Speaker A
Hey, what's up? Sean Cannell here with Think Media. In this video, we're going to be learning from Ali Abdaal. He recently spoke at our Think Media YouTube Summit, and if you actually want to get on the waitlist for the next one, we'll put a link to that in the description down below. But in this video, he shares his five-step video creation process all the way from ideation to publishing the video, and this is going to help you not only save time and be more productive but ultimately help you get more views as well. So let's cut right into the video. Essentially, what I realized after talking to a business coach was we got out a big piece of paper and we drew out the stages of video production. The first stage is idea generation. The next stage, you know, at the time I was making the video first and then doing the title and thumbnail, but what I appreciate now is that title, thumbnail, and even hook come first. If there is only one thing you take away from this talk, do not even think about what your video is going to be. Don't even think about writing the video unless you know what the title, thumbnail, and hook are going to be. You don't have to create the thumbnail in Canva or Photoshop and stuff, but like you should have a very good idea of what's the title, what is the thumbnail, and what's the hook. And by hook, I mean the first 30 seconds. All of that stuff should be done way in advance of actually trying to write that video. So you start with the idea. This is the concept of the video. You got title, thumbnail, hook, then it comes down to writing the video, then it comes down to film, then it comes down to edit, and then sort of like publish and analytics and stuff, that sort of thing. And at the time, he asked me, you know, how much time are you spending at each level of the process? And I was spending like 10 hours a week on editing, which was just really dumb. And he encouraged me to outsource my video editing. So after two years of doing all my video editing myself, I decided to outsource my video editing. The number one tip, unfortunately, that I would recommend for anyone who is struggling with consistency or time management is you cannot be editing your own videos unless you really, really, really love it. And if you really, really, really love it, then fine, okay. Is it the highest value thing you could be doing, etc., etc.? But we're thinking like a business, right? Editing is for most channels a thing that could be done by other people. Editing does not, is not necessarily the thing that you have to do yourself. So you automatically free up a ridiculously large amount of time by just outsourcing your video editing. Then at this point, people like, "Well, I'm not making enough money," etc., etc., and yeah, I would really be thinking, what is the dollar value of your time? What is the dollar value of your time? Maybe your YouTube channel isn't making money, but how much do you value your time? Would you rather edit videos for eight hours, or would you rather spend those eight hours coming up with new ideas or filming new things or spending time with your family or hanging out with your kids, all of that stuff? What I realized is that even when my YouTube channel wasn't making money, I should have really outsourced my editing because yeah, I was working as a doctor. I was earning like $15 an hour, so my time is worth at least $15 an hour, right? And I can find an editor for $10 an hour. Great. I've now got arbitrage on my time. I have now freed up this enormous bottleneck, which is the fact that it takes me 10 hours a week to do my editing. So the first recommendation I would give is please, please, please outsource your video editing. People always have issues with this. I have a whole session in my course where we teach people how to outsource their video editing. People always like, "Oh, I don't have the money. No one can edit like me. My style is so unique." And every time for the last four years, I've been saying to every student in my YouTuber Academy that, like, guys, come on, you just need to outsource your editing. Here's how you do it. And every single person I've ever met who's actually outsourced the editing has come back and said to me, "Wow, I'm so glad you pushed me to outsource my editing because now I have all this free time and now I'm not stressed anymore," etc., etc. So if there is one thing you take away from this talk, please let it be that if you are currently doing video editing, I would implore you to do whatever you can to outsource that, get it off your plate because usually for most people, editing is not the fun part of making YouTube videos. If it is, it's a different story, but you're kind of in the minority there. So we realized we should outsource my video editing. The other thing I've realized over time is that, you know, what's the thing that takes the next amount of time? Idea generation is kind of quick. Making a title and a thumbnail, like you just take a lot of photos. You have a thumbnail photo library. You have a house style for thumbnails. It's not that bad. The writing process has the potential to take a very large amount of time. What I realized is that scripting videos is a total waste of time if you are an educational YouTuber and you are struggling to produce videos consistently. I would very much recommend not scripting your videos and instead just talking through bullet points. Scripting videos word for word, my goodness, that takes a huge amount of time. Ideally, when it comes to this thing around finding your niche, ideally the thing you're making videos about is something you feel sufficiently, something that you feel you're enough of an expert in that you don't need to script things word for word because usually talking through bullet points, you're more confident on camera, you're more comfortable doing it, and it takes a lot less time than scripting videos word for word. So what I realized for myself is that if I wanted to be consistent with making YouTube videos, especially when I had a day job, is that I could not script them word for word. I tried, but it would take me like 12 hours to script a video, and then I'd be trying to read it off a teleprompter, and then it would be a total show, and I'd be like, "Oh, I'm stumbling over my words." And so if I just remove that requirement to script things word for word and I just thought about bullet points, then that made all the difference. If you got value from that session with Ali, hit the like button, and you can check out Ali's channel linked up in the description down below. Also highly recommend his book, Feel Good Productivity. You can grab it on audiobook or physical. That'll be in the description as well. And if you want to check out Gary Vaynerchuk's session from our YouTube Summit, click or tap the screen to watch that next. Subscribe if you're not subscribed, and I'll catch you in the next one.
