This week, I sat down with the inspiring Graham Cochrane, a seven-figure business owner who has managed to scale his online business while working just five hours a week. Dive into an engaging conversation where Graham shares his journey, insights on building a successful online business, and actionable strategies for audience growth. Whether you’re a course creator, membership owner, or coach, this episode is packed with valuable tips to help you streamline your business and achieve your goals.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Building a Scalable Business:
The importance of focusing on audience building as the primary asset for long-term success. - Creating Valuable Content:
Strategies for creating engaging and valuable content that resonates with your target audience. - Personal and Professional Growth:
The significance of aligning your business with your personal values and lifestyle.
If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Graham on Million Dollar Life Giving Business Formula Training, Podcast, Youtube, Instagram, Rebel book
Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Teresa: If you got the chance to sit down with a seven figure business owner who only works five hours a week. What would you want to ask them? Well, this is exactly what I got the chance to do. I got the opportunity to sit down and talk to Graham Cochrane, who has a seven figure online business. And like I said, only works Five hours a week.
And I got to pick his brain about how he has done it and how he has built his business. He shares the number one skill that he believes that every online business owner should have to build a successful business. And also he has a really fascinating question that we should be asking ourselves while we’re building that business to ensure that we are attracting the right people into our world.
It really is an insightful conversation, which I think you’re going to get so much out of.
Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I’m your host, [00:01:00] Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast.
I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you’re in. In each episode, I’ll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we’ll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way.
So if you’re a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. This week, I have got an amazing guest for you. I’m interviewing the very lovely Graham Cochrane. Now I first met Graham when I went to the Kajabi conference last year, and he was one of the speakers on the VIP [00:02:00] day.
And he’s just one of those people who is so lovely and seems so nice that you just instantly want to be friends with them. And I spoke to him at the conference. And when I did the summit, I knew I wanted him to speak because at the summit, I got him to talk about his affiliate work that he does with teh Kajabi because he makes a ton of money through Kajabi affiliate.
However, today on the podcast, I am picking his brain about completely different stuff. We are talking about how he built his business, how he finds the online world. And I’m asking him questions about what is working right now. What would he be doing if he was just starting out again? And he is a big YouTuber, has a really successful YouTube account.
And I might mention to him that I’m thinking about a YouTube channel and I ask him what I should do and how I should get started. So it was an awesome way to [00:03:00] pick his brains about all that good stuff. He is a really lovely guy and very smart on what he does. And I know you are going to get so much value from this episode of this podcast.
So. If you’ve got a friend who you think would also value this podcast, please do go and share it with them. And it would be remiss of me not to ask you while you’re at it to give me a review on either Apple or Spotify. A lovely five stars would be amazing. I appreciate it so very much. And I want to remind you, if you have the VIP pass for the summit, then you can watch Graham’s session that he did there.
It really was excellent. Okay. I will leave you to it. Here’s the lovely Graham. Graham, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing?
Graham: Oh, I’m doing great. I’m not as great as you’re about to be on your trip, so I can’t wait to hear about it when you come back.
Teresa: Yeah, it’s an exciting time at the point recording this.
We’ve got lots of exciting things coming up, which is awesome. So you spoke at the summit. And people loved your session. [00:04:00] And we had such a lovely conversation that you very kindly agreed to give me your time again and come and be a guest on the podcast. But just in case someone doesn’t know who you are, we will start the same, maybe slightly boring way, but I find it helpful to explain who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today.
Graham: Yeah, well, I’m excited to be here. I loved your summit. I love your energy. And when I got to meet you, I think in person at the Kajabi event in 2023, you were just super kind and nice to me. I got off stage and you said some nice things and you’re very gracious. So I knew I liked you immediately when I met you.
So. It’s not a problem to spend time with you. Yeah, I would, I tell people I’ve been online about 15 years now in the online coaching space, selling courses, communities, masterminds, things like that. Originally in the music recording space, my first company’s called the Recording Revolution. I’m a musician by trade.
I grew up making songs, writing songs, but then I learned The art of recording and producing and audio engineering [00:05:00] and stumbled into content creation. I thought I was trying to put out some stuff on the internet in 2009 to get leads for a freelance service of recording and producing music. Had no idea that people would just like the content for what it was because they wanted to learn how to do it themselves and they didn’t want to hire me as much as they wanted to learn how to do it.
And so I became a, an educator and people wanted more content, more content, more YouTube videos, more articles. And I just was like, this is the coolest thing ever, but you don’t make any money writing blog posts and making YouTube videos. So if I’m going to keep doing this, how can I make money? And that just opened the door to trying to figure this stuff out.
I didn’t know that these things existed. I didn’t know the Amy Porterfield’s of the world. They didn’t know there was a world where people were selling courses. And so I stumbled into it, eventually figured out that was the having your own digital product was the best way, in my opinion, to monetize. I’ve done it all though.
Affiliate marketing, brand deals, advertising, [00:06:00] sponsorships, done it all, but stumbled into that, built that business up. And then I would say the last six or seven years, I’ve been teaching people the business model, how to do what I’ve done in hobby niches, all kinds of niches. And Now I’m writing books and speaking and, and hanging out with cool people like you.
So I just say, like, I like to teach, I like to empower people. I like people to get transformation. And I’ve discovered I have a gift of taking complex things, making it simple and helping people actually go implement it, which at the end of the day is what makes people have life changes when they actually do something with the information, right?
Teresa: Yeah. And I’m so glad you said that because I think In this online space, there is no short of information and, and in terms of people teaching in this online space, there’s no short of those people as well. But I think the one thing that people often miss is you actually need to do the work. So learn and find out and follow people and everything is brilliant, but actually You’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to do these things [00:07:00] or otherwise it’s never going to actually happen and you can’t live from the beach and earn money as you sleep.
But I mean, it’s nice. That would be lovely. But we do actually have to do some work as well. So when we had you on the summit, we talked a lot about you do a lot of affiliate stuff. You do brilliantly well with the affiliate stuff. You built a big audience. You are known for what you do, which is amazing.
But actually I’m gonna be a bit selfish and like proper pick your brains on this session.
Graham: Sure.
Teresa: ’cause because it’s my podcast that I can. But.
Graham: Do whatever you want.
Teresa: I’m also fascinated because you have been in this industry and this space for a long time. What are your thoughts? Because I feel like it’s gone through various different things. And I’ve been in since probably about eight, nine years and I’ve seen lots of changes. So what changes have you seen and what do you see kind of really like, what do you, what do you project for the future of it or how we need to [00:08:00] show up or what we need to do if we want to be in this space?
Graham: Man, that is a great question. Is that a good thing that I’m old enough and been around long enough that like I’m being asked that what have you seen this change? It’s so funny. I still feel like I just got into it. Okay, so let’s talk about what hasn’t changed and then story about what’s changed.
Teresa: Yeah. Perfect.
Graham: 30, 000 foot view. What hasn’t changed and will never will change is really the audience is the asset. So you got to build an audience, right? I’ve, I’ve always said this and it’s, it’s proven true. Even though a lot of moving pieces change around, the core tenant is without an audience, nothing is possible, but with an audience, anything is possible.
So we’re really in the audience building business. And more than ever, you want to own that audience. You know, we’re both Kajabi users. Whatever tool you use, you want to have an email list. You want to own the relationship so you can have direct communication with your people. And we’re seeing this with platforms like TikTok.
They’re considering banning it in the United States and it’s on the Congress floor. If you’ve built a business on TikTok, 2 million [00:09:00] followers on TikTok means nothing if it’s banned, right? Or even if it’s not banned and everyone leaves TikTok for the next TikTok, because that’s what’s happened, then you have to go rebuild those followers over there.
You don’t actually own the audience. So, You want to have your own audience, but the reason you want the, the reason the audience is the asset is because you may not know what to sell. You may not even like what you’re selling. You may want to change what you’re selling. It doesn’t matter if they like you and they trust you, then you can monetize in a million different ways and you can even evolve.
I’ve evolved in how I monetize and change, but it’s like the people like me and the audience building is the hardest part and it’s the part people don’t want to do. They want to shortcut the process and let’s just run ads or let me just, you know. And there are ways to bypass it a little bit, but what’s the point if really the skill that’s most necessary to win online is the skill of audience building, you might as well learn it now because then if everything’s taken away from you, you can go build another audience.
Absolute worst case because you’ve learned that skill of how do I, it comes down to serving people. Like no one’s good. No one’s going to follow you for no [00:10:00] reason. They have to have a reason. So that hasn’t changed. And interestingly enough, email marketing has not changed, even though email, there’s new nuances of like things that work and don’t work, but like email marketing still is the number one driver of sales online, which is fascinating to me and everyone wants to kill it, but it’s just not dying and maybe it’ll die one day, but I, I really think it’s, it’s, it’s going to be around for a long time.
So email marketing hasn’t changed, audience building hasn’t changed. And then just paying attention to what your people want. And really listening. And this is, this is what’s harder for people like you and me that are, you know, if you want to call us OGs or whatever. When you’re starting out, you’re scrappy and you’re willing to like, listen and, and pay attention.
And then when you get some success, it’s very easy to just, let’s just do more of what’s already been working because now that I’ve cracked the code, I don’t need to think anymore. And then you start to decline because now you’re not doing the thing that got you there, which was paying attention to what your people want and being scrappy and innovative and [00:11:00] excited.
And so it’s very easy to get dogmatic about your own thing that was innovative at one point. And, and that’s true for me. Like, well, this is the way I do things and this is the way it’s worked. And so I think you always got to stay in that lane of what do my people want? They used to want this or that I used to, My videos used to do well when I did this, but if it doesn’t work anymore, be willing to not just change and trend chase.
It really is because trends don’t matter. What matters is what your audience wants and your audience is different than my audience. They are very unique. And the way you win is by serving the audience. So those are all the things that are 30, 000 foot view, but they’re so important. And those haven’t changed.
A lot has changed. I think there’s, it’s easier in a way than like the tools are. I mean, if anyone complains about the tech staff or the tools today, I just. I just don’t have patience for that. It is so easy to push a button, create a brand and monetize [00:12:00] your knowledge. Yes, it takes work. And this is called a business.
It’s a business, but it is, this is not hard work guys. This is not hard work. So the easier tools, more creative tools. AI is very interesting. I feel like I’m kind of a late adopter in the sense that I don’t, I don’t nerd out over the newest thing. So I probably that’s to my disadvantage. But even I am not an idiot enough to know that like AI is only going to be a tool to speed up things.
Like we’re in the creation business. So if it can speed up my content creation, if it can speed up my web design, if it can be a bridge between me and my clients and Whether it’s an AI chatbot that helps answer some of their low level questions that so I don’t have to or my customer service person. I think those tools are new and those are changing.
And if people get uncomfortable with them, it just think about, again, it’s just a tool. How can I use this tool to make my business faster, leaner, increase or improve the customer experience. Those things are all in flux. And then here’s, here’s what I’m thinking about Teresa. [00:13:00] This is interesting because the last, I would say the last six years.
I’ve had a lot of not pushback, but a lot of people asking me, Graham, why aren’t you doing a lot of short form content? Why aren’t you jumping on, you know, especially the last five years since Tik Tok really started to emerge. Why aren’t you on Tik Tok? Why are you doing a ton of reels? Why aren’t you doing YouTube shorts?
And I mean, I’ve done a few of these things. And there’s been this push and this trend to do that. And then what’s fascinating to me is I’ve, I like doubled down on long form content. I went longer. Everyone got shorter. I went from like 15 minute videos to 30 minutes to 45 minutes.
And I don’t know if you’ve been following, you know, Mr. Beast and Alex Hermosi, but even Alex a week or two ago of this recording posted that he’s, he’s moving away from short form content. He’s moving to longer form content, and he’s moving away from all of the different random topics that grew his audience and realizing none of those people converted into customers or into the right prospects.
So he’s like, I’m going to just double down on one [00:14:00] lane for the type of audience that I want to build. One type of content, educational in nature, not entertainment in nature, because people who consume your entertainment content don’t want to buy education. They want more entertainment. People who consume your education content want more education.
So if you’re selling information or education, that’s, I’d rather have a smaller audience. That’s the right audience. And this is, Alex is probably one of the bigger people to say, you know, 35, 000 pieces of content. I’ve figured it out. I’m just going to go long form. He’s, he’s going, we’re moving backwards to the way it was, which is.
I don’t have the energy to watch all these people. I don’t want the dopamine hits anymore. I just want to pick my, I want to listen to a Teresa and listen to what she has and just learn from her deep dive with her stuff and then implement her stuff. So I get results versus just the quick fix, the quick hits that don’t go deep enough.
So all that to say, I feel like that pendulum is swinging back.
Teresa: Yeah.
Graham: To just, Deeper. Oh, he even said not, he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to do fancy editing. It would be like hardly any editing, no B roll, no [00:15:00] crazy jump cuts. It’ll just be him talking to a camera, long form content. And it’s like, wow, that is not, not only that did change, but now it’s changing back when big names like that are saying, we’re going to focus on just good old fashioned helping people.
Teresa: And I think that everything you just said is brilliant. I think, so the couple of things. The first thing is those core basics will always stand. When I think about what makes me good in my space is I think it’s because I had a degree in marketing, which granted was 20 years ago because I’m very old, a degree in marketing, but the stuff they taught me are those things, you know, building an audience.
They didn’t call it building an audience, obviously, because that really wasn’t a thing, you know, understanding who your customer is. And email marketing was a thing back then. Like it looked very different from today, but it was a thing. And it’s those core things that when you get them, right. [00:16:00] Then like you said, everything else is just mechanics, mechanics and tools.
different things that you can use to execute the thing. But I love the fact that those are so important. And I want to come back to the audience thing, which I will in a minute. But the other thing I wanted to say as well is it proves that like, when something comes out, when the next big thing happens, when the TikTok happens, all the reels happen, all the whatever.
And I am like you, okay, I’m not on TikTok. I rebel against making reels. I just hate it for whatever reason. I really struggle. I have my podcast that I do. I don’t jump on the new and latest things because one, I don’t have the mental capacity for it. And I just think I haven’t got the energy for it. I didn’t jump on threads when that came.
I used to be on Twitter a lot and I shut that account down given the dumpster fire is over there sometimes. So like, but people think to be in this space and particularly in the online space, I’ve got to be on the latest things. I’ve got to be doing the [00:17:00] latest things. I’ve got to be churning out every type of different content in different places with different people.
But actually there are hugely successful people who went, no, This is my lane. I’m going to stick in it. This is what I’m good at. And I’m going to keep focused on that space. And I think that’s really important to remember that if someone, if someone’s listening to some things, they’ve heard someone go, you’ve got to do this to be successful.
No, absolute rubbish. Like there is someone successful in every single genre space, tools, strategy, mechanic. It’s just the fact that they’re in that one and that works for them. So yeah, let’s talk about the audience building. Because you’re right, this is, this is something that I am focusing really hard on this year because As much as I don’t want to say it, and I know you and I are both very similar in the sense of when I say this is a numbers game, neither of us really feel like it’s a numbers game because we genuinely care and we’re not just about collecting the [00:18:00] people so we can buy them our stuff, you know, and make loads of money.
But it is a numbers game because if you haven’t got an audience, you haven’t got a business. What are you seeing right now that is working really well for you and for other people that you work with in terms of growing audiences?
Graham: Yeah, I mean, again, this is a tricky thing, right? Is that which audience are you building?
And this is kind of what Alex was his audience, but found out that the majority of them aren’t going to be the right people to buy from him, you know? And so there’s, so there’s things that are working. Like I have clients that are like, Hey, I’ve found out if I react to these news articles, I get a lot of eyeballs because it’s a trending term or it’s a trending news piece.
And I think that’s strategic, right? It’s you, you’re jumping on a trend, you’re jumping on something that’s newsworthy and that might put you in front of people that wouldn’t have heard of you otherwise. Are those the right people that are gonna opt into your list and it eventually buy your thing? It just depends on how tightly aligned that news piece is.
It [00:19:00] could be the perfect segue into your stuff. But it might not. I, I, a client I was on a call with yesterday, his, we were sort of tearing down his YouTube channel and looking at it. His number one video is Sort of like a parody of a very famous person on YouTube and that’s gotten him a lot of views But none of that has nothing to do with what he sells or what he does And he knows that he was just trying different stuff at a time But it’s frustrating to see like the YouTube thinks he they want to rank him high for this guy’s name And so if you look at his analytics The data would say, make more videos about this guy.
Yeah. And you’ll get more views and that would be correct. But that would be pointless too, because those aren’t the right eyeballs. And so I always try to reverse engineer. So start with, If you have a product to sell already, you start with that product. Like who’s going to buy this? Who is the right person to buy this?
And you reverse engineer the business around that. That’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Then you would think, okay, what, what type of people are they? What are they searching for on Google and YouTube [00:20:00] right now? What, like, what questions do they have and what, pain points do they have? Can I show up and meet them there when they’re like, I don’t know how to do X or how to do Y and then there’s Teresa or there’s Graham answering that question and bringing them into the ecosystem.
That’s a perfectly valid way to think about it. If you don’t have a product yet and you’re like, I want to have a online course and make passive income and you’re just starting out, then do the opposite. Please don’t build the product first. Right. Start to think about who you could most easily serve. And a simple way to think about this, cause it’s so brilliant the way my friend Rory Vaden says it.
He says, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
Teresa: Yes.
Graham: So you may not feel like you’re an expert or credible or you don’t have a degree and like none of that stuff matters. That’s just usually our insecurity coming up. But who were you in the past? What did you overcome? Did you have a health journey where you like made a lot of progress and lost a lot of weight? Did you have a, like a tragedy? I have a friend who lost a baby at five weeks and she [00:21:00] dealt with that mourning process and now she’s powerfully positioned to serve moms and dads who’ve had an infant loss, right? Like what have you overcome?
What have you succeeded at in the past? Have you gone from this to this? That’s probably the easiest business you could build around because it is your story. It’s your experience. You’re probably the person people ask for help around the subject anyway. Like for me, it was audio recording. Like I knew how to set up a studio and help you record.
And so it was very natural for me to start creating content around that, which is going to attract those people that want to know more about it. And then I could figure out what product to serve them with after the fact. So it really comes down to the who, who can you serve best? Who do you want to serve?
And then if you want to get nitty gritty, like you could say, well, which platform are they on? Like, there are like some audiences that are more on LinkedIn, let’s say, if they’re more in the corporate environment world or leadership space, like I, I think LinkedIn is a weird platform, I don’t ever [00:22:00] log into it.
I had an assistant that created an account for me at one point. He’s like, you’re doing pretty well on LinkedIn. I’m like, what, why would I ever be on LinkedIn? But I have friends that if they do one post on LinkedIn, not only they get a huge following, they get clients immediately because their people are there.
So you could think about what platform your people are on. Or just pick one, like just pick one to your point. This is the great thing about business building in the 21st century is it all works. There is no one way. If anyone’s telling you this is the one way, it’s probably the way they’ve had success with it.
Like I will tell you to be on YouTube because I’ve had a lot of success with it. I also think the data shows that it’s a great efficient use of your time because it’s a giant search engine, but people usually telling you their way. But if you don’t like YouTube. You could still make a boatload of money doing something entirely different.
Just, it really comes down to who you want to serve, where you’re going to serve them, and just focusing. Something else that I’ll just, last thing here [00:23:00] that really is powerful, Rory Vaden talks about this too. They talk about something he calls Sheehan’s Wall. Which is like there’s, there’s a wall that separates unknown people from known people.
So on the, on the known side, you’ve got the Oprah Winfrey’s, the Tony Robbins of the world, like the Elon Musk’s, whatever, everybody knows their name. And then you’re, there’s the rest of us on the unknown side. And then you can have a microcosm of that in a certain niche. Like you might be unknown in a niche or might be known in a niche.
Like I was, I became the most known person in my audio recording niche and we’re trying to break through that wall. How do you get to the other side? And so usually we see people on the other side, like, you know, Tony Robbins. He’s like, wow, he speaks about, you know, business building and relationships and mindset and all these cool things.
He does all these things. I want to do all those things. And so you try to do all those things or he’s on all these platforms. I’m going to be on all these platforms and you’re taking all your effort and spraying it on a wall and it’s being spread out and sprayed on a wall. It will never break through the wall because it’s just diluted.
It’s diluted. The way to break through the wall [00:24:00] is to pick one audience you’re going to serve to solve one problem and pick one platform and just focus all that water all that pressure in that one spot until you break through Which is how most of these people did. Once you, once you’re on the other side of the wall, you can talk about, do whatever you want all over the place.
You can have a record label and an airline and a colonized Mars. It doesn’t matter because you’re on the other side of the wall, but you have to break through the wall. And so if you haven’t broken through the wall yet, then just give yourself the freedom to just pick one audience type of person, one problem to solve, one platform to solve it on and just crush it until you break through and then get creative and have fun after that.
Teresa: That’s such a good point. And if you had said that to me six, seven years ago, I’d really appreciate it because I have done, and it’s so funny at this point that we’re recording this, I have just done a big review of my business. I’m back to rebrand. I personally have, I hate to say, been through a journey because that, is very, you know, coined by lots of people, but I have, I spent last year getting sober and it [00:25:00] not only changed me, it changed my life.
It changed my business. Like I am not the person who I was. I feel completely different. And I’m able to see everything with such clarity now, probably helped that I’m not Drunk or hung over, but I am able to see stuff as such clarity. And what’s so funny is when I started in this space, I started when the first speaking gigs I did was over in the States.
It was for lead pages. It was for one of their events. I was on after Pat Flynn. So this was back in 2017, I think. And I was talking about building your online business. And I was talking about the importance of doing a webinar and landing pages and lead magnets and all of this, right? And then I think for obviously lots of good reasons, but I started, I started to get picked up for that.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I got distracted. And then I went, but mindset’s over here. Oh, and I can be a coach over here. And Oh, let me do this thing over here. And I [00:26:00] completely diluted, who I was and what I did. And I had built this name, which was cool, or a level, you know, which is called my built a level of an audience, which is cool, I guess, because of me, but I wasn’t doing what you said.
I was like, literally going, let’s talk about mindset. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about that. And, and obviously I’d come from a marketing background. There was nothing in marketing. I couldn’t really talk about either. But I completely diluted myself. And it was so funny because the other week, not the other week, near the beginning of this year, someone posted like something about me and put something like the best social media person I know.
And I was like, like, I haven’t done social media for like years and years. And I thought no one knows who I am or what I do. Like people want to work with me, which is lovely. But if you say to them, What do you think Teresa will do for you? They’d be like, I don’t know. It’d just be really nice to work with her, right?
Which is a terrible marketing strategy. So I’m actually [00:27:00] now getting to the point where I’m pulling it all back in and going, I know I can talk about that thing and I do love talking about that, but actually, I need to go back to my roots of online business of that’s where I’m good. That’s what I know about.
That is like what should have been my niche all those years ago. And I didn’t. And I got distracted. And like I said, having gone through what I’ve gone through, you know, the mindset stuff I did, the coaching stuff I did, I think was probably essential part of my journey. And probably in part way, helped me get to where I am today from a health point of view and from a sober point of view, but actually from a business point of view, it kind of really screwed me over a bit.
So. I think what I’m trying to say is like, it’s almost not too late. Like, yeah, I am 10 years in my business this year, but I’ve refocused and gone. Actually, that is where I shone. And that is what I loved. And that is now my sole focus of yes. How awesome that I can talk about the mindset stuff if you want to, and I can focus on [00:28:00] coaching things if you want to, but actually where I’m really freaking good is the online business space and getting people to grow their online business and have this amazing online business.
So, so yeah. So I’d really like to have heard that like many years ago, but as it is, I’m grateful you said it now, and hopefully someone else listening to this will be a bit earlier in their journey and they will get the message a bit quicker than I maybe did. Okay. So I, part of my review is I had a, a good friend who’s a marketing guy and he did a full content review on me.
looking at everything and we’re making some changes to the podcast to just get it more engaging and do some things and increase the listens and things. One thing he said to me, and again, I’m being very selfish that I have you on my podcast and we can talk about this, is he wants me to start YouTube. Okay.
Graham: I like this guy.
Teresa: Yeah. He’s obviously very smart. I haven’t done it in the past because I think there was a part of me that’s like, it [00:29:00] needs to be perfect and I need to do this. And I really hated pre recorded stuff because put me live and I’m fine. Pre recorded I’d like, Oh, I stumbled there. I need to change it, whatever.
And I think as I’ve grown in confidence and I’ve done more and more and more of this stuff, I actually don’t care that I might stumble over my words. It’s fine. We’re humans. So. If someone like me was thinking about starting YouTube and obviously now, you know, I have my team, they’re very efficient. So with the podcast, I do my bit, they do the rest, which is amazing.
So I know I’ve got the backup in place to take on another content strategy, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to everybody. What, like, 101, getting started. How do I make this work? What, what should I be thinking?
Graham: Oh, I love that you’re doing this because I think it’s only going to help you. Like the beauty of, the beauty of a podcast is that you create really deep engagement.
And the listeners who listen to podcasts usually listen all the way [00:30:00] through and like they they generally want to take action like it’s pretty intimate. It’s an intimate platform. The negative with podcast is that it’s hard to discover you if you’re on a podcast. There are some search tools inside of Apple Podcasts and Spotify, but it’s kind of a closed loop right now.
So the beauty of like either just taking the video of your, your podcast recording, like if we’re taking the video of this and putting that up on YouTube, that alone will significantly skyrocket your exposure to the podcast because now it’s on YouTube as a search platform. I got fed a podcast that Tim Ferriss was on yesterday or the other day on when I was on YouTube.
For a girl, I don’t follow her podcast and I went and listened to it on Apple podcast because I was in the car and it was easier to listen to it, but I discovered it on YouTube because the algorithm fed it to me. So I think you’ll win better just by being on YouTube, even if you didn’t do new videos, even if you just posted your podcast as a video podcast like Joe Rogan, like he kind of pioneered the video podcast, just put up a camera while you [00:31:00] talk or just take the video on your zoom or I use Riverside like that’s great.
Other than that, most people overthink YouTube. Like it literally is as simple as everything you’re already doing in your business, which is, and this is really great that you’re refining who you want to serve and what you want to focus on. YouTube really thrives with specificity, just like any brand should because YouTube is a platform that wants to serve videos to its viewers.
Its job is to find the right videos that its viewers want to watch. It’s not there to help you, Teresa or me is there to help the viewers. So if we want to play along with YouTube, we have to give YouTube as much information as we can to tell it.
What are our videos about? Who are they for? And who should they serve those videos to? And if they trust us and, and basically, you know, serve up the videos that we say they are to the people we think they should be showing them to, and people don’t like them, meaning it’s not exactly the right person, or it’s not really what they’re looking [00:32:00] for.
They’re going to stop serving our videos up because they’ve just, you They look for engagement and engagement clues are usually like click through rate is one thing like I like the thumbnail and title. I’ll click and see what it is. CTR is one metric, but really they like retention, audience retention, like what percentage of the video did they watch?
And they like watch time, which is how many minutes did they watch? And this is why like long videos on YouTube are doing really well right now, because you can rack up a lot of minutes watched if you have longer videos. Those are big indicators for YouTube that people like Teresa’s video because they watched 60 percent of it when most people watch like 3 percent of a video.
Like if you have a really high retention rate, a lot of watch time, they think, okay, this is a video that’s relevant. I served it up, people watched it, they watched it for a long time. So all that to say, All I would say for you is get super clear on that one sentence of like I help this type of person achieve this result without this pain point right the classic template of if [00:33:00] you can fill in the gaps of that little mad lib and and then put that everywhere on your YouTube description on your YouTube channel art.
And if your videos are all geared towards helping that type of person achieve that type of thing without type of pain point, that’s the first start is like, just clarity. Give your channel as much clarity as possible. And then think of your YouTube videos as just answers to questions.
That’s what I would do is just like write down the top 25 questions that audience would have because they’re typing them into YouTube right now. How do I start an online business? What tool do I need to start an online business? What’s Like, how do I do email marketing? How do I write a funnel? Like, whatever, I don’t know, like, whatever the big questions are, those should be titles of your videos.
Right? Like, that’s the simplest thing I could say. Don’t be creative. Be as clear as possible. Be clear, not creative in your titles. And that’s the biggest thing is the titles. There’s other things like your description and they were hashtags for a while on YouTube, but none of it matters as much as a [00:34:00] very clear title that’s zeroed in on a very specific audience person.
And then just do it. Yeah. Just put it out there and just do it because Like, you know what it’s like if someone’s like, Teresa, how do I start doing speaking? How do I get on stage and get good at speaking? You probably say, you just got to start speaking, you know, because his first few engagements are going to be rough, but you learn so much faster by doing it.
You can see what the audience is when they’re dozing off, when they’re engaging, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not only do you need to do it to get better at it, but here’s the powerful thing about YouTube is the analytics are so powerful.
Teresa: Okay.
Graham: So YouTube wants you to win. So you don’t have any analytics if you don’t have any videos.
So you need to get some videos out there as fast as possible even if they’re not tightly edited, just get something out there because after a couple of months of having videos, then you can actually look at the analytics and YouTube will tell you, here’s how people are finding you. It’s either YouTube search, it’s suggested videos, and, and there’s a couple other things like the home screen, but what terms are [00:35:00] people typing into YouTube that are leading them to you?
Right? That’s powerful to know. So for example, for me, Five years ago, I posted my very first Kajabi affiliate type video because the affiliate program started. They bugged me. Can you please start promoting as an affiliate? I didn’t think I’d make any money on it, but I remember putting out a couple of videos on how I was running my seven figure business on Kajabi. I was like, I’m just going to show you all the stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
When I started to see after a few months that the number one search term that was leading people to my channel to see all my other videos that had nothing to do with Kajabi was the word Kajabi.
I was like, this is interesting. Not only am I getting Kajabi affiliate income, because I have some really good videos on YouTube, but more powerful than that, my whole brand is, I’m being discovered by people that have no idea who I am because they’re looking for Kajabi videos on YouTube. And I happen to have some Kajabi videos and now they’re like, who’s this Graham guy?
And so by learning that that term, not just anecdotally hearing that, but seeing the data that that was [00:36:00] the number one term or the numbers two term, if there’s also a Kajabi tutorial as a term was leading people to my channel. Well, then the fastest way to grow my channel is to make more videos around Kajabi because YouTube already thinks my channel is associated with people looking for Kajabi.
And so I have gathered more clients and people on my email list who are buying my courses or joining a mastermind of mine or whatever, through looking at the analytics and giving Kajabi, sorry, giving YouTube more of what it wants. So for you, I would say get on there as fast as you possibly can. Even if the videos are rough.
So that you can get the data so you can find out what people like and not only that, but what YouTube associates you with because then you can just play with the algorithm a bit more. Now there’s some terms that you’re going to ignore if they’re an outlier. Like I did one video on should you be an LLC or a sole proprietor in the United States for your business and that video blew up.
And I don’t want to make any more videos ever on tax related stuff. That’s not my, I just was answering one specific [00:37:00] question, but I’m not going to feed the algorithm that, even though it says I’m associated with that, that’s an outlier for me. You don’t have to do what it tells you to do. But other than that, it’s pretty spot on.
And it tells you what kind of videos are going to crush for you. And so that’s, it’s an ally for you when you get on there, but just don’t overthink it. Don’t over edit it again, going back to Alex Ramosi, like he’s going back to long form loose edits. If anything, I stumble over my words all the time and I keep it in there and it has not stopped my, my channel from going or for me to build a business.
Teresa: And I think when I think about like, so when he first said it, I was like, really, do you think, and he was like, you’ve got the setup, your office is good. Like, there’s no reason why you don’t look like a good set up on camera. But then of course my mind suddenly went, I’d probably get in some, some video guys who probably need to do like, you know, this and, and probably batch record a few and then have some B roll and dah, dah, dah.
Whereas, The thought of me having to do any editing, so like even this podcast, we edit it a bit, but like hardly anything. And [00:38:00] Phil who edits knows just don’t touch it unless it’s like some major massive thing in it. We just like clean up the audio, make the sound levels good and be done. Like, could I effectively Hit record on a zoom thing or not zoom, but on something just talk as if I’m live and then go, thanks very much. Bye. And finished typing and put that up in a wanna.
Graham: That’s what I do.
Teresa: Is it really? You don’t edit like.
Graham: No, I don’t do any editing. Cause I said, forget this. I, I don’t want to waste any time editing. Cause I used to, I used to do like tight jump cuts. I would do B roll. I would do music. And I’m just a weirdo.
I’m always experimenting if it can save me time, because I value time and I hate doing stuff I don’t like to do. So this experiment simple. What happens if I stop editing, stop B roll, stop adding music and just post videos of me talking and, and see what happens. And nothing changed. Nothing changed. Same.
So again, we’re in a landscape where [00:39:00] ironically, people are actually getting tired of the highly edited, highly polished videos. So it’s actually, I didn’t care about that even five years ago. I did my own thing anyway. I’m a bit of a rebel. That’s kind of what I do, but it’s now actually people are pushing back against that and they want more just real authentic videos.
So especially a person like you, you would crush on YouTube because you’re, you’re a natural speaker. You’re a great communicator. You have a great setup. Like I’m looking at you right now, like it looks super professional. Like this is great. Just hit record and go. And just get to the point, just blow people’s minds and be valuable.
And, and here’s the other problem with YouTube that I would just caution people again. It’s like, don’t, when you look at the analytics, the problem is you’re going to look at the retention graph. Which is going to be this really sad curve of like, everyone starts watching and they all just drop off. And, and it settles down for the super fans that watch the whole thing.
But most people, it’s because we have ADHD and we’re just watching and we’re moving on to the next thing. It almost doesn’t matter what you do, you’re not going to keep those people because they’re just sort of scrolling and binging and they’re, they’re on the toilet, you know, like [00:40:00] that’s it. So you don’t, they’re not going to be your customers.
I don’t like least like to meet customers on the toilet. That’s usually not where I like to meet them. So forget those people. And just know that like length doesn’t matter. In fact, the longer it is, if it’s good, you’re weeding out the people that aren’t going to do business with you anyway. And it’s giving you a chance to really blow the minds of people that want to do business with you.
And you can speed up the, it’s, the speed of trust is so much faster with the a long YouTube video. So I’m a fan of just being yourself. Yeah. Putting it out there. And you can test ’cause you’re really just testing the titles and the thumbnails. And the thumbnails don’t overthink those. Make them as simple as possible.
Make sure they look really good on small mobile. So the three word rule, like no more than three words of text. Okay. And you could do four, but sometimes no even no text. Like the thumbnail is just. It’s the title and the thumbnail is how people read together. So just make it your face nice and big, maybe two to three words, but just a clear title and start testing out the content people want to learn from you.
And then everything else is the same with your business lead [00:41:00] magnet funnel in the back and offers. But I think you would grow 10 X by being on YouTube just by virtue of the search, the search volume. That’s where everyone is.
Teresa: And I think you’re right, you know, podcastization, I love it and I don’t ever see it going away in my world.
However, it is not an easy thing to be discovered on. Whereas like you said, you know, I, we’ve got into watching YouTube like we’re teenagers, but like we will sit and put YouTube on and because we’re going to Japan. Obviously my feed at the moment is Japan, Japan, Japan, Japan. And that’s fine because that’s how I’m finding stuff and I’m watching it and like, yeah, that’s useful.
But also interestingly enough, we now watch this. I’m also heavily into gardening and growing vegetables. My dream is a homestead with like acres of lands and chicken and like, that is what I want. And so we watched this couple called Simple Living Alaska, who we love, and they do like 50 minute videos.
Like, and we [00:42:00] literally, like, cause we watched them from, they, not when they started, but we found them and we went back to the beginning. They’d be going four years and we were watching from the beginning all the way through. And now we’ve caught up in like. You’re only doing one video a week. This is ridiculous.
You need to throw out this content much quicker. I can’t go fighting a whole week to see it. But we will see it.
Graham: That’s amazing.
Teresa: An hour video. We love it. So I just think, there’s just been so many different things. And I’m like, maybe, maybe it’s time. But you have given me so much to think about, Graham. I really, really appreciate it.
And like I said, this is very different from the chat we had about the summit. But I wanted to kind of really pick your brains. You are big in this industry. You’ve created an amazing business. You are obviously really good at what you do. You are a lovely, lovely guy. And I just thought, let’s, let me try and get as much of that as possible that then we can take and use in our own businesses.
So that is awesome. Thank you so much. So before you go, Two things. [00:43:00] One, I was looking at your speaker kit and I’ve seen my, I am on your speaker kit, just so you know, right?
Graham: Ah, did you sneak in that photo?
Teresa: I honestly, I could tell it’s me. It’s just the back of my head. Like you can’t see me, but I’m like, Oh, that’s me.
I’m sat there and there’s a picture. There’s a great photo of you speaking in Kajabi, which is amazing. And secondly, where do people come and find you? Where are you hanging out the most where they can come and follow your stuff?
Graham: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ll give you a couple of resources. One, if you have your online business and you want to grow it, but also really design it to fit your life, I have a life giving online business sort of workshop.
It’s my million dollar life giving business formula and it’s a training and it walks you through how I think about designing your business to fit your life. So if you figure out what you want, designing to fit your life, and then I have a formula at the end, actually the three parts of that you need to scale while not killing yourself.
So it’s, it’s really didactic. It’s really fun. And I think if you, it’s good if you already have a business, it’ll [00:44:00] get you going. So it’s GrahamCochrane.com/lifegiving.com. So check out that training if you want. The podcast of the Graham Cochrane show, it’s on YouTube as well. Online the only social media I hang out in is on Instagram at the Graham Cochrane.
And then I will say my newest book is coming out later this year called Rebel. Find yourself by not following the crowd. And this is, it’s a beautiful little coaching session in a book, pushing back against conformity, figuring out the way you want to do life and do business and how you can do it your way.
It’s coming out on September 3rd, but you can pre order now at the rebel book. com got a bunch of bonuses there too, if you, if you’re an early adopter and pre order that sucker. So I’m excited about that and hopefully it’ll help you as well.
Teresa: So the rebel book. com.
Graham: That’s it.
Teresa: Okay. So I’m going to run off and minute we finished and do both of those things. Sign up for your life giving thing the rebelbook.com. This has been wonderful, Graham. Thank you so very much. I really appreciate being on the podcast.
Graham: Well, thank you for having me on and I’m delighted that I could help. And Hey, the offers out there, if you need any help with your YouTube stuff, as you’re [00:45:00] getting it going.
Happy to take a look because I want to support you in it because you’re going to do great.
Teresa: Thank you so much. Take care, Graham.
