The YouTube Growth Flywheel, How Channels Really Explode

All right, so five years ago, when I first started posting on my main channel, Shane Hummus has over a million subscribers now. I didn't have very many. I only had like a few thousand subscribers. And there were a lot of other channels that were actually doing quite well, that were in similar niches or even the same niche. And they were talking about similar topics, right? And they were getting a lot of views as well. And, you know, a lot of these channels were ahead of me. Some of them had, you know, 10,000, 30,000, 50,000 subscribers. So sometimes they were 10 to 50 times bigger than my channel. And I left all of them in the dust. Okay. I passed up all of them within a very short period of time. And some of those channels now they haven't even hit 100,000 subscribers yet. And I'm over a million. So how did this happen? Well, it's the YouTube content flywheel. I took advantage of the YouTube content flywheel and they didn't. Essentially, a kind of like a philosophical way of thinking of this is when I got an opportunity, I took advantage of it and I doubled down on it. And when they got opportunities, they didn't. Now, let me describe exactly what I mean by this, because this is extremely important. And this is something that a lot of people make this mistake. Okay. A lot of people make this mistake in life. There is a certain amount of luck that you're going to get. You're going to get certain opportunities from time to time. And you taking advantage of those opportunities is going to basically 10 X your life, maybe even more. Right. And if you don't take advantage of those opportunities, if you don't strike while the iron's hot, you're going to be leaving a lot of value on the table. Now, in order for the content, the YouTube content flywheel to work, you have to be doing a few things. First of all, you have to be posting with ideas where they're likely to succeed. And I've described many times on my channel how to do this. It's with the icon method. And then you have to be trying different things out, trying different ideas, different formats, different content styles, etc. And that's called the evolution method. So let me let me just before we get into this, I just have to preface this. And you can check these out on other parts of my channel. And by the way, if you need help with those types of things, I actually have GPTs that will literally help you with those exact things coming up with ideas, coming up with different formats, etc. I'll put those down in the description and the pin comment below. Also, GPT for coming up with your niche if you're having trouble with that. And so let's talk about exactly how to do this. So you've got the icon method. OK, that's for coming up with ideas. And then you've got the evolution method. Evolution method. And this is for testing. And then eventually, if you're doing these two things right, it is not a matter of if, but it's a matter of when. Eventually, you will get a video that pops off. OK, and that quick break. This video is sponsored by me. Most of you don't know that I actually have my own coaching program on personal branding and then growing and making money on YouTube. And this is good for complete beginners, maybe even people who just want to get a job by growing their personal brand all the way up to people who are very advanced on YouTube. And they get to work directly with myself and my team to help them reach their goals. Now, we are opening up three to five spots, and this is pretty rare. We usually don't have these open. We usually only limit them to select people. But we're opening up three to five spots and you can check those out down the description and the pen comment below. And in this program, you'll get to work directly with myself and other people who are highly successful on YouTube. Just as an example, Sean was able to go all the way from being stuck, not making very much money on his channel to making over five thousand dollars a month. Now, that's an example of one of my more advanced students, but there's lots of examples of people who started off from scratch and they got to five K a month, 10 K a month, et cetera. So check that out down the description and the pen comment below is where number three comes into play, which is the YouTube content flywheel. OK, and this is the mistake that so many people make is they don't take advantage of this. So the best way to describe this, but before I even tell you what it is, I want you to pretend this is an analogy. So you really understand why this is on YouTube when your audience sees you. It's kind of like, especially if it's a brand new audience, it's kind of like that's the first time they've met you. That's like their first impression of you. Now, let's just say, put yourself in their shoes and let's just take it off of YouTube. Let's just say you're going to an art class. OK, and this is a very specific type of art class. It is portrait photography. OK, you went to a portrait photography class and you met somebody new. OK, if that person, let's just say, you know, we're just going to draw this right here. This is portrait photography. My very beautiful drawing. If that person that you met at a portrait photography class asked you to go to Mexico with them, you would probably say no because you don't know them. Right. You don't know anything about them. They could be a psycho for all you know. But if that person that you met in a portrait photography class asked you to go do more portrait photography, let me draw another very beautiful photo here, except maybe it's like outside. Right. So outside of the class, there's a very good chance that you're going to say yes to that. And then if that person then asked you, you know, the next week, hey, do you want to go do landscape photography? So it's like, let's just say you're in the mountains here. Beautiful mountains here. Right. There's a very good chance you're also going to say yes, because chances are if you're interested in portrait photography, you're also interested in landscape photography. Right. So you're probably going to say yes to that. And then if the next week that person asked you to do, let's just say videography. Right. So I'm going to draw a very beautiful video camera here. And that's the camera recording videography. And let's just say you're recording, you know, some some landscape. But with videography, there's a there's a good chance you're interested in photography. You're probably also interested in videography like, you know, hey, what if I flip a switch on this camera and we just record some videos? We'll see how we can do. It's a little bit different, but there's a lot of similarities. Right. So you'll probably also say yes to that. And then let's just say the next week they ask you to go and, you know, let's do some painting. Right. Let's go to a painting class. Right. So a painting class where they draw some some very beautiful landscape photos. Right. I could probably use that. And yeah, they want to they want to ask you, hey, let's go to a painting class. You're probably also going to say yes to that. And then the week after that, they ask you, hey, do you want to just go get dinner together? Let's eat. Let's eat food. Right. Eat some food, burger, some food as a beautiful burger right there and some food. You're probably going to say yes to that. And then the week after that, they ask you, hey, do you want to go? You want to go on vacation? Yeah. Or maybe they just ask you, do you want hang out, hang out and watch some TV? And then the week after that, they ask you, hey, I'm going to Mexico in a few months. Do you want to go with me? You know, there's a good chance you're going to say yes. Right. But but do you see how if you would have asked them right away, you definitely would have gotten a no. But since you went through this process of meeting them in photography class and then asking them to do something slightly different and then you went down the line. Now they now you formed an actual relationship. And they're you know, at first they were just going to do for, you know, portrait photography because that's what they're doing. Right. So there is some utility. They're getting something out of it. And then they were still getting something out of it, even when they're doing landscape photography and videography. But eventually they just form a relationship with you and they just want to hang out with you. And it's the same thing on the Internet. Right. It's the same exact thing. When people discover your channel on the Internet, it's the same exact thing. OK, so if you have a video that pops off and this is what happened to me, my very first video that popped off was about degrees. It was about the most useless degrees. This is my very first video that popped off. If my next videos had nothing to do with degrees, let's just say my next video is about credit cards. The YouTube algorithm would have taken all these people that had this that saw this video, all these, you know, hundred K plus people, and they would have shown that those people the credit card video and nobody would have been interested because they only watched one video from me. And the credit card video is way too far away from the degree video. Right. But what I did instead is I made a bunch of other degree videos. Now, they weren't exactly the same. There were some little changes here and there, but I made a ton of other degree videos. And so these people, the YouTube algorithm show these hundred K people more degree videos and more degree videos. And that's obviously what those people were interested in. Right. And then eventually I went from degrees to like alternative education, which is like, you know, certificates, boot camps, et cetera, or like faster ways of getting done with college. And then after I did that for a while, I then started talking about careers and then remote jobs. Right. Because a lot of people want remote jobs, especially during the 2020 period. And then eventually I could just talk about any sort of make money related topic. Right. Make money online or investing, et cetera. Any sort of make money related topic. But if I would have just gone straight to including credit cards, I could talk about credit cards. But if I would have just gone straight from degrees to credit cards, I would have just ruined my opportunity. And I would have also violated the trust of the algorithm. And so you don't want to do that when you have that first video pop off. You want to drop everything you are doing and make more video. First of all, like, OK, let's just say video pops off. Congratulations, your first video pops off, which is just a matter of time if you follow my criteria, which, again, down the description of the comment below, GPT will help you do that. Video pops off. You want to stop everything you're doing. OK, that's step two. Step one is get a video to pop off. Step two is stop everything you're doing. Step three, analyze why that video popped off. Right. Why? Now, usually it's going to be the idea. That's number one. That's that's the most likely. Number two most likely is the format. So is it a listicle? Is it a how to? Is it a challenge video, et cetera? And then number three just might be your style. Right. Maybe they just like your style. They're like maybe you have memes in your videos or you have a certain presentation style that they like. But usually it's the idea. Then the second most likely is a format. And the third most likely is the style. And you want to analyze why. Why is it that people like this video so much? And then when you figure out why, which is probably going to be the idea, let's just say it's the idea. You make way more videos on that idea. OK, and you beat that idea like a dead horse. I'm talking you might make 30 to 50 videos on that idea. Seriously, you beat that idea like a dead horse. And this is what makes your channel pop off. This is what makes your channel pop off. OK. And slowly you can then transition to other topics. Right. And when you transition to those other topics, people know, like and trust you. Right. They form a relationship with you. OK. And then you can transition to other topics slowly. Right. Just like in the example with the friend that you met in photography class. Right. And you might be asking, well, Shane, how does this create a flywheel? Where's the flywheel come in? Well, you have your first piece of content that does well. This is your let's just say your your pop off video. OK, this is your pop off video. And then you make more. Pop off videos, more videos on a similar idea. And then what ends up happening is it recommends those people because of the fact that you're making more, you become known as the guy in that niche and they start. The algorithm starts recommended to other people, but also individuals, grassroots people start recommending it. So grass, I'm going to I'm going to call this grassroots Rex. OK, plus plus algo, plus the algorithm. The algorithm basically gets to categorize you and it trusts you more because it knows it can rely on you to supply people with the content that they actually want. You're not going, you know, imagine if you, you know, my two favorite shows, Breaking Bad and The Office. The Office is a dry comedy. Breaking Bad is a gritty drama. But if I were to click on The Office like I'm, you know, after a long day, I'm like, I want to watch The Office and then Breaking Bad pops up. I would be disappointed because I wanted a dry comedy, something light and a gritty drama, something very serious popped up. And that's what happens when you're making content all over the place. So you want to be known as the guy who makes content on that particular topic and just totally dominate that topic. And by the way, this is something that everyone does. If you look at Wayback Machine, look at any popular channel these days, and that's exactly what they did. When Ali Abdaal first started, he was making lots of content on very specific tests that doctors have to take in the UK. When Alex Ramosi, when he first started, he was making content on how to do marketing and sales for gyms. And then they made lots of content on that. And then slowly over time, they transitioned to other types of content. So you become known as the go-to guy for that type of content. And then what ends up happening is it just feeds back into itself and it causes you to pop off even more. And then it just turns into a flywheel and it just keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. And it just gets better and better and better That is how it works. This is what works. And this is where your channel absolutely blows up. Because you are known as the go-to guy for that topic. A topic where there's a supply and demand imbalance that you found with the ICON method. There's a massive amount of demand, but there's not a lot of supply. And you now supply the demand. The algorithm then knows that you are the go-to guy for supplying that demand. And people know you're the go-to guy for supplying that demand. So the algorithm starts promoting it to people, but also people individually will start sending it out to other people and being like, hey, what do you think of this guy's opinion on this college degree, that college degree, etc. And then it just starts this flywheel process where it just gets better and better and better. And it's just amazing. And that is the difference between channels that absolutely pop off and channels that don't. Because ones that don't, don't take advantage of this opportunity. Because this is an opportunity. And you get these every once in a while. You get an opportunity. And when you get one, take advantage. Take advantage of it. Stop everything you're doing and start posting more and more content on that topic. And that is what's going to blow up your channel. This is what I help people do, by the way. I help people really figure YouTube out. So if you are a busy business owner, or now this is usually like a coach, coach, consultant, online service provider, agency owner, etc. Or you are a YouTuber, that is having issues with either time, content, like how much content you can actually put out, or monetization. Because basically, the things you want to achieve with YouTube are one, you want to get views, right? Two, you want to do it in a low amount of time. And then three, right, so you want to do it efficiently, right? You want to get views efficiently where you're not spending all your time doing it. And then three, you want to monetize effectively, right? Because almost nobody has all three of these going on. There's some people that are getting views, but they're spending all their time on YouTube, and they're not really monetizing effectively. There's people that are getting views, and they're spending a lot of time, but they're monetizing effectively. But like I said, they're still spending too much time, so they're not able to work on their business because they're stuck working in their business. And then there's a lot of people that aren't getting any of the three, but very, very few people have all three of these things absolutely nailed down. Because if you're doing the views thing right, you should be happy with the amount of views you're getting. If you're doing the time thing right, you should really only be spending one to four hours per week on your channel, which is what I spend on my main channel. Only one to four hours a week. In fact, usually it's more on the one hour a week side. And then when it comes to monetization, obviously you want to be making really good money from YouTube, which there's a lot of YouTubers who get tons of views, but they're actually not making money, right? And so if you're having issues with any of these three things, you need to book a call down the description in the pinned comment below, because we offer Done With You. So this is to help you to basically create a system that does this effectively. So we install, we personalize, and then we automate the system, okay? And this may or may not involve hiring, right? Because we actually will hire for our clients, right? Install, personalize, and automate the system. And then the Done For You, we basically will hire, we'll source. Let's cross this out. Source, really good talent. It's very cheap. People who work on my YouTube channel, which I've started multiple seven-figure businesses from, are all from the Philippines, so it's not super expensive. So source, hire, place, and train, okay? We source, hire, place, and train people into businesses to help them run this system, this exact system effectively, right? So we have two different options. If either of those sound at all interesting to you, go ahead and book a call down the description in the pinned comment below. What we will do is four things. One, we will figure out your current situation, okay? Figure out your current problems, okay? Two, we'll make a plan to solve the problems, or actually, we'll figure out your goals, right? Figure out your problems first, then figure out your goals. Three, make a plan to solve the problem to get you from your current situation to your desired situation, and then four is see if we're a good fit to work together, okay? So it'll be super valuable. Whether or not we end up working together, it'll be a super valuable call for you, so definitely book that down the description in the pinned comment below. And somebody who was having this exact problem when I first started working with them was Sean Dolwet. So Sean was basically, he had the views, he was doing pretty good when it came to the views, so he had the first one down. Time, he had it kind of down, he was still spending way too much time, and monetization he was really, really bad at. Within nine months, we got him from where he was stuck, so he was stuck at $10k to $30k per month, and within nine months, we got him to over $500k per month. He did about $650k last month, okay? So this is an example of someone, he's a coach and he's also a YouTuber, right? So he kind of fits both criteria. So check out his video. I actually did an interview with him where we talked about everything. You can check that video out by clicking right here.