Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Paatel and Eric Sue. All Right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. All Right, everyone, today, we've got Jake Chran, who I had the pleasure of hanging out with last week in in Miami. And so, Jake, I mean, the way I look at you is you do business essays on YouTube. That's what you define in your Twitter. I don't know if it's your Twitter or someone else's Twitter, but Jake's almost got a million subs, and I think depending on when you listen to this could be way more by then, And I've kind of followed his growth over time, and his videos are really well done. And not only that, he's kind of becoming the modern day renaissance man. I mean, he's doing all this stuff while he's traveling. So we're gonna dive into how he does all this And yeah, Jake, do you think I missed anything with your intro? No, Usually the elevator pitch I give is I run the number one business channel for documentaries on money, power and crime. Interesting, why did you start with money, power and crime? So it's a long story with the YouTube channel, But for that angle, I really got inspired by the book forty Laws of Power by Robert Green. And in that book, he talks about how the pursuit of power kind of pervades our lives everywhere we look. And yet, you know, talking about power openly is such a taboo subjects and that's what he kind of wanted to solve with his book. And I was really inspired by that and I really love the book. So I've kind of angled my channel around that kind of concept, like looking at everything from like the power angle, like the money angle, which usually involves crime, So yeah, awesome. You know what, have you read the fiftieth law before? Not yet? Not yet. The fiftieth Law is collab that he did with fifty seid It's okay. I think forty eight laws is better and he has that. I just bought his new book Mastery from another friend that recommended it. But anyway, I'm sure you'll like that one. So look, I want to start off with your YouTube journey because YouTube's always it's a slog for most people, and I think they just give up too early. And I think you had a story like that. So do you want to talk about your story and kind of your assent because I think people will get a lot from that experience. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people see the success stories of someone who just starts the YouTube channel and blows up right away. I was definitely not that. It took me from zero two hundred k subscribers. It took me four years in total with two different channels, like trying out two different channels until it really took off. And I found that a good example of this is like Ram Stephan, who blew up like relatively quickly, but for him, he had all this experience built up as a real estate investor and agent already, so he had something to talk about already for people like me who watched YouTube as a kid and really wanted to be a YouTuber. I started my first channel when I was probably sixteen or seventeen maybe, and I didn't have any life experience back then. My brain wasn't fully developed, so it took me a lot longer, and it was totally worth it. That's why I usually say I got a degree in YouTube, because it took a total of four years to get to one hundred. Kay, you get the plaque too, so that's my degree. But yeah, so all I watched throughout high school middle school was YouTube, so that was my main form of entertainment. So at the time, I was really into tech channels in high school, like Linus Tech Tests, Marcus Brownlee, and I just fell in love with the idea that you could do something creative, just have fun on camera, playing around with products, getting free stuff, and make a living out of it. So I just really fell in love with that with that idea. So at the time I was doing Techwindo, I was an instructor and a competitor, and that was my only form of expertise, so logically I wanted to do a Techwindo channel, and I grew up to like five k subs in one to two years, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty bad, so I gave up on it. I went the traditional route of studying computer science, became a wet developer, and once I got the job that I thought I always wanted, like it was remote front and web dev, I just got super bored really fast. So I went back into YouTube and after a few months going at it, I was making like one hundred bucks a month from YouTube. So I literally just quit my job and the job if I did a full time it was it would have paid me like eighty K a year when I was like nineteen, So that was a big commitment to quit that job, so I quit it. I was living with my parents at the time, so I didn't have many expenses, so I was good on latfronts. But it took me like another year of doing this channel until it really took off. And during that first year of this channel, I was really struggling because at the time I was watching Graham stuffan, so I was kind of making videos similar to him, but because I was kind of just copying him. I wasn't giving anyone some inherent reason to watch my videos over his, which is which is what I see a lot of people do when they first start on YouTube, which is okay, but you have to like move past the where you know you start off. You're inspired by the YouTubers you watch, so you try to copy them, but you don't give people a reason to watch your videos over theirs, so you don't grow. So a year in I knew I had to change something. So I read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, and I basically it teaches you how to go into any crowded niche, any credit industry, and carve out your own little blue ocean to where you're not competing anymore because you created your own little subniche where there's no competition. So I basically just followed an exercise in the book and created basically the strategy I have for this channel right now, where there's no real competitors, at least when it started. Now, no little copycast was popping up here and there. But yeah, that's how I finally broke through and finally started growing. Got it, And so can you give us a breakdown. I mean, so Graham Stephan for those that don't know, So the way that works is he mostly talks about investing. They're usually ten to fifteen minute videos, and he'll give breakdowns of like his stock portfolio or like you know, he'll go through articles and all that, and so you know that's you initially tried to kind of imitate that a little bit, right, and then now, I mean, you have your own formula, So what does that formula look like? And then can you just kind of walk us us through how like you're different because blue ocean basically, just so everyone knows Blue ocean, it's a lot less competitive of Red ocean is where like people are killing each other. It's too competitive. Yeah, there's blood in the ocean. So I read that book and I basically looked at all the different niches on YouTube the highlights, and the three main ones were personal finance, make money online niche, and the edutainment niche channels like Polymatter, Windover Productions, Cris Cazot channels like that where it's like b roller animation plus voice over. And then the third niche st I really liked at the time was video essays where people break down movies like Why the Joker Is the Greatest Villain Ever or whatever, and I basically just took the stuff I liked from each of those niches. I threw away the stuff I didn't like from each of those niches, and with all those different attributes, I looked at the ones I liked but could improve on. So that's why it's basically a combination of these three subniches that make up my channel today. That's part of the reason why I'm on a camera at the end of the videos, because I liked the personal touch, the personal connection you build when people are on camera, like in the like the gram stuff in style. But I also liked the cinematic aspect of the video essays, plus the production value of like the Editatement niche. So it was just a giant mix of all these things. Yeah, it's hard for people to to so just I just want people to understand how this might look. And I recommend just typing Jake trying into YouTube so you can you know when you get home or whatever. But the way your videos are done, they're typically it seems like fifteen to twenty five minutes or so, and then to your point, they're video essays you don't your faces and pop up till later, So there's a lot of b roll. You're kind of narrating, right, So I guess you know, that's what makes it different because there's not a lot of people doing that. And now you see there's copycasts which I haven't seen quite yet. For you the production, how long is it typically taking for you to kind of make the sausage from start to finish? Like probably like five days, okay, yeah, And that's like how many hours per day are you putting in there? It's hard to say because it's creative work, and you can't do creative work for like eight hours straight, yeah, like you just get burns out. It's really hard to say, like it depends a few hours to eight hours a day, I don't know, Okay, yeah, So I mean my point of asking the question too, just so everyone knows, like mister Beasts has a good saying about like forget about the views and all that, like the subscribers, it's just about making a damn good video. And so just by asking that question, you can tell like hours and hours goes into it, Like Jake isn't half asking it when he's doing this right, And so I guess when you started to do this, when did you start to reap the rewards? Because some people are probably thinking, like, you know, oh man, I have to put like fifteen twenty twenty five hours plus into a video, Like how long did it take to start seeing it go up? Yeah? So I had that the lemma first too when I started doing this style of video, like why should I put in ten fifteen hours into a video that's only going to get five hundred views? And the problem with that is, you know, if you never make a good video to start, you're never going to get the views. I probably made probably like four or five videos of this new style, on one that took off, and the one that took off was called why Graham Stefan is killing the YouTube Algorithm. When I switched to this style, I went from like a few hundred views to like two thousand views three thousand views, which is better but not crazy. So once I launched that video, I showed it with Graham on Instagram and he just really really loved it and was super impressed, and he showed it on his Instagram with a swipe up, and from there, within a few weeks it climbed up to one hundred k views, So that was the initial snowball that got things rolling from there. Subsequent videos got less views. Now it was in like the tens of thousand views, and I kind of just kept iterating. At the start, I wasn't doing like money power crime, but it kind of just iterated towards that as I studied more and found things I'm interested in. And after that video, I think the next video that really took me into the direction of the channel today was after I watched a documentary on war profiteering, so I made a video on the viciously profitable business of war. I thought no one was going to be interested in that, because who was interested in war profiteering? I am. I just thought it was cool that video did super well, So I kind of just kept doing that the absurd business of banking until I kind of got to this point of focusing on purely money power crime. Yeah, and so walk us through your research process. You don't need to go super in depth here. But also it takes time to have to read this stuff and pull up like the research right, So yeah, there's literally no easy way around it. Aggressive googling, reading books and articles, YouTube videos, documentaries, just basically searching wherever I can to find like the best stories there you go. I mean, look, at the end of the day, there's there's no shortcut around making a damn good video. I do like how like you made a video about someone and you shared it with them, there's kind of that push. Do you think that that led to like a push that kind of just stayed there for the videos or is it like you just kept making really good videos afterwards. Yeah, So I would say it jumped up, huh, and it went down like halfway, but it's still like halfway back fifty percent better than before. Yeah, so it was still a massive, massive boost. So the initial push helped a lot. So yeah, yeah good. Yeah, I would say a lot got it. Lots cool. But for some people, they grow, they grow super gradually. Like Marcus Brownlee. He talks about it all the time, how he never had like a explosion moment, it was always very gradual. Interesting. Yeah, I mean this stuff takes time to compound, and like some people take it says it takes three years to get going. Some people maybe it's five years to build like a like an audience or build a business and so I do want to talk about that too in a second. But tell us what not to do, tell us what to do to fail at YouTube. So you know, I think a lot of us go into it, but the I call it like the kind of Gary v mindset. I'm not bashing on Gary Vie. I like him, but a lot of people go into it thinking that, you know, if I just put out content, if I just stay consistent, then I would just eventually blow up. But no matter how many times you put out the same bad video, it's still the same bad video. So I believe it's a combination of consistency but also continuously innovating and trying out new new video formats, trying out new video styles and seeing what catches on, because no matter how many times you put out the same video, it's not going to do any better because today it's a lot more competitive. Like back when garyt v started, he just posted the same wine videos over and over and over again, and he eventually blew up, which worked for him. But today there's a lot more competition. You really have to be strategic about it and give people a reason to watch your videos over someone else's. So I would say, like the number one mistake would be just putting out content and thinking that it will eventually blow up. Got it, and then walk us through kind of the the economics of a YouTuber just I'm sure people are wondering that question. The number one revenue stream people think about is AdSense, where YouTube plays ads on your videos, and that can be really lucrative depending on your niche. So some niches can't be monetized because it's to like music because you're doing covers of copyright songs, or some niches are really touchy that you can't get monetized on. And some niches are more profitable than others because advertisers are willing to pay more for those niches versus other niches. So, for example, any video related to courses like make money online courses like people can put ads on. Those get super super high ad rates because they're so only like a thousand dollars course and they have super high profit margins, so they're willing to get like one hundred dollars cost per acquisition or three hundred dollars cost per acquisition, so they're willing to pay a lot more. Other niches pay less, So you can't just have to balance it out. I know people who get a fraction of my views, but since they're CPM cost per one thousand views is so high, they still make a lot of money with like a tiny amount of use just because their audience is so concentrated. The CPM is so high, and they do more like affiliate marketing to the super hyper concentrated audience, So they make a lot of money just from a very little amount of use. So there's different ways to go about it. For me, I think my CPM is above average, not crazy low, and I bounce it out with a lot of views too. That's one. The other one in sponsored spots. Every video of mine is sponsored because I view it as if it's not sponsored, then that's wasted real estate that could have been sponsored or promoting something else. So those are the two biggest got it? And so you've kind of gone beyond just the sponsorships and the ads and stuff, right, like what walk us through kind of the business model for you and the kind of what your long term vision is. Yeah, So the newest thing I've done is the YouTube join button, where next to the subscribe button, there's a join button and you can pay five bucks a month to get. In my case, it's a much longer documentary on stuff that I normally kind of talk about on the public channel because it's like too controversial. So the video is not monetized, and you pay five bucks a month and you get one of those videos a week. The next one that's about to come out I'm very excited for it's on Jeffrey Epstein Nice. I definitely cannot post out publicly. So the way I'm approaching this is most people who do like a join button or Patreon, it's more of a donation offer, like you want to support this creator. I don't believe in relying on the generosity of others for your business. I think that's like a losing formula. So I really want to approach this differently where the value they get like way exceeds the five dollars a month, and I think it does right now. The documentaries are very good. I put a lot of work into them, and there's like inherent value because I literally wouldn't be able to post these on the main channel. It wouldn't be worth it. So that's how I'm approaching that and in the future, so my front end monetization is pretty like very solid with the ad sense sponsor spots, et cetera. I have a little bit on the back of now with the five dollars a month thing. The plan is to kind of like max out the back end montization with some bigger offer that costs more but obviously still delivering more value than what it costs. So I'm still deciding on that right now. I haven't found listed yet, but that's like the focus for this year. Got it? Love that? And so, and just another question around your videos. How many videos are you cranking out per week? Right now? It's four, but sometimes I have delays. Sometimes I have the delays. It's a grind. It's a grind. I would say, yeah, so, do you think you're going to continue down that pace for the rest of this year? Or yeah, damn, I'm just doing the math right now. Let's just say each video takes about fifteen hours or so six let's say twenty hours. It's eighty hours right there, in addition to all the other stuff you're doing. And plus everyone should know too, I mean, Jake, you're doing all this while you're traveling, right Yeah. So I literally live out of my backpack and my carry on right now. I don't even have a big suitcase. It's like a carry on. The fits in the overhead bin crazy And yeah, I found that the ninety nine whatever percent of humanity has been spent nomadding. Like this culture of having a house, a lot of possessions, et cetera is a fairly new thing in the grand scheme of things, like consumerism only really popped up in the nineteen hundreds. So I found that the closer you get to like the ideal of what our brain's evolved for, the more contempt you feel with life, the more happy you feel. And that's what I found with minimalism and traveling all the time, seeing different places, is that I don't really have anything to lose anymore. I don't have a house to lose, I don't have a car to lose, I have money to lose, but none of these tangible things that hold you down. And I found it like super rewarding and really good. That's the same reason why I do martial arts combat sports, because you know, it's a very visceral, primal thing. You get to release it like a lot of violent energy. Again, it takes you, it puts you in like that ideal state that our brain's evolved for and I found like a lot of inner piece doing all this stuff. Huh fascinating. So let's go into that a little bit to talk to us about becoming this renaissance man. Like, how are you doing. You're traveling the world right now, You're trying all these new things. I'm looking at your Instagram, like you're playing the guitar, You're doing daekwondo, You're meeting all these people. Tell us kind of what the how you're planning to become the modern day renaissance men. Well, I've always just loved learning in general, and I think like learning is probably the greatest superpower you can have because if you love learning, if you're good at learn, if you're a fast learner, then you can learn anything, like any skill you wants. And if you look at like the greatest renaissance men throughout history, Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, et cetera, they were able to achieve like competence, they were able to innovate in all these different fields. When there was no Internet, they have to like go out and find books and like talk to people in the real world. And you know, today we're so lucky to have all the stuff available to us, all online, and I don't know, I feel like we kind of owe it to them to like achieve more than they did when they had nothing and we have everything. So that's one reason. And another reason is I just find it cool, so much fun to learn all these new things all the time. Yeah. So I started out with taekwondo, graphic design and video editing, well development, shooting guns, gun fighting. Now it's jiu jitsu. Have my first multi Thai class a few weeks back. So fun, and yeah, I just find it so rewarding in like every way. Got it? So yeah, just continue learning whatever I'm passionate about. So how does that work when you're traveling? So do you, like, let's say you're going to London or something or Dubai or something, right, do you just look at like who teaches in the area? Are you like yelping it or something like yeah? Yeah yeah. So unfortunately there's not too many martial arts schools around London, which is very disappointing to me. So this traveling thing, I expect it to last like forever. I'm just gonna keep nomadding until I get bored. Ideally, like my ideal like lifestyle if I like settled down and stop no banding, would be to have like coaches or classes stretch out throughout the day, kind of like my own university, but of stuff I actually want to do and learn, so like an hour list and an hour orleve et cetera. So while I'm traveling in this space of my life, it's a lot harder obviously. So yeah, right now is mainly just like working out every day consistently while I'm traveling, which is really nice, so I don't get fat while I travel and working and doing stuff that I can do at home in my hotel room, like learning stuff like that. But yeah, you know what I mean, A lot of people they want to become YouTubers because they want to become famous, right, and so for you face pops up tours, z en and not. I'm just wondering because you don't show your face that much, Like how many people notice you when you're when you're out and about. Yeah, so it's actually a surprising amount for how little I show my face. It just shows like the people who do watch like they're very into it, which is pretty awesome. That's actually a good one. The ones that know you those are the ones that retained they thought you had a good video exactly, exactly, So very good fans. I love all of them. Everything everyone I've met in real life has been like super chill. So it happens like probably one out every two times I'm in a crowded place. Recently it happened in Miami as sexy Fish, like one of the guys working there. Yeah, stuff like that. Amazing, It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Cool man. Usually I ask questions about favorite tools and all that. I'm just curious. I mean, what's your favorite business tool. Let's start there. Favorite business tool. I do all my messaging on Skype, Slack. Yeah, I just keep it simple. I use loom a lot okay, loom dot com. You can screen record and just it uploads automatically, super convenient. I love that thing. Such a genius business. I use the Adobe Suite okay for everything. And yeah, and how about your favorite YouTube channel that's not yours favorite YouTube channel that's not mine? Definitely let me know. Spelled kind of weird, but you pronounce it like let me know, but let me know. And a super big fan of him. He does these mystery videos where it's completely animated, custom animated, really cool aesthetic, incredible music selection, great writing, keeps you in suspense. Huge fan huh. I'm going to add that right now. And then a favorite business book. Favorite business book probably the one that got me started. When I was studying computer science. I was very academic back then, not very business minded at all. I even considered like doing a master's degree in computer science. And I was like very deep into it, basically very nerdy, very academic. And one day my friend recommends me this book, Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ. DeMarco, And I listened to the audiobook in one day and it basically just turned my world around. And I came in the next day completely uninterested in college, going from like a complete academic to like, screw this, I want to drop out already. Why am I doing this? Why didn't anyone tell me about this different world that existed? So that book had the most profound impact on my life. Millionaire Fast Line was that what it was? Yeah? Why? MJ. DeMarco fascinating? All right? Jake, well this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online? YouTube search Jake Tran should be the first result. I hope and uh on Instagram. Jaketran dot io. I'm thinking about getting on Twitter. I don't know. I think that's a good idea. So anyway, everyone make sure you check out Jake Tran on the tubes, Instagram and hopefully soon on Twitter. So Jake thinks I have an account. I have an account, I just don't see it. You have like fifty eight followers on there? Yeah, yeah, all right, everyone go follow Jake on on Twitter as well. All right, catch you all later. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool dot io for more resources based on today's topic, as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool dot io until next time. Class dismissed

Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Paatel and Eric Sue. All Right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. All Right, everyone, today, we've got Jake Chran, who I had the pleasure of hanging out with last week in in Miami. And so, Jake, I mean, the way I look at you is you do business essays on YouTube. That's what you define in your Twitter. I don't know if it's your Twitter or someone else's Twitter, but Jake's almost got a million subs, and I think depending on when you listen to this could be way more by then, And I've kind of followed his growth over time, and his videos are really well done. And not only that, he's kind of becoming the modern day renaissance man. I mean, he's doing all this stuff while he's traveling. So we're gonna dive into how he does all this And yeah, Jake, do you think I missed anything with your intro? No, Usually the elevator pitch I give is I run the number one business channel for documentaries on money, power and crime. Interesting, why did you start with money, power and crime? So it's a long story with the YouTube channel, But for that angle, I really got inspired by the book forty Laws of Power by Robert Green. And in that book, he talks about how the pursuit of power kind of pervades our lives everywhere we look. And yet, you know, talking about power openly is such a taboo subjects and that's what he kind of wanted to solve with his book. And I was really inspired by that and I really love the book. So I've kind of angled my channel around that kind of concept, like looking at everything from like the power angle, like the money angle, which usually involves crime, So yeah, awesome. You know what, have you read the fiftieth law before? Not yet? Not yet. The fiftieth Law is collab that he did with fifty seid It's okay. I think forty eight laws is better and he has that. I just bought his new book Mastery from another friend that recommended it. But anyway, I'm sure you'll like that one. So look, I want to start off with your YouTube journey because YouTube's always it's a slog for most people, and I think they just give up too early. And I think you had a story like that. So do you want to talk about your story and kind of your assent because I think people will get a lot from that experience. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people see the success stories of someone who just starts the YouTube channel and blows up right away. I was definitely not that. It took me from zero two hundred k subscribers. It took me four years in total with two different channels, like trying out two different channels until it really took off. And I found that a good example of this is like Ram Stephan, who blew up like relatively quickly, but for him, he had all this experience built up as a real estate investor and agent already, so he had something to talk about already for people like me who watched YouTube as a kid and really wanted to be a YouTuber. I started my first channel when I was probably sixteen or seventeen maybe, and I didn't have any life experience back then. My brain wasn't fully developed, so it took me a lot longer, and it was totally worth it. That's why I usually say I got a degree in YouTube, because it took a total of four years to get to one hundred. Kay, you get the plaque too, so that's my degree. But yeah, so all I watched throughout high school middle school was YouTube, so that was my main form of entertainment. So at the time, I was really into tech channels in high school, like Linus Tech Tests, Marcus Brownlee, and I just fell in love with the idea that you could do something creative, just have fun on camera, playing around with products, getting free stuff, and make a living out of it. So I just really fell in love with that with that idea. So at the time I was doing Techwindo, I was an instructor and a competitor, and that was my only form of expertise, so logically I wanted to do a Techwindo channel, and I grew up to like five k subs in one to two years, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty bad, so I gave up on it. I went the traditional route of studying computer science, became a wet developer, and once I got the job that I thought I always wanted, like it was remote front and web dev, I just got super bored really fast. So I went back into YouTube and after a few months going at it, I was making like one hundred bucks a month from YouTube. So I literally just quit my job and the job if I did a full time it was it would have paid me like eighty K a year when I was like nineteen, So that was a big commitment to quit that job, so I quit it. I was living with my parents at the time, so I didn't have many expenses, so I was good on latfronts. But it took me like another year of doing this channel until it really took off. And during that first year of this channel, I was really struggling because at the time I was watching Graham stuffan, so I was kind of making videos similar to him, but because I was kind of just copying him. I wasn't giving anyone some inherent reason to watch my videos over his, which is which is what I see a lot of people do when they first start on YouTube, which is okay, but you have to like move past the where you know you start off. You're inspired by the YouTubers you watch, so you try to copy them, but you don't give people a reason to watch your videos over theirs, so you don't grow. So a year in I knew I had to change something. So I read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, and I basically it teaches you how to go into any crowded niche, any credit industry, and carve out your own little blue ocean to where you're not competing anymore because you created your own little subniche where there's no competition. So I basically just followed an exercise in the book and created basically the strategy I have for this channel right now, where there's no real competitors, at least when it started. Now, no little copycast was popping up here and there. But yeah, that's how I finally broke through and finally started growing. Got it, And so can you give us a breakdown. I mean, so Graham Stephan for those that don't know, So the way that works is he mostly talks about investing. They're usually ten to fifteen minute videos, and he'll give breakdowns of like his stock portfolio or like you know, he'll go through articles and all that, and so you know that's you initially tried to kind of imitate that a little bit, right, and then now, I mean, you have your own formula, So what does that formula look like? And then can you just kind of walk us us through how like you're different because blue ocean basically, just so everyone knows Blue ocean, it's a lot less competitive of Red ocean is where like people are killing each other. It's too competitive. Yeah, there's blood in the ocean. So I read that book and I basically looked at all the different niches on YouTube the highlights, and the three main ones were personal finance, make money online niche, and the edutainment niche channels like Polymatter, Windover Productions, Cris Cazot channels like that where it's like b roller animation plus voice over. And then the third niche st I really liked at the time was video essays where people break down movies like Why the Joker Is the Greatest Villain Ever or whatever, and I basically just took the stuff I liked from each of those niches. I threw away the stuff I didn't like from each of those niches, and with all those different attributes, I looked at the ones I liked but could improve on. So that's why it's basically a combination of these three subniches that make up my channel today. That's part of the reason why I'm on a camera at the end of the videos, because I liked the personal touch, the personal connection you build when people are on camera, like in the like the gram stuff in style. But I also liked the cinematic aspect of the video essays, plus the production value of like the Editatement niche. So it was just a giant mix of all these things. Yeah, it's hard for people to to so just I just want people to understand how this might look. And I recommend just typing Jake trying into YouTube so you can you know when you get home or whatever. But the way your videos are done, they're typically it seems like fifteen to twenty five minutes or so, and then to your point, they're video essays you don't your faces and pop up till later, So there's a lot of b roll. You're kind of narrating, right, So I guess you know, that's what makes it different because there's not a lot of people doing that. And now you see there's copycasts which I haven't seen quite yet. For you the production, how long is it typically taking for you to kind of make the sausage from start to finish? Like probably like five days, okay, yeah, And that's like how many hours per day are you putting in there? It's hard to say because it's creative work, and you can't do creative work for like eight hours straight, yeah, like you just get burns out. It's really hard to say, like it depends a few hours to eight hours a day, I don't know, Okay, yeah, So I mean my point of asking the question too, just so everyone knows, like mister Beasts has a good saying about like forget about the views and all that, like the subscribers, it's just about making a damn good video. And so just by asking that question, you can tell like hours and hours goes into it, Like Jake isn't half asking it when he's doing this right, And so I guess when you started to do this, when did you start to reap the rewards? Because some people are probably thinking, like, you know, oh man, I have to put like fifteen twenty twenty five hours plus into a video, Like how long did it take to start seeing it go up? Yeah? So I had that the lemma first too when I started doing this style of video, like why should I put in ten fifteen hours into a video that's only going to get five hundred views? And the problem with that is, you know, if you never make a good video to start, you're never going to get the views. I probably made probably like four or five videos of this new style, on one that took off, and the one that took off was called why Graham Stefan is killing the YouTube Algorithm. When I switched to this style, I went from like a few hundred views to like two thousand views three thousand views, which is better but not crazy. So once I launched that video, I showed it with Graham on Instagram and he just really really loved it and was super impressed, and he showed it on his Instagram with a swipe up, and from there, within a few weeks it climbed up to one hundred k views, So that was the initial snowball that got things rolling from there. Subsequent videos got less views. Now it was in like the tens of thousand views, and I kind of just kept iterating. At the start, I wasn't doing like money power crime, but it kind of just iterated towards that as I studied more and found things I'm interested in. And after that video, I think the next video that really took me into the direction of the channel today was after I watched a documentary on war profiteering, so I made a video on the viciously profitable business of war. I thought no one was going to be interested in that, because who was interested in war profiteering? I am. I just thought it was cool that video did super well, So I kind of just kept doing that the absurd business of banking until I kind of got to this point of focusing on purely money power crime. Yeah, and so walk us through your research process. You don't need to go super in depth here. But also it takes time to have to read this stuff and pull up like the research right, So yeah, there's literally no easy way around it. Aggressive googling, reading books and articles, YouTube videos, documentaries, just basically searching wherever I can to find like the best stories there you go. I mean, look, at the end of the day, there's there's no shortcut around making a damn good video. I do like how like you made a video about someone and you shared it with them, there's kind of that push. Do you think that that led to like a push that kind of just stayed there for the videos or is it like you just kept making really good videos afterwards. Yeah, So I would say it jumped up, huh, and it went down like halfway, but it's still like halfway back fifty percent better than before. Yeah, so it was still a massive, massive boost. So the initial push helped a lot. So yeah, yeah good. Yeah, I would say a lot got it. Lots cool. But for some people, they grow, they grow super gradually. Like Marcus Brownlee. He talks about it all the time, how he never had like a explosion moment, it was always very gradual. Interesting. Yeah, I mean this stuff takes time to compound, and like some people take it says it takes three years to get going. Some people maybe it's five years to build like a like an audience or build a business and so I do want to talk about that too in a second. But tell us what not to do, tell us what to do to fail at YouTube. So you know, I think a lot of us go into it, but the I call it like the kind of Gary v mindset. I'm not bashing on Gary Vie. I like him, but a lot of people go into it thinking that, you know, if I just put out content, if I just stay consistent, then I would just eventually blow up. But no matter how many times you put out the same bad video, it's still the same bad video. So I believe it's a combination of consistency but also continuously innovating and trying out new new video formats, trying out new video styles and seeing what catches on, because no matter how many times you put out the same video, it's not going to do any better because today it's a lot more competitive. Like back when garyt v started, he just posted the same wine videos over and over and over again, and he eventually blew up, which worked for him. But today there's a lot more competition. You really have to be strategic about it and give people a reason to watch your videos over someone else's. So I would say, like the number one mistake would be just putting out content and thinking that it will eventually blow up. Got it, and then walk us through kind of the the economics of a YouTuber just I'm sure people are wondering that question. The number one revenue stream people think about is AdSense, where YouTube plays ads on your videos, and that can be really lucrative depending on your niche. So some niches can't be monetized because it's to like music because you're doing covers of copyright songs, or some niches are really touchy that you can't get monetized on. And some niches are more profitable than others because advertisers are willing to pay more for those niches versus other niches. So, for example, any video related to courses like make money online courses like people can put ads on. Those get super super high ad rates because they're so only like a thousand dollars course and they have super high profit margins, so they're willing to get like one hundred dollars cost per acquisition or three hundred dollars cost per acquisition, so they're willing to pay a lot more. Other niches pay less, So you can't just have to balance it out. I know people who get a fraction of my views, but since they're CPM cost per one thousand views is so high, they still make a lot of money with like a tiny amount of use just because their audience is so concentrated. The CPM is so high, and they do more like affiliate marketing to the super hyper concentrated audience, So they make a lot of money just from a very little amount of use. So there's different ways to go about it. For me, I think my CPM is above average, not crazy low, and I bounce it out with a lot of views too. That's one. The other one in sponsored spots. Every video of mine is sponsored because I view it as if it's not sponsored, then that's wasted real estate that could have been sponsored or promoting something else. So those are the two biggest got it? And so you've kind of gone beyond just the sponsorships and the ads and stuff, right, like what walk us through kind of the business model for you and the kind of what your long term vision is. Yeah, So the newest thing I've done is the YouTube join button, where next to the subscribe button, there's a join button and you can pay five bucks a month to get. In my case, it's a much longer documentary on stuff that I normally kind of talk about on the public channel because it's like too controversial. So the video is not monetized, and you pay five bucks a month and you get one of those videos a week. The next one that's about to come out I'm very excited for it's on Jeffrey Epstein Nice. I definitely cannot post out publicly. So the way I'm approaching this is most people who do like a join button or Patreon, it's more of a donation offer, like you want to support this creator. I don't believe in relying on the generosity of others for your business. I think that's like a losing formula. So I really want to approach this differently where the value they get like way exceeds the five dollars a month, and I think it does right now. The documentaries are very good. I put a lot of work into them, and there's like inherent value because I literally wouldn't be able to post these on the main channel. It wouldn't be worth it. So that's how I'm approaching that and in the future, so my front end monetization is pretty like very solid with the ad sense sponsor spots, et cetera. I have a little bit on the back of now with the five dollars a month thing. The plan is to kind of like max out the back end montization with some bigger offer that costs more but obviously still delivering more value than what it costs. So I'm still deciding on that right now. I haven't found listed yet, but that's like the focus for this year. Got it? Love that? And so, and just another question around your videos. How many videos are you cranking out per week? Right now? It's four, but sometimes I have delays. Sometimes I have the delays. It's a grind. It's a grind. I would say, yeah, so, do you think you're going to continue down that pace for the rest of this year? Or yeah, damn, I'm just doing the math right now. Let's just say each video takes about fifteen hours or so six let's say twenty hours. It's eighty hours right there, in addition to all the other stuff you're doing. And plus everyone should know too, I mean, Jake, you're doing all this while you're traveling, right Yeah. So I literally live out of my backpack and my carry on right now. I don't even have a big suitcase. It's like a carry on. The fits in the overhead bin crazy And yeah, I found that the ninety nine whatever percent of humanity has been spent nomadding. Like this culture of having a house, a lot of possessions, et cetera is a fairly new thing in the grand scheme of things, like consumerism only really popped up in the nineteen hundreds. So I found that the closer you get to like the ideal of what our brain's evolved for, the more contempt you feel with life, the more happy you feel. And that's what I found with minimalism and traveling all the time, seeing different places, is that I don't really have anything to lose anymore. I don't have a house to lose, I don't have a car to lose, I have money to lose, but none of these tangible things that hold you down. And I found it like super rewarding and really good. That's the same reason why I do martial arts combat sports, because you know, it's a very visceral, primal thing. You get to release it like a lot of violent energy. Again, it takes you, it puts you in like that ideal state that our brain's evolved for and I found like a lot of inner piece doing all this stuff. Huh fascinating. So let's go into that a little bit to talk to us about becoming this renaissance man. Like, how are you doing. You're traveling the world right now, You're trying all these new things. I'm looking at your Instagram, like you're playing the guitar, You're doing daekwondo, You're meeting all these people. Tell us kind of what the how you're planning to become the modern day renaissance men. Well, I've always just loved learning in general, and I think like learning is probably the greatest superpower you can have because if you love learning, if you're good at learn, if you're a fast learner, then you can learn anything, like any skill you wants. And if you look at like the greatest renaissance men throughout history, Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, et cetera, they were able to achieve like competence, they were able to innovate in all these different fields. When there was no Internet, they have to like go out and find books and like talk to people in the real world. And you know, today we're so lucky to have all the stuff available to us, all online, and I don't know, I feel like we kind of owe it to them to like achieve more than they did when they had nothing and we have everything. So that's one reason. And another reason is I just find it cool, so much fun to learn all these new things all the time. Yeah. So I started out with taekwondo, graphic design and video editing, well development, shooting guns, gun fighting. Now it's jiu jitsu. Have my first multi Thai class a few weeks back. So fun, and yeah, I just find it so rewarding in like every way. Got it? So yeah, just continue learning whatever I'm passionate about. So how does that work when you're traveling? So do you, like, let's say you're going to London or something or Dubai or something, right, do you just look at like who teaches in the area? Are you like yelping it or something like yeah? Yeah yeah. So unfortunately there's not too many martial arts schools around London, which is very disappointing to me. So this traveling thing, I expect it to last like forever. I'm just gonna keep nomadding until I get bored. Ideally, like my ideal like lifestyle if I like settled down and stop no banding, would be to have like coaches or classes stretch out throughout the day, kind of like my own university, but of stuff I actually want to do and learn, so like an hour list and an hour orleve et cetera. So while I'm traveling in this space of my life, it's a lot harder obviously. So yeah, right now is mainly just like working out every day consistently while I'm traveling, which is really nice, so I don't get fat while I travel and working and doing stuff that I can do at home in my hotel room, like learning stuff like that. But yeah, you know what I mean, A lot of people they want to become YouTubers because they want to become famous, right, and so for you face pops up tours, z en and not. I'm just wondering because you don't show your face that much, Like how many people notice you when you're when you're out and about. Yeah, so it's actually a surprising amount for how little I show my face. It just shows like the people who do watch like they're very into it, which is pretty awesome. That's actually a good one. The ones that know you those are the ones that retained they thought you had a good video exactly, exactly, So very good fans. I love all of them. Everything everyone I've met in real life has been like super chill. So it happens like probably one out every two times I'm in a crowded place. Recently it happened in Miami as sexy Fish, like one of the guys working there. Yeah, stuff like that. Amazing, It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Cool man. Usually I ask questions about favorite tools and all that. I'm just curious. I mean, what's your favorite business tool. Let's start there. Favorite business tool. I do all my messaging on Skype, Slack. Yeah, I just keep it simple. I use loom a lot okay, loom dot com. You can screen record and just it uploads automatically, super convenient. I love that thing. Such a genius business. I use the Adobe Suite okay for everything. And yeah, and how about your favorite YouTube channel that's not yours favorite YouTube channel that's not mine? Definitely let me know. Spelled kind of weird, but you pronounce it like let me know, but let me know. And a super big fan of him. He does these mystery videos where it's completely animated, custom animated, really cool aesthetic, incredible music selection, great writing, keeps you in suspense. Huge fan huh. I'm going to add that right now. And then a favorite business book. Favorite business book probably the one that got me started. When I was studying computer science. I was very academic back then, not very business minded at all. I even considered like doing a master's degree in computer science. And I was like very deep into it, basically very nerdy, very academic. And one day my friend recommends me this book, Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ. DeMarco, And I listened to the audiobook in one day and it basically just turned my world around. And I came in the next day completely uninterested in college, going from like a complete academic to like, screw this, I want to drop out already. Why am I doing this? Why didn't anyone tell me about this different world that existed? So that book had the most profound impact on my life. Millionaire Fast Line was that what it was? Yeah? Why? MJ. DeMarco fascinating? All right? Jake, well this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online? YouTube search Jake Tran should be the first result. I hope and uh on Instagram. Jaketran dot io. I'm thinking about getting on Twitter. I don't know. I think that's a good idea. So anyway, everyone make sure you check out Jake Tran on the tubes, Instagram and hopefully soon on Twitter. So Jake thinks I have an account. I have an account, I just don't see it. You have like fifty eight followers on there? Yeah, yeah, all right, everyone go follow Jake on on Twitter as well. All right, catch you all later. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool dot io for more resources based on today's topic, as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool dot io until next time. Class dismissed