← All questions

#177 · How to acquire distribution fast and dominate the AI era

youtube ↗Hiring & Team

Do you have recommendations for finding a good and affordable video editor?

He says he was lucky to have distribution, so he could simply ask his viewers to edit his videos; those who volunteered already respected him, enjoyed his content, and idolized him, making it easy to assemble a high-quality team and train them. He made a YouTube Community post requesting video editors and received examples. If you don't have that distribution, you can still find editors on job platforms like Indeed or Upwork. In either case, he advises always forcing applicants to do something before hiring: have them submit an application with a portfolio, review the portfolios, shortlist about ten, then email them saying you like their work, love their portfolio, and ask if they'd be open to a quick trial piece. Offer to pay 25 dollars for the task, describe the work (X, Y, Z), and request completion within 48 hours. If the trial works, send an invoice for payment. This small upfront trial cost gives you far more clarity on skill level and saves money by avoiding a bad hire. He applies this same trial-based approach to hiring anyone, not just editors.

video editorhiringtrial

Related answers

youtube ↗Hiring & Team

Hey, Nick, do you hire out the editing of your videos?

Yeah, I outsource the editing of my videos. For my Instagram channel, I work with Shu, who manages it completely. He gives me scripts that we assemble using newsletters and some scraping systems, I record them on a teleprompter, and he handles publishing, editing, and captions. His work has driven massive virality—recent videos got 490K and 336K views. On my main YouTube channel, I’ve worked with editor Johan for over 30 videos. He trims obvious imperfections and tangents, adds a high‑quality intro with assets or effects, and handles publishing. The TLDR: get someone to help with publishing, because it used to take a lot of my time. Aside from that, the daily updates channel is basically it for my workflow. Pretty cool, huh?

video editingoutsourcinginstagramyoutube
youtube ↗Hiring & Team

What do you need help with in your business?

Thanks for the offer. If you need help with something like YouTube titles, I’m happy to reciprocate—I do have a team that now streamlines my workflow. Regarding paid ads, they do work; use custom audiences and retarget Instagram followers or website visitors for high‑intent outreach. If you’re a paid‑ads expert who can demonstrate generating $50k+ for clients, let me know—I could give you control of a campaign or test an affiliate offer. That’s a current need of mine. On the editor side: I found my editor through a daily update; Johan is talented but initially struggled with the load and export issues, taking about 12 hours and wanting to quit. After he apologized and we worked through the bugs together, we gave it another shot. We needed some reps—I reviewed his first few videos, gave feedback, and now he’s excellent and I’m mostly hands‑off, only stepping in if I see an obvious problem (like cutting too much of the latter parts or excessive ADHD jump cuts). I asked him to trim a little less, and now it’s perfect. I let him create his own assets; he follows the daily updates and process‑optimization strategies I discuss. We’ve adjusted things to make his workflow easier, but my focus is always on the final deliverable, not the hours he puts in. Anything I can do to help him is worthwhile. Our workflow uses a ClickUp board with video titles; I record, move the file to editing, he pulls it from the Google Drive folder I shared, edits, and publishes to YouTube.

hiringeditorclickuppaid ads
youtube ↗Agency Operations

How do you plan your time for planning and filming videos for your main channel while balancing your agency, coaching, and content creation? I'm struggling to manage content output, client work, and scaling my coaching business. Could you share your planning and balancing approach?

I’m hitting the upper limits of what one person can realistically handle with my current level of systematization. I keep seeing situations where a better way would exist, but I don’t have time to figure it out, so I push through at a less effective level. I ran into the same issue with my agency—I know there must be more leveraged ways to do the same work without hiring another team member. Pragmatically, I’m at about $2 million a year in profit, which feels like a reasonable ceiling for someone trying to juggle an agency model (which is less profitable per unit time), a main YouTube channel, and other content‑production mechanisms. Even with good time management, that seems to be the upper limit for one person. To give you a behind‑the‑scenes look: I usually start with the video idea, then the title and thumbnail, because those drive performance. I source ideas from YouTube comments using a comment scraper, turn them into titles via templates, then think about a thumbnail (though I don’t over‑think it—content matters more). I’ll sometimes leave a silly clip at the end, but I focus mainly on production. Logistically, I get the ideas into the pipeline, then filming is straightforward: I turn on the camera and talk for an hour or two, sometimes following a strict outline, other times just using my tablet and pen because it’s more time‑efficient.

time managementworkload balancecontent planning
youtube ↗Hiring & Team

Do you have any video editing work available for me?

If you want to pitch me, send me one of my videos edited into a one‑minute short and upload it to YouTube or Google Drive so I can click a button to view it. If I like the quality, I’ll definitely take a look. That’s how I usually work with anyone—most of my team came through cold outreach, so just follow that process.

video editorhiring