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#190 · How to Build $1M+ Social Proof As A Total Beginner In 21 Days

youtube ↗Marketing

Should I focus on pushing content regularly or prioritize high-quality content at a slower pace? If starting from scratch, what videos would you make?

Well, I wouldn't be in your situation in the first place. It doesn't make sense to start a YouTube channel or talk about stuff until you've actually delivered value in the past. If your revenue is less than $20,000 a month, you shouldn't be running this channel right now because lead volume will be too variable and there's nothing to build a business around. Spending time just touching up your content and trying to make it really high quality completely defeats the purpose—believe it or not, your content doesn't have to be very high quality as long as you're somebody worth listening to. For example, I'm just in my room in a tank top after a shower; I might not know what I'm talking about when I started this video, but it's still worth listening to because I've achieved outcomes that a lot of people here want to achieve, and I've consolidated a lot of knowledge. The two are valuable together, but the actual quality of the content aside from that knowledge and the perceived value of being associated with me isn't anywhere near as high. So the hack is: you need to do good first. Don't start a content business and then run another business side by side. Start the other business, crush it, achieve massive success, and then make videos talking about it. If you do anything else, you're really just putting the carpet before the horse and wasting your time.

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Related answers

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 ↗Marketing

I have no duties for the day, no school, no work — basically 24/7 free time. How can I use my time wisely to grow faster than my competition? Can you guide me on how to start posting content on YouTube that I'll be able to monetize in the future?

It really depends on where you are. If you've made some money already and have notable accomplishments to talk about, starting a YouTube channel is fine. But if you don't have anything notable, no major accomplishment yet, I would not start a YouTube channel first. What I'd do first is knock something out of the park and get some social proof under your belt — get a win in the arena of business. Then once you have the win, you can start talking about it and combine the two into a 'wins machine,' like I have. If you're a total beginner who's never sold anything or made any money, focus less on monetizing through content and more on starting a business and doing outreach to people who might want your products or services. Make $20-40K, pay down your client debt and knowledge debt, understand what people are really willing to pay for — then you can start posting content on YouTube later.

youtubecontent strategybeginnersocial proof
youtube ↗Marketing

How should I approach content ideas for a small SaaS brand when I want to start a YouTube channel?

My recommendation is to first grow the SaaS a bit before you start a YouTube channel. Instead of advertising $2 K in MRR, frame it as a $100 K‑a‑year business. That kind of headline is more interesting to viewers. If you’re still early and don’t have impressive results, people won’t be inclined to spend time on your content. The key is to focus on what you’ve achieved that’s better than 99.9 % of the world. When you have a tangible outcome—say you’re consistently making $8‑10 K a month—you can use that as the hook for your videos. Spend time improving the SaaS, develop strong skills, and once you have a modest success metric, start talking about it. Use that achievement as the basis for your content and you’ll be able to attract an audience.

content ideassaasbranding
youtube ↗Marketing

How do you find a bunch of ideas for your main channel, and how do you know if they're good or not?

I've tried the outlier approach many times — looking at what other people have done and duplicating it with mild changes. To me that's akin to old-school article flipping from SEO 5-10 years ago. I don't think it's very sustainable or high quality in the long run. When you do that, your channel ends up being a patchwork of different subjects, and though your view metrics look good independently per video, on net you're usually not getting a lot of returning people watching, which ultimately impacts your ability to monetize that audience. What I like to do is talk about what I like to talk about. If I have a subject I really like — for instance, I just recorded a video on how to use AI in learning — I'll record a video on it and try to fit it into some known outlier packaging. A lot of the time it's fitting a square peg into a round hole, but I try to make it work anyway for short-term metrics. And if it doesn't work, I don't care. You can call that a great strategy or a horrific strategy. But I have probably some of the best monetization of channels at approximately my size, for products I sell like low-ticket info products as well as agency work. There are very few people who can meaningfully compete with me on that despite my objective subscriber and view metrics not being very high. So clearly it works really well for me. I just ask: what the hell do I want to talk about? And then I talk about it.

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