Graham Cochrane (00:05.112)
Most people think you need millions of views to make millions of dollars on YouTube. Big viral videos, crazy stunts, sponsorship deals. But what if I told you that's not how I made $15 million on this platform. The truth is YouTube isn't about going viral, it's about building a business. And if you know how to do that, you can make life changing money without chasing trends, views, or
algorithm. So in today's episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on exactly how I did it. But more importantly, how you can too. Let's dive in.
Graham Cochrane (01:00.11)
I don't think most people understand what's possible with YouTube and I think most people are looking at YouTube the wrong way. Let me give you an example of one of my students, Aiko, who is an English pronunciation coach for native Japanese speakers. Yes, you heard me right. She doesn't teach English, she teaches English pronunciation and she has built consistent $30,000 months with only 456 subscribers on her YouTube channel.
This should be instructive to all of us. The goal, as you're gonna see in a minute, is not to grow a subscriber base on YouTube or get millions of views on YouTube. This is a misnomer. What we're gonna do is something completely different that is much more scalable, much more sustainable, and actually has way more income earning potential than what most people are doing. Most people view YouTube as a platform to make money in two ways, one of which is AdSense where
They run the ads at the beginning or middle or end of your videos and you get paid a penny or two or three or a fraction of a penny based on how many seconds people watch the ads. So basically get a lot of views and then you make money off of the ad revenue. And the reason why people think this is the way you make money is because it's how a lot of people do make money. The problem is when you try to make money off of AdSense or the ads running on your YouTube channel,
You only make money when people watch, which means you have to keep people watching and you have to get a lot of eyeballs to stack up any kind of substantial income for it to work. And so maybe you had a video pop or you went viral or your topic was trendy for a while. What happens when it goes out of fashion and there's not as many people searching that or the algorithm shifts and they're not suggesting your videos as much? Your income goes down commiserately.
The same is true with brand deals, which is a little more direct. It's the same principle as running ads on your YouTube channel. The only difference is you're working directly with a brand for a sponsored post. So if I mention your product in my video, you're gonna pay me X number of dollars. And so you can do these brand deals, sponsorship posts, and that way you can at least contract 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 100,000, 5,000, whatever it is, per video.
Graham Cochrane (03:13.944)
But the problem continues. If you don't get the views to support the money you're charging for the sponsored posts, then these brands aren't gonna pay it anymore. They're gonna look for someone else or they're gonna wanna pay you less. And then also there's the complication of you needing to always promote someone's product. Is it a product you believe in? Is it a product that's good for your audience? Or is it just a random product with money attached to it? If that doesn't bother you, then go for the brand deals. It can be a great living, but you have to continue to perform
You have to continue to get people to watch at high clips to garner the high wages that you want proposed. So that's what most people think YouTube is. That's not what YouTube is. Let me give you this one little line which we'll unpack again towards the of this episode and then I'm gonna show you something visually that's gonna transform things and then I'm gonna walk you through the process. You need to understand this sentence. YouTube is a billboard, not your store. YouTube is a billboard.
not your store. Another way to think about it is YouTube is your sales engine, not where you make the transactions. Okay? There's a lot of ways to unpack this and a lot of ways to do this differently, but let me show you something that I think is gonna be instructive.
Graham Cochrane (04:35.16)
This is what I call the YouTube rapid growth roadmap. And there's four.
Graham Cochrane (04:45.634)
This is what I call the YouTube rapid growth roadmap and there are four steps on this path. The first step to making a lot of money on YouTube is to define your avatar. We'll get into this in a second. Define your avatar, the who that you're gonna serve. The second is to give them transformation. You want to actually blow their minds on the platform. Number three, invite them into your world.
and we'll explain what that means, and then fourth and finally, make them an offer. So you define your avatar, you give them transformation, invite them into your world, and make them an offer.
Graham Cochrane (05:48.238)
We're gonna unpack those four steps here in just a minute, but if you wanna go really, really deep on how to turn even your tiny YouTube channel into a massive revenue stream for your business, I have an entire program I put together to go from zero to putting leads that pay money into your pocket. It's called my YouTube Income Accelerator, and it is the best training I've ever done on YouTube, not to grow a big channel, but to grow a profitable business.
using YouTube as a lead gen machine. We break down everything that you need to understand about how to grow in YouTube, but more importantly, how to leverage YouTube to put money in your pocket right now. Click the link in the description below if you want to check out that program and you're really ready to dive deep into this YouTube game and take even a small channel like Aiko did with 456 subscribers and turn it into multi six figures a year or more. Okay, let's jump into defining the
Okay, let's jump into the YouTube rapid growth roadmap. The first step was to define your avatar. This is important for any business, but you gotta ask yourself, who do you help? Or who do you want to help? Help is a very strategic word. That's all we're doing on YouTube is we're helping. We're helping. If you can be helpful, you can build trust. YouTube is a trust engine. There's something that I call trust funnels. The whole way you make money in business is to build.
And so you want to use your YouTube channel not as a place to sell, but as a place to build trust. So you got to ask yourself, who can you build trust with? Who do you want to help? Do you want to help busy dads? Do you want to help overworked moms? Do you want to help people trying to build a business? Do you want to help people trying to record music? Do you want to help people who are trying to learn how to speak Italian? Who do you want to help? Who are they? And what is the big problem you're going to solve?
Specifically, what are their five biggest challenges related to that problem? So my first business, the recording revolution, helped people, home studio musicians, musicians who wanted to record their music at home. That was a specific who, and their five biggest challenges revolved around I don't have a lot of money to spend on equipment. This whole stuff is overwhelming and highly technical, and I'm artistic, I'm not an engineer. I don't have a great sounding room. I'm doing this in my spare bedroom or my mom's basement.
Graham Cochrane (08:06.798)
I'm embarrassed about the quality of my recordings. I don't wanna share the recordings with anybody or tell them to listen to my Spotify channel because it doesn't sound that great. And it's taking me forever to get great results. I wanna be able to do this quickly. those are probably five of the biggest challenges. What are the five biggest challenges your person, your avatar has? What is the biggest transformation that they desire? What do they dream about? Yes, they're coming to YouTube to learn how to do X, Y, and Z, but why?
Ask yourself why. If they learn how to record their music better, what transformation does that give them? Well, for a lot of my clients in the past, it was the transformation of sounding professional, therefore feeling professional, being proud of their music, being able to display their music, be able to maybe take the songs they wrote when they were teenagers and now in their retired years, be able to relive that dream of having a professional recording of their music. What's the biggest transformation they desire?
And then the fourth thing you need ask yourself is what have they tried before? This is such a powerful question because if you can think about, and you probably understand this because this was probably you at some point, what have they tried before that didn't work? What kind of work? Because then when you say that in your videos, when you say that later in your sales copy, when they're selling something, they feel known and seen. like, yeah, this guy gets me. This girl gets me because I have tried to solve this problem in the past.
And if he or she's bringing it up, then they probably know that those solutions don't really work anyway. And so there's even more trust built there. But who do you help? What are the five biggest challenges they have? What's the biggest transformation they desire? And what have they tried before? Here's a simple one sentence bio you can use to put at the beginning of your YouTube channel description or anywhere you wanna talk about this. I think this is a good helpful exercise. You ready? I help blank.
my audience or avatar, achieve dream outcome without something they want to avoid. I help my audience achieve this dream outcome without something they want to avoid. So for example, with my business, I could say, I help online business owners grow to six or seven figures without working all the time.
Graham Cochrane (10:27.446)
Another way I could say it is I help people scale to seven figures and beyond. I help business owners scale to seven figures and beyond, working 20 hours a week or less. That's a positive way of saying without having to work more than 20 hours a week. You could fill in without having to run ads, without having to be slimy or sleazy or pushy or salesy, without having to work all the time. I help who achieve what without what. The thing they don't want. The thing they assume is necessary.
to get their dream outcome. But when you can tell them you can get them their dream outcome without that thing they really don't want to have to do, wow, now they're intrigued. That's your one sentence bio. Plug that in as an exercise today. I think it's gonna help you. All right, the second step in the YouTube growth roadmap is to give them transformation. So, very, very simple. Please understand this. You need to make videos for them, not for you. You gotta make videos for them, not for you. The YouTube channels that never grow,
numbers wise, vanity metrics wise, and the YouTube channels that never put money in your pocket are the ones where those people are just making videos all about them, for them, whatever they want to talk about, whenever they want to talk about it. That's fine. You're allowed to do that. It's a free country. It's a free world, but it's not going to help you make money. You really have to make videos for the avatar we just defined. Think about them all the time. Obsess over them all the time. Talk to them all the time. And if you really are in the business of service and helping people,
This should be easy and fun for you. This is gonna help you make better videos. So think about what they need, what they want. Each video has to have a clear promise. My friend Sean Cannell over at Think Media says for the YouTube title, make a promise in the title and deliver it in the video, right? So every title is a promise. Every video is a promise.
How to make millions of dollars on YouTube without millions of views is a promise, right? How to set up a home recording studio with $300 or less is a promise. Make a promise that they would be interested in and then deliver on that promise in the video. I always try to think of the 10X value rule in anything I do, free or paid. I want people to get 10 times the value of the cost. So there's no real cost to watch a video or listen to an episode like this, but you do spend your time.
Graham Cochrane (12:47.182)
So I wanna give you 10 times the value of the time that you spent consuming this content. If you buy a coaching program of mine, for example, if you join my effortless business accelerator for six and seven figure entrepreneurs, it's a $10,000 investment. I want to ensure that you make at least $100,000 off of that investment, which is a no-brainer. That's 10 times the value rule. So I think about how can I give them so much value in every free video or every free podcast episode?
that they walk away knowing, wow, this was insanely valuable. I love this guy or I love this girl that helped build trust. And then always have self-contained videos. Meaning your video shouldn't be only an open loop where you have to watch another video to close the loop or you have to download something to close the loop or you have to buy something to close the loop. The video itself, if done well,
should be self-contained, meaning I can consume your 10 minute, 15 minute video and it is satisfying in and of itself, it gives me value in and of itself, I don't need anything else, I could take this and run with it. And yet, if you do this well, your best students are gonna wanna go deeper, they're gonna want more. Because you really just opened up Pandora's box by showing your expertise, showing your depth of knowledge, showing how much you understand them, that they realize, wow, this was really helpful.
What else does she got? I need to go deeper. So think self-contained videos, but if you do it right, you're giving 10x value, they're going to want to go deeper. think about your distinctions. This is a helpful framework. Think about one to two provocative or spiky points of view, as my friend Rich Lippin would say. What are two one to two provocative, contrarian points of view that you have? A way of seeing the world that most people don't. If you can identify one to two of these
points of view of philosophies and infuse them into everything you do on your YouTube channel, you're really gonna stand out because there's a million people doing what you're doing in your niche, right? There's a million people building businesses and teaching how to build a business online. I'm not unique in that. So I have to bring my own provocative points of view. Some of those are I don't run ads and the other ones are if it takes you 20 hours, more than 20 hours a week to create a million dollars a year, you're doing it wrong.
Graham Cochrane (15:13.844)
you can do this and it takes me five hours a week to run a multi-million dollar a year business, right? So that's provocative. Some people disagree with that. Some people are confused by that. I help people build what's called an effortless business, right? Even that title is provocative. What do you mean effortless? That doesn't make sense. Everyone tells you to work harder, sell more, try harder, push harder, talk more. I'm not on social media hardly at all. 15 minutes or less a day. I literally have a cap on my phone that cuts me off of Instagram after 15 minutes.
How can I build a multi-million dollar a year business if I'm not on social media all the time? Provocative. So those are some of my distinctions. What are yours? They're gonna help you. So you defined your avatar, you give them transformation. That's the YouTube part. The next two parts are the money making part. Step three is invite them into your world. Invite them into your world. So we mentioned this at the top of the episode. YouTube is a billboard. It is not your store. This is not the place to sell. You can sell on YouTube.
But really it's only gonna be effective for your warmest leads. And I have no problem with doing it, going direct from video to sales. But the bulk of your money is gonna be made by inviting them into your world. So, couple ways to think about this is, your channel is promoting you and how valuable you are, but it's not where you make the transactions.
You then want to think about no dead end videos. You don't want a video as much as it's self-contained, like I said a minute ago, meaning it in and of itself can contain value, you don't need anything else. It should never end. There should always be an invitation in every single video, inside the video, at the end of the video, in the description of the video, in a comment that's pinned in the video. The invitation is always what's the next step? How can they go deeper with you? And so what we want to do ultimately is move them off of YouTube to your email list using something we call Lead Magnet.
The reason we wanna do this is twofold. One, YouTube could disappear tomorrow. I don't think it will, but it could. And then how are you gonna get in touch with those people? How are you gonna sell? Two, YouTube is not really a place people wanna buy. It's a place people want to engage and learn and grow and find people they wanna follow. So your email list, email marketing is still the number one driver of sales on the internet, is the best place to convert to a sale and...
Graham Cochrane (17:33.294)
YouTube is like renting, you're renting the space. YouTube makes the rules, they're the landlord. But your email list is like your home, you own the space, so you make the rules. You have direct access to that lead. You can now email them directly any time you want. On YouTube, you have to hope that they check back into YouTube and hope that they even see your videos. But again, you can't control the algorithm, so it might shift. I have a lot of friends that have been on YouTube forever and they were getting a certain number of views, or a certain number of their subscribers would see their stuff, but then the algorithm shifted a little bit.
and now they're not getting as many views as they once were. This has happened to me multiple times. So we can't control YouTube. We can control the email list. So the goal here is to move them from the video after you've built trust into your ecosystem through your email list. And there's a couple ways to do this. One simple invite is if you've liked this, you're going to love this. If you've liked this video, you're gonna love this 10 step guide I put together, which is my complete guide to get you from A to Z.
whatever that is. If you like this, you're gonna love this entire free masterclass I put together to teach you how to go X, Y, and Z. It's my whole methodology. Just check it out below. Another way to say this is, hey, if you've been enjoying this video so far, I wanna give you a gift and thank you for watching. I wanna give you my five-step guide. I wanna give you my whatever cheat sheet. I wanna give you access to this free masterclass where you can go real deep on this topic. For example, if I were teaching
copywriting, like how to write a sales page, or a copywriting formula, or how to write good hooks. That might be really attractive to people, and if they're attracted to that, they probably want to improve all of their copywriting, so I could easily invite them to a free master class that teaches them how to write a high converting sales page in the next 30 minutes. So now they're like, wow, I'm gonna go from one video to a longer, more in-depth training, but I have to give Graham my email address to get on his list.
and agree to be on his list in order to access that training and then now I can serve them even more powerfully outside of YouTube but I can also follow up with them and that's the powers following up which is the final step of the YouTube rapid growth roadmap which is make them an offer. We make money when we make offers, it's as simple as that. If you wanna make more money, make more offers. And I'm not even joking, it's really as simple as that. So the beauty of YouTube,
Graham Cochrane (19:56.172)
as a sales engine is that YouTube qualifies warm leads for your business. So I view YouTube as my sales team, I view it as my free samples of Chick-fil-A in the mall where they used have little chicken nuggets on a stick pack in the day and you'd be like, my gosh, the chicken's so good. I've qualified them. Do you like this chicken? Yeah, do you want more? There's more where that came from, right?
do you have this problem? Yeah, you've been watching these videos and you're getting solutions, then I know you're probably gonna like this training or this free guide. And so I'm qualifying the whole internet and it's almost like because I'm building trust with these people and the people that are watching and are opting in, anyone that's opted into my list, I automatically know they're a very warm lead. This is not like running ads to cold traffic. I know these people are very interested in what I've been teaching and sharing and so it's.
very natural to make an offer to them through my automated email funnel or whatever I like to do. And that's the power is automating the offer. So they opt in and they can automatically be given an offer within seconds or minutes or days, however you want to do it. And that offer could be a digital course, it could be a paid community, it could be a group coaching program, it could be to book a call to work with me one on one and they go through an application process, whatever it is, it's automated. And so,
you continue to put up these videos and all of a sudden, over time, YouTube is building trust, qualifying leads, inviting them into your ecosystem and putting an offer in front of them and you are nowhere involved in that system. You are making money. This is how I've made over $15 million online without having millions of views on YouTube. This is how I haven't had to run ads or do brand deals.
or make content that's all clickbaity just to get as many views as possible. I get to create the content I want to create to serve the people I feel called to serve, knowing that the videos themselves are valuable and even if they don't buy anything, people are getting value, their lives are being transformed by it, but also I have a system that's now bringing those warm leads into my world, putting an offer in front of them, and I get paid 24-7, and this compounds over time. You can make money in the short term, yes.
Graham Cochrane (22:15.608)
But the winners in this game are those that can stay in the game long enough. I've been doing this for 15 years over two different brands. If you stay in the game long enough, this type of system compounds.
Graham Cochrane (22:37.358)
So in review, the YouTube rapid growth roadmap, define your avatar, give them transformation, invite them into your world and make them an offer. You do those four things, my friend, you will make money despite low views or low subscribers and you'll realize those numbers don't even matter to you anymore. They will grow naturally because your content is good, but there'll be a nice sort of applause, not the vanity metric that you're shooting for, for your self worth or to feel great or to feel like you've done something important.
Now if you need
Graham Cochrane (23:14.082)
Now if you're ready to dive deeper into this YouTube thing and turn your entire YouTube channel, even if it's small, into an income machine, check out the link below for my entire program, YouTube Income Accelerator. This is my best program where I literally do teardowns of clients' YouTube channels. We do a titles and thumbnail workshop. We build lead magnets. We build offers. We teach you how to write the right sales copy and the right email sequence to automate the offer to convert and how to continue to grow things, how to look at your analytics.
Everything you want to deep dive on YouTube from the standpoint of how can I use this to make money? It is inside YouTube income accelerator. So check out the link in the description below if you think, hey, I'm ready to go deeper on this. I think you're really, really gonna enjoy it. And I've gotten a ton of people incredible results. So check out the link there. You'll see all the results they're getting as well. I hope this was valuable to you today. Let me know if you're watching on YouTube on a comment below, which of those four steps of the YouTube rapid growth roadmap is the one that's missing for you that you need to implement.
Was it defining your avatar? Was it giving them transformation like truly transformative videos? Was it inviting them into your world or was it making them an automated offer? Leave that in a comment below. And if you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, message me on Instagram at TheGrahamCochran and let me know which part of the YouTube rapid growth roadmap you need to implement this week in your business. All right, my friend, have an amazing rest of your week and I'll see you on another episode real soon.
