by the fact that authors do this with me.
It's tough to put your unedited work in public.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: It's embarrassing. Yes, yes.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: But I have authors who are like, no, I will spend an hour and a half with you to do this with you. So I'm. I'm really honored by the fact that they do it with me because it's. It is a. It is a very vulnerable thing.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Yes, for sure.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: And that's. It's also kind of interesting. I mean, that's even an interesting little angle there. Like, hey, this author is, you know, bleeding her heart on the page, and we're gonna go dig through it, you know, Join us.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Well, you're not kidding. You. You publish, you've got.
Wow. Okay. I wonder if that includes shorts. Is that just short?
[00:35:24] Speaker B: That includes shorts. Yeah, that includes shorts. Because I'm doing one video a week. I'm not doing. Okay, that many, but I am publishing two shorts a day. So in a week, I'm getting 15 videos.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Right? That's great. That's great. Yeah. Here's your shorts. I am totally with you on the shorts thing because I just. I use I as you. I use Opus Pro, and I just crank them out. And then. I probably shouldn't be admitting this, but I just. I don't even look at them anymore. I just say, like, yes, publish one a day for. Oh, how many clips are there? 24. Okay. For the next 24 days, every day at 4:30. Go. Thanks. Bye. And I just. I can't be bothered.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't. I. You know, it's. I can't quite figure out what works on shorts. Like, I. Cause I have looked at this because I've only been doing them now for not very long, for like a month, I think. A month or two months.
And so I can't quite figure out what works with them because some of them. Like, I've had some shorts get, like, thousands of views.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: And then I've had some shorts get 17 views.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: And I can't tell the difference. Between them, I'm like, I don't know. You know, the ones that get 17 views are like, oh, this was.
This was like the A plus content that Opus Pro is like, this one's going to kill it. And then sometimes the ones that don't are like, this is the, you know, C content from Opus Pro. And, like, it does really well. So, like, I can't quite figure out what's working, what's not.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I know.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Anyway, I totally get it and I don't. Why I would say, I don't know. I do know a bit, but it all. It is also, there's a. An element of, you know, random luck and all that.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Here. These thumbnails are cleaner. Like, here. Here's a night. This just again, your eyes focus on, like, the clean. And what stands out like here. Boom. The one with the dragon. Right. Just stands out.
So, all right. Without going into too much. How to. But it's just I see things and I want to fix them. But in here. All right, here's a. Here's a little pro tip in.
I'm pretty sure it's only in the YouTube app itself.
Not YouTube Studio, but YouTube app on the phone. It's the only place I know how to change it. On the phone, you say edit video, and you can't edit too much. Well, you can change the title and all that stuff, but on the phone, it's the only place you can change this. The thumbnail of a short after it's published after. So, like, so, for example, the dragon one. I'm focused on the dragon one.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: Here it says, why would he turn?
And so when you open up the YouTube app on the phone, you'll get 10 or 15 screenshots and interesting. And if you're lucky, there's one that you think is better. So instead of why would he turn? Which is maybe interesting, Right. It sounds like.
Or dialogue. But that's fine. That sounds good. But if there's a better one, then you can just tap. I want that screenshot as my thumbnail save.
Go. So it's a kind of a.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: So like. So like the. And I'm on the first one. That's not a great thumbnail.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. Right.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: And I mean, this is back to like, you know, where's the priority of your time? Right. Because also in that YouTube again, on the YouTube app on the phone, only you can. I think you can make a title which, like in the case of these first four, could be handy. Right? Nice big old Title on what. What is this short about? What are we talking about?
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Also, I picked. I picked oldest. I should pick popular.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: No, that's, That's. Yeah, no, that's good.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: One more pro tip while I'm thinking of tips. And this is probably the most important tip that I've learned.
So here, I'm going to show you something. So if I go to this short, I'm going to open up this short.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great opening.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Sorry, I couldn't find. Pause. I don't know. I don't think you hear that video, do you?
[00:39:40] Speaker B: I did not hear that video.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Okay, I hear it. Okay. So here, as you'll notice, okay, again, I'm on a computer, so it's a little different, but I cannot.
What can I click? I can click here to go to your channel. Yeah, I can click here to subscribe. And what does this get? And if I click here, Wedding dress girls.
Oh, no, that's just the description. So there's not many places I can click. Right?
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: So in.
Again, in YouTube Studio or YouTube app or on the computer, you only in shorts, you can connect the short and say, what is the related video?
So what is the related long form video? Right.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: And then clean up my screen here a little bit. Then over here somewhere is going to be a new link. And remember, it's hard.
It's not hard, it's impossible. Just like Instagram. Like Instagram. You can't. You can't click on things.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: If you get a certain number of subscribers or whatever. Yes, you. Blah, blah, blah. But here, it's the easiest, simplest way to take a short.
And what's the goal? I want them to watch the whole video because this is a clip from the bigger video.
So in the editing screen, you're going to open up that short and say, what's the related video?
That one.
And you got to find it. And then it's manual labor. I literally do this. I'm going on a train to Amsterdam for half an hour and I will. I will just go through some shorts and go attach the related video, the longer form video to a short. And then that happens in the studio.
I can't remember if it's studio or. Yeah, I think studio somewhere where you can edit, like editing your short.
And then what can you do with it? You can't do too much, but you can give it. It's called related video. And then you want it to go to.
To that place.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Okay.
Okay.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Hey, one question about podcasts. I just, I realized I was doing something wrong. And I.
Because I also have a podcast, and I use a podcast service, and it, you know, sends it out to the world. Right.
And then I use YouTube's RSS feature to pull in the podcast automatically, right. From the. From the podcast server or whatever. So it automatically appears. Yay. But what. What I'm getting is that just like here, right here, you have playlists, and playlists are collections of videos. Right.
By the way, you can also make a playlist cover thumbnail, by the way, which is super handy.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, here, pitching your book, you can make a nice cover for that. So. But in podcasts, all of these are.
I don't want that viewful podcast.
These, if I'm correct, are these videos?
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: These are just. So for me, playlists are like. The podcast thing is interesting.
I just marked some of my playlists as podcast.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: So I. I use a service, too, for podcasts.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: But I load directly to YouTube.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: Okay, thank you. Because then you're doing it correctly. Okay, okay. Sorry. The way I was. What I was doing, I was pulling in the RSS feed. So it's automatic. I publish with my YouTube, with my podcast provider, and then it creates an RSS feed. Right. And then my YouTube. In YouTube podcast, you can say, oh, do you have a podcast? Yes. You have multiple podcasts? Yes, I want to. What do you want to do? Do you want to pull it in automatically from your RSS feed? Sure, we can do that. Click connect, you know, give the right verifications or whatever, and then it automatically pulls in when there's a new episode, which is fantastic.
The only downside is that you're pulling from a podcast feed, so it's audio only. It's a static image and audio only. Now, for many people, that's fine. Not me, but many people listen to podcasts on YouTube. I don't do it. I use a podcast service.
So what I was doing. Well, wait a minute. That episode actually has a good video to it.
So what I was doing is I was letting the RSS pull it in automatically, and then. And that's why I was looking here, because here, podcasts, these are your podcasts, but you designated them podcasts. Whereas what I was doing then was then I would upload the video, which was the exact same audio as my podcast episode, but then YouTube was saying, hey, duplicate content.
And they were kind of dinging me for it. I didn't. They didn't say any of this, but this is the analysis I got when I did the Like a channel sort of research. So you're not doing that. So that's good.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I think I lucked out because I. Because I record these sessions over zoom with people.
I already. I was doing the audio feed.
Like, I take the session, I record, I put it into.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: What is that live?
You did some live?
[00:45:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Okay. Sorry.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Funny.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: One of my coaches participated in a conference that recorded live.
Yeah, it's funny. I never thought about doing live. Is life helpful?
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, they.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: They like it.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: I. I should do it more often. I don't. Of course, there's a million things you could do, but apparently YouTube loves it. Right.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: And then. Then they're on your site anyway as videos, so you could just. You could even do one of your dialogue sessions, your editing sessions live, I guess. Right?
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Do they post as videos after? I guess they do, yeah.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: You decide. Do you want this to be posted a video or not? Interesting, because that'd be kind of fun. I don't know. Then people are literally watching over your shoulder as you. You're really live helping a. A writer. That. That could be fun. Yeah. You got to make sure your writer client is. Is okay with that.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: But, yeah, I do warn them ahead of time. I'm like, I don't do any editing. What's.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Why the raw feed is what's going up, y'.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: All. Yeah, yeah,
[00:46:17] Speaker B: yeah. Okay, That's.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
So here again, I'm just playing nitpick, but who.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Who are.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Who are Jeff and Laura? Q and A's doing Q and A's. Great. Who are they? Okay, Jeff, that's you.
Who's Laura? Right.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It is really funny hearing you look at it and watch it.
I didn't realize it, but I've actually built my channel for insiders, not for outsiders.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Ah.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Which is fascinating, because insiders know who Laura is.
But I understand now, looking at it through your eyes, that, like. Oh, yeah, you have an idea, Lawrence? You don't know what joints with JP Are. You know, jp?
[00:46:54] Speaker A: No. Right, right.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Which is why I'm not getting. I understand now, like, oh, this is why I'm not getting the traffic I. I want to get.
Because this is for insiders. So you come in, you're like an insider, move on.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: And then time with Tom.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, who's. Who the hell is Tom?
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: And. And what are joints? I mean, joints with JP that could be a whole lot. Opening up a whole nother can of worms there.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's an inside joke that I teased him About.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: Because we couldn't figure out what to call it on, like, episode, like the fourth or fifth one of these we did. We've done a ton of them. We couldn't figure out what to call it. So I was like, oh, we're like, you know, Spike Lee joint. We're gonna call it a joint with jp. And he was like, please don't, because I don't do marijuana. And I was like, oh, now it's funny. So that. Yeah, but what a weird. I'm looking at you looking at my page. Be like, what a weird thing to put on the front of a page.
Funny to me.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: It's like, not for outsiders.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
So by the way, I'm. I'm sure you know this, but I'm just sort of stating it. You. Please don't.
Okay. You can make.
In fact, this was my presentation in France a few weeks ago, which was called. Which was YouTube for speakers. And you can make things private or unlisted or public, right? Yeah, private is like, nobody's going to see it no matter what. Like, you need to invite them by email. It's even a hassle. Right. Unlisted is anybody who has the link can see it. So even if you share it privately, if they still share that link, they can get in, right?
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: So if some of these things really are sort of. You'd rather have not the public see them. You can always make them unlisted and you can even have an unlisted playlist so that all of these here, whatever the Dialogue Doctor Community, these are all unlisted.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I have a whole ton of like, I do use that unlisted feature. A ton.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Because I like, I do a weekly. So the community that revolves around the Dialogue Doctor, there's a subscription community.
We meet at least three times a month and get recorded.
I only put a small sampling of those ones that I think are like, okay, this is interesting to other people I put up here. But, like, there's a whole nother set of videos behind the scenes that you only see if you're in the community. I use that unlisted feature a lot. I'm like, oh, this is an unlisted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't know if I'm supposed to be doing this. Maybe I shouldn't say this out loud. I actually use YouTube as a storage place. Not.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: Yes, I do too. I totally do too.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: So, like, when I do a session with somebody, it might be like, I do these sessions in batches. I don't Know if this is interesting to anybody, I do these sessions in batches. So I reach out to the community. Like, hey, I'm doing a batch. Here's 20 sessions, 20 session slots. These are going to be used as podcast. Sign up for them. We're going to do it for free.
And they go within, like, an hour. Like, those are all gone within an hour. And then we.
So then I'll do those sessions over, like, a month. I'll get, like 20 episodes in a month, and then. But that'll. That'll stretch out to 20 weeks.
So you might do a session with me and then, like, not. It's not going to be published.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: All right.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: So I go ahead and put it up as a hidden link just for the author so that they have it. Because I don't want to store that video in Google in the Google cloud, because they make me pay for it. Whereas YouTube lets me store for free.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: I do the same thing. I do the same thing.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So I just put it up there.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: I do. I'm in Toastmasters. It's like public speaking group, right?
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I know what Toastmasters is.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, cool. And so I'll record the meetings, record the individual speeches and evaluations and all the good stuff, and then I'll put it up in a playlist and make it unlisted and just share it with the group.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: Because we ran into that storage thing as well in the past. And YouTube, it's just like, give us all the.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: I'm like, someday y' all are going to figure this out, right?
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: Don't tell them. Nobody tell them. Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you one more tip here if I. Yeah, please do.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Because it's funny because I just see things. And of course, I do this all the time. So.
Okay. Do you know timestamps or chapters?
Right.
No. So here, if I hover my mouse over this line, Right. I don't. Yeah, there's no title or chapters or anything. Okay.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: So. So then I go in here.
See here. Show transcript.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: Okay. So I'm going to show transcript. It's going to show up over here.
I can. I'm going to highlight this whole thing.
And then depending on how you like to do things, I use AI, I'll use chat, and I will copy and paste this entire transcript. Right?
Copy. And I'm not going to do it for you here, but copy that into. Into. So here I can tell you exactly what I do. I will type the transcript, I'll Copy the whole thing. And then, I mean, depends on your familiarness with familiarity with AI and stuff, and how comfortable you are using it and everything. Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, just. That's what I figured, but don't want to assume.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: So then, yeah, I use it. Yeah.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: All right, so I'll put it in the chat GPT and then I'll say, I mean, I have a special folder, of course, for just this. Get. Give me three titles, give me three subtitles, give me a description, give me a call to action, and then give me a timestamp.
And then the timestamp is.
So again, like, I hovered over here.
It. It will break up your video into chapters, for lack of a better word. Right. Oh, and then I can. And then the best part about a chapter here, I'm going to show you. I'll go to. I'll go to some video of mine.
To show you what I mean.
So here's some video of mine. Okay. So here, if I hover, can you see that?
[00:53:09] Speaker B: I always wondered how to do that.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's. And then. And it. So then. Even better part. I mean, that's nice, but I gotta, you know, hover everywhere. Whereas. Even better.
So here's my title, by the way. See how. This is how I use. This is a podcast.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Oh, thanks.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: Oh, I see that. Yeah.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Podcast. I'm not taking up that space in the beginning, but I want to know, kind of for my own record keeping, you know, what episode am I on? Right, yeah, yeah. That's sort of my own little. It's sort of almost.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: No, it's so smart.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: My own information.
So then here. So here's the timestamps. Okay.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:47] Speaker A: And the best part is. Oh, I really want. Oh, love. That's what I want. Click.
It'll take me right there.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Right. So it's handy. It's not just cute, but because people say, like, oh, what do I. I want that part. Boom. Yeah, it takes me right there in the video and it really helps with.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: It's interesting. Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Here, I can show you. While we're at it, I'll just show you an example of a short, but I have to make sure I actually did it.
Okay, Here, I notice this guy.
Okay, so here, I'm going to click on this short.
Yeah, Come on, short.
Sorry, one sec.
It's not really loading. Okay, there we go.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Yeah, there we go.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Okay, so this is a short.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: Right. And remember earlier when we were looking at your short, there was a channel.
Channel link down here.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: And then this is the title. If I click on this, it's going to just give me the description.
Yeah, but I don't want that.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: But you've got that extra line there.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And that extra line is this one. Oh, click. And now I go to that spot where that short came from in the full video.
That one is, I think, like the. The killer trick. That is totally manual labor. I don't know how to do it. Not manually, but worth it.
So it's worth going through your shorts.
Yeah, go through your shorts.
I'm not sure if I'm logged in here. I could. Otherwise, I'll show you how to do it, but basically go in, edit. It'll say related video. You have to go find it.
[00:55:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Click, that's the video I want.
And then save.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: That's huge.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: And then you get that link, which is even better on a phone, because on a phone you can tap. And now you get the full video. But of course, what we want, we want people to go watch the whole video. That's sort of our goal.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: That's the goal. Yeah.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: The YouTube world, right? Just like a book. I don't want them to just read the snippet. I want them to, you know, read the whole book.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that is great.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: That's. That one. Yeah.
I mean, there's so many things.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: Yeah, you've given me a ton of homework. I mean, I'm totally doing it, by the way.
[00:56:25] Speaker A: I'm totally doing it.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: I'm going to go in and start, you know.
Yeah. I'll start with the new videos I make. But I'm. I'll slowly start chucking through the backlog, too, and.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Okay. Hey, I. I just. It just occurred to me. I just got an idea. It is currently June.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:41] Speaker A: And Author Nation is November. What's like five, six months?
[00:56:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: Would you. Would you be up for connecting again in, I don't know, a few months or September or something?
[00:56:53] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. See, see. See if I can pull it off. If I can.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. Just whatever you do. Whatever you do before and after. Yeah, okay. That'd be fun.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: That sounds awesome, man. I love it. Sounds great.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: Okay, cool. That'd be great.
All right. Because I could just keep going on for hours, and if you let me, I will, but now. Stop it. Stop it.
Let's. Let's call it. And this has been super cool. This is really fun to see. For me too, Bradley.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Thanks so much, man. This has been incredible.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So then let's Plan that we can just, you know, pick a day in September or something. But what are we.
Whatever. September. Something like that. Just. We'll make some changes and we can see some things. We'll have a little update and see if anything's changed or improved.
[00:57:39] Speaker B: And that's great because you'll actually hold my feet to the fire direction.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: Yes, yes, exactly. Which I. I always need myself.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: I'll have it in my. I'll be like, bradley's gonna look at this in September. I gotta get it done.
[00:57:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I haven't done it. I haven't done a thing.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I gotta do it. I gotta do it. Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds awesome, man. And thanks so much. I learned a ton today. This was amazing.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Yeah, awesome. Really fun. Yeah, me too. I did, too, because it's fun. Because, you know, they say the best way to learn something is to teach it, so.
And then we forget what we know. We think everybody knows what we know.
[00:58:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And today, my biggest takeaway today is that, like, oh, yeah, outsiders, this page is not for insiders. It's for outsiders.
Like, oh, crap, I've been doing it wrong. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm pumped about making changes.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Okay. But I know I've been ticking on your side here, but you're doing the hardest thing, because most people say, oh, I've got the best thumbnail and I've got the best title and I've got the keyword and all that stuff. I'm like, yeah, I'm just. Yeah, I'm going to start actually creating videos. Yeah. I was thinking maybe next year. Right?
[00:58:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, yeah.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: I've got processes down.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: I just have to, like, figure out how to make them functional.
[00:58:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So also, what you can do, since you're okay with AI, you can go. You know, the beauty of you. One of the reasons I'm on YouTube at all is because of sort of the. They call it, like, the lifespan of a video. Right. Like, you know, TikTok is 8 seconds and Instagram is 14 seconds, and Twitter is a half a millisecond. Right. Facebook is a day or a week or whatever, but YouTube is forever.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: Right. And so you can take. Go find your best videos, go change the thumbnail, change the title, which you can do, right? Add a description, add a timestamp, go pick your. Your top three or whatever and just get a new thumbnail title, description, timestamp, maybe make some shorts. Make a handful of shorts from it and then do that related video to the main video. To the main video. Because then what that will do is it'll create some new shorts, new activity, and then if people see it, say, oh, what's the main video? Oh, look at that. This comes from a bigger video.
Now they're watching your bigger video.
[00:59:44] Speaker B: And part of what I love about YouTube that's really funny is I'll get, like, it happens about once a month. I'll get somebody who I can tell is watching through all 300 videos in order to. Because they're like, so and so liked video two, so and so. Like video three, so and so liked episode four. And I'm like, oh, they're just watching through it.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: Right? That's cool.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really funny. But, yeah, so it's that evergreen. That evergreen content is great. And I start. I was going to start just at episode 331 and work backwards in episodes. Starting with the most watched is really smart.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah. It's just.
[01:00:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:18] Speaker A: Well, also, you have hundreds of episodes. Don't overdo it. But just. I don't know.
All right.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: So much.
[01:00:29] Speaker A: Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. And this is also cool because then we'll see each other in Vegas. Yeah.
[01:00:34] Speaker B: I'm pumped about meeting you in person.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be really cool. All right.
