Last week I dropped my first six YouTube videos. Actually, they were posted for me and I just got to watch them go live. Along with their partner blog posts.

If you listened to my episode about taking a break from Instagram for 6 to 8 weeks, that was in large part due to drafting 17 YouTube videos, scripts, and actually taking seven days to film all of that continent with my friend, old boss, and videographer Paige Major from Paige Major Creative. 

Today I want to take you through the production, and behind the scenes of what all went into, my YouTube approach, and why I am taking the approach that I am. As well as tools that we used, and cost of production. 

I don’t feel like people talk about these things transparently. Especially on YouTube. So allow me to be that person for you. Note that this is just my own approach and experience. I will make clear that though I’m entering YouTube as an amateur on that particular platform, I am not an amateur in my field, nor am I an amateur at creating content.

Let's talk YouTube Debut

Back in the beginning of 2021 I was continuing my Facebook ads journey that ended in a loss of $80,000. A loss I was willing to endure, but that certainly left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to investments and the direction that I wanted to take my business from a growth standpoint. 

But I knew that something had to be done. And I was clear on the fact that whatever money I invested next was going to be in order to get me in front of an organic audience. So I would pay for that service, but not actually do paid advertising if that makes sense. I was still going to have to pay probably the same amount to get me in front of more of the right people, but again not through paid advertising.

I learned through my own Facebook and experience that I really do think my style is best received over a long period of time. Building trust, and having a buying cycle of about 3 to 12 months, regardless of my program or course. 

So I committed to playing the long game. And either hiring a PR agency to get me on podcasts and things of that sort. Or to venture into YouTube to tap into a new market. 

After interviewing and meeting with a very specific PR agency, it was a hard no for me and the appeal of YouTube and having control over my organic contact just seemed more and more appealing. I enjoy teaching long form anyway. It’s actually something I struggle to cut down for Instagram. And Instagram is actually one of the reasons that I also went with YouTube.

I want to start off with some background education. Instagram is a social platform. YouTube is a search based platform. Meaning that the lifespan of content can be years or even decades now. You type in some thing in the search bar and the most popular videos pop up. That video can be seven years old, and often is seven years old, depending on the topic of the content. If that video is properly formatted, ideally that lead someone back to their channel to binge more information, or helpful links are in the description that take them back to the website, or affiliate links that they’re making money off of so on and so forth.

On the flipside of that, Instagram content dies after 24 hours for the most part. There are absolutely pros to this, and that if something doesn’t do well, you can totally reformat it and repost it to see if it does better. It’s not a total loss. That obviously doesn’t work the same on YouTube. And there is much more effort that goes into creating YouTube content,