wondering how to grow your business using youtube cameron anderson is the owner of blacktail studio woodworking shop with more than 1.6 million subscribers to their youtube channel i wanted a price point that was a no-brainer and that one sold for 15 over 15 000 along with this massive social media following blacktail studio has built a virtual community with a makerspace database online workshops and other resources for woodworkers all across the country you know they always say to diversify your investments but nobody talks about diversifying your income because you lose your job you lose 100 of your income how do you turn that following into revenue or sales of some sort today we're finding out how cameron built this community how it's helped his business grow and his advice for other entrepreneurs on how to turn online fans into real business success big thanks to clicklis for sponsoring this video for those that haven't seen our first interview with you tell us a little bit about blacktail studio when and why you started it and anything else you want to highlight sure sure blacktail started in believe 2016 formally but my youtube channel started around 2018 and i'm just a small one-man woodworking shop that is now kind of a more of a woodworking youtube page with a small woodworking shop i used to be a pilot i was a life fight pilot and we had a great schedule we worked seven days on then we had a whole seven days off and so i needed a hobby and so like a lot of people you know in the last couple years that have picked up things like woodworking i had the time and so i just said i'm gonna learn to woodwork and so i started woodworking and started selling things and started social media with it and just kind of snowballed from there what are the benefits of selling or even potentially giving away some educational products as a small business owner like yourself youtube is really kind of the ones that are i'm giving away i mean that's all essentially free content and i found that the online courses i do those are more for the people that really need to learn how to do something entirely you know go through all the boring stuff i have to keep everything so interesting and fast paced in youtube that you don't necessarily learn exactly how to sand and finish something because it's kind of boring if you're not into it so youtube i've had success giving away and the online workshops is more the ones that are able to generate the revenue through that longer form content how do we grow subs how do we do that what have you learned so far anything else i want to extract that from you and share it with our viewers sure uh i mean it's that's the best million dollar question uh indeed it is one thing i do is i ask for it and i ask for it earnestly let me give you an example of what not to do and so and let me see if you guys do this and you're in this video when i'm watching it okay so don't start a video and say hey don't forget to like and subscribe yadda yadda you haven't given them anything all you've done is wasted their time you're taking time from what they're there to watch the video and it's annoying them and if anything they're going to unsubscribe so wait till you give them a really good tip a really good trick something like that whether it's business advice or maybe a really fun woodworking scene that i do and after that i'll say you know what guys it really makes a big deal or it's a big difference to me if you subscribe only do it if you want to you know this isn't charity but if you'd like to i would really appreciate it just give them an honest you know hey this means a lot to me and i appreciate it i think that's an incredible tip so if you guys take a nanosecond and subscribe like hit that bell it works well for all of us and we appreciate the support so that's great that's something that we shouldn't be doing at the beginning of the video right that makes sense tell us the social media platforms that black studio is on and why are they the best places to engage with customers i tell everyone do all the social media you know i have to focus a lot on youtube i would like to focus more back on instagram i started out kind of on instagram i need to do more on tick tock i'm starting to do more on facebook but do as many as you have the bandwidth for and something's going to give you can have success somewhere unless at another platform but if you have the time do all of them where are you engaged mostly right now which platform youtube for sure just with the comments and reading and responding yeah it's it's you know and creating all the content for it and what most youtube creators do is they use that content they chop that up and repurpose it on instagram and facebook and places like that why is it important for you to spend time and respond to feedback and comments not just for the youtube algorithm like for you what's inside your mind it's it's a focus group i mean people spend millions and millions of dollars on focus groups you know these big businesses and this is my this is my focus group well so you're getting all that feedback improving and growing on that yeah [Music] if there's a business out there that's just starting a youtube channel what would your advice be or a number of advice that they can do right away to be successful in their growth i don't want to guarantee success in their growth but don't start it with the intent of oh i want to have a million subs and make a bunch of money and sell a bunch of product do it more for the viewer and it can secretly in the back of your head can be trying to get that million subs and have all the success but it's transparent when people are doing all the cliche things that they see other creators do in the hopes of building that channel and it just comes across not as genuine not as they're trying to help the audience more is that they're just trying to grow their page so just focus more on the audience and less on yourself and less on the growth amazing cam how do you manage your content and activity across all platforms if that's even what you need to do i'd like to get a little bit more regimented with it right now i'm posting a new youtube video about every four weeks and then the other platforms whenever i think about it or whenever i have the time i'd like to now that i have that new videographer kind of get the structure of like hey we're gonna do three instagram posts a week one youtube video every three weeks one facebook video a week and just have like a standard thing and that way we can maybe have a chart and just knock those out and make sure we don't miss anything so you're not at the confirmed sop yet you're kind of working that out yeah this is you know day three of having an employee so right now we're on boarding but yeah i think it's going to help a lot that's awesome how do you choose topics for your videos traditionally what i've done is i am a woodworking company and i'm still making furniture for clients so i just make a video of the build process and now i'm trying to branch out a little bit more i'm trying to not make the same video 30 times because that's what people do they keep ordering what they see me make so we did a charity raffle a couple months ago that i got to build something really unique and ended up selling for 12 000 which we gave to make a wish after that we did another auction that was just for me it was just actually like business income and that one sold for 15 over 15 000 anymore i'm kind of using my gut saying hey i think this would be a cool video but originally i just did videos on what i was working on at the time somebody watching this and they are in the woodworking business as well it's like at which point do you need to branch out and do something else because i can imagine if it's the same videos to be making the same things for three five years how do you change how do you adapt and still give value back and i think i'm trying not to wait until my content is not popular before i change i'm trying to diversify a little bit now and that way i open myself up to be able to do you know really different things but still related to the woodworking community in woodworking equipment can get very expensive that's why we're excited to share how clickley's can help new and established businesses acquire the equipment they need to elevate their business to new heights click lease works with vendors all across the us and makes applying a breeze click lease will help you find the right lease term and payment plan that best suits you once you lock it in it never changes for the duration of the term so click the link in the description below to learn more about how qlik lease can help you acquire the big ticket items that you need to grow your business simply submit the details on the equipment you need ranging anywhere from five hundred dollars all the way up to twenty thousand dollars and their ai driven system will process your request within ten minutes no hard credit check will be pulled again thank you to click list for sponsoring this video don't forget to click the link in the description below so that you can learn all about what qlik lease can do for you [Music] besides the wood uh products that you sell right that you work on custom you have a lot of digital things that you provide as well tell us a little bit more about that i have some digital now i'm working on getting more digital ones i believe when you were here last time i just released my virtual epoxy workshop yeah and that was in response to we used to do them in person and then it got really hard around 2020 to get 20 people from around the country in a small room together so people kept asking they're like hey i'm in india i'm in england i mean wherever i want to take your workshop can you do one online it was a lot of prep there's a lot of work because i wanted to make it as good or better than my in-person one so i spent a couple months prepping for that i hired an actual video crew not just me with my camera like i was doing at the time and i had created this about three and a half hours long where it's everything in my in-person workshop in an online workshop so it was something i'm really proud of and that's got that's done really really well and i want to do more of that i want to have lots more uh online tutorials because that's kind of the future where we're going this master class format whereas you can only do so much in person but you know having a pretty good online reach now there's a lot of opportunities and it's another income source besides the beautiful wood products that you create what else in addition to the workshop you've got the makerspace database or other things that you sell as well that you want to highlight or mention sure so the makerspace database right now that's me just kind of giving back a little bit because it's not monetized at all yeah and all that is is again it's one of those things i get a lot of questions about a lot of comments where people would say how do i find a big shop like the one that you use up in portland and i was like i don't know call around you know call a cabinet shop and i never really knew and about the 100th question time i got this question i was like there should be a website where people can put their shops whether it's a small garage shop or a big industrial shop up on my website and then somebody can find it so kind of like uh people call it uber for tools but i'm not making money on it or uh yeah yeah and uh i i love the idea of monetizing it i just want to make it something people want first i don't want to charge people make money off something that they don't really want so that's gone well i've just started working with a guy who's helping me launch products so like physical products to get into some stores so um we're just finishing up a jig that we created that i'm actually pretty excited about and that'll be actually in stores and online here probably the next few weeks that's awesome can you show it to us later yeah absolutely [Music] give us a quick overview of the shop since the last time we were here has anything changed you know you're here just like probably three weeks too early i'm just starting kind of the phase two of the shop uh i tried to do a shop expansion and the county said no now here on site just here on site i was gonna kind of double the size of the shop so instead i finally resigned just to make this the best shop that i can until i can figure out what i'm going to do good call so i have this lumber storage that's really really not very great and it's working for me yeah so i have some like extremely heavy duty cantilever racks that i'm going to attach inside the walls that are going to hold a bunch of slabs so i can bring more inventory in and get stuff out of the way kind of the same as as i remember it's mostly the same i'm starting to organize a little bit more getting some things up on the wall i think this was actually here last time we were here yes um again you're a couple weeks earlier this will be done in the next couple weeks i'm finally working on it because it does look a little different than the last video because i just had it cnc'd that's that's one special piece here it's gonna be really neat like all youtubers that we have to put our achievements up on the wall that's new there we go a million subs yeah so i got that i got that on display now but other than that no it's pretty much the same shop okay [Music] putting a price on a digital product is not as easy as something you can hold in your hand right so how did you decide or analyze the market for your courses you know 50 bucks versus a thousand sure my in-person workshop was 250 or 249.
I wanted a price point that was a no-brainer i wanted it to be where somebody didn't have to think about it if it was just such a great value so right now the course is 99 i'm working with a guy in marketing and he's telling me that's way too cheap so i think we're gonna go to 149. so if you're watching this in this 99 maybe it's a good time to buy uh i i just don't want it to be a huge barrier to entry i want it to be like these epoxy tables are pretty expensive to build anyway you're gonna have over you know thousand dollars maybe in materials so what's what's a hundred bucks to make sure it works out well it's not it's not a lot at all i mean if i was on the receiving end and wanted to find this kind of educational information i'd pay 500 bucks so do you listen to the audience and you see what the market's doing i mean i i didn't analyze it i i should it's one of the things that it'd be great if i had somebody in my corner that was good at that so i just went with my gut and was like you know what i think it's a no-brainer at this price point so i'm gonna do it at this price point yeah i think you're super fair and i think you give away a ton of value to people i appreciate you that's that's pretty awesome you mentioned other products digital things tattoos different income streams that you have right now how you possibly monetize and monetize what sure sure i remember thinking it was always so weird that almost everybody has one income stream you know they always say to diversify your investments but nobody talks about diversifying your income because you lose your job you lose 100 of your income well said yeah so now you know youtube does pay from the ads the affiliate links when i have a tool i'll just say hey there's a link to it in the description and it's not like an ad because people they don't want to search for they don't want to have question marks they want the exact thing you're using or they want to know where it is or how much it is so you get you know a small percentage but if you get a couple million views that can really add up and you're making it easier for your customers it is actually they don't see that they see it as a service which i was nervous at first and saying oh you could look for the link but that's what they wanted i started monetizing facebook i wasn't doing anything on there and that's actually been another great revenue stream the virtual workshops have been phenomenal i want to do more of those like we talked about and then i'd get sponsorships for the videos so that's another good revenue stream i'd like to start phasing those out as my dreams don't hold me to this if you come back in two years i'm still taking sponsors but know that i'd like to i'd like to bet on myself through the products and the workshops and things like that is just push my own products because if it's good enough for a sponsor to pay me x number of dollars it should be good enough for me to just say that i think i could sell that many products with that time instead of a sponsor [Music] the workshop i know we keep coming back to that but we're talking about creating other income streams and providing value how much time do you spend on that per week still is it pretty much a passive income at this point or do you devote weekly daily hours to that so i do go through at least once a week and and that is a place where i do respond to every question still so i see there's you know hundreds of questions but it's not you know tens of thousands of questions so i go through and i will respond to everybody's questions because they will say hey i might have missed this section most of the time that information is in the workshop but a lot of times they'll answer their own question before i get to it they'll say got to chapter 13.
Thanks sorry so a couple hours a week but it's mostly passive [Music] the next question i want to ask is the maker book that i owe and we've asked about it before but what else can you highlight the importance how it helped your business and how it provided value and more value to your customers that's the makerspace database that's the where if you have maybe a shop like mine or maybe a smaller shop and you say i want to be able to buy some more tools and help some people out so maybe i'm going to rent some time out and so they're an independent contractor you know someone goes on my website looks just like yelp and it has a map search and says you know hey i want to someone has this tool close to me is there anybody and sometimes they're really small shops sometimes they're huge industrial shops and they have a fee and you just go pay that person and now you can get into woodworking for basically no money in terms of no tools upfront costs if you don't have a garage or a space to work you can go use someone else's space and use their tools so in this business or this industry there's a lot of tools i would imagine you can just go to ace and buy what you need but is that not the case when it comes to specific woodworking tools yeah um kind of sort of you can buy a lot of tools locally um but it's thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars cost yeah and so if someone says hey i don't even know if i want to get into woodworking i don't want to spend a thousand or three thousand dollars maybe i'll go pay this guy 80 bucks you know get this project done and now oh yeah that's fun maybe i do want to look into this a little bit more so it's makerbook.io is the actual url for it got it you might actually have to put your email in or i think you can log in with facebook or google like most websites [Music] in terms of software or tools is there anything out there that you're using to grow your following online or is it just natural so i i'm a sucker for the youtube analytics and i think that's a huge huge part of growing your channel is i talk about listening to the people but also listen to the analytics and it's just a free youtube studio app and looking at your click-through rate i do a b testing of thumbnails and titles and i has made a massive difference in the success of my videos is testing the titles testing the thumbnails i know you guys do a little bit of that too we do a lot of it yeah and what do you do specifically is it just one title you look at the views if it doesn't work you change the talent right away or i i i'm not on on that upload so i'd love to share more right now i do i pick my best guess and i let it ride for a week or two and this is something i learned you know mark rober he's got 20 million subscribers he's on jimmy kimmel he's like a factual famous youtuber and he says he won't start a video unless he knows the unless he can picture the thumbnail i think it is or the thumbnail in the title and so that was always an afterthought for me so now i'm when i'm building a project i'm thinking so much about the thumbnail and the title because that's probably 50 percent of the success of the video is that thumbnail and title that's incredible how long does it take from start to finish for each video and what's like the big step in the entire picture of that i mean sometimes my builds take months and so you know from the time i pick wood up it might be three months until the table's finished and it doesn't mean that's the only thing i'm working on at the time but you know and then it can even be a couple weeks of editing after that so is editing kind of the the majority of the time that is consumed to create that video where's the thing the camera setup is a lot you know because i try to get really good really interesting shots the higher my quality of videos gone up the better my views better everything's gone so one shot that you'll see me pushing a board through a table saw might be me pushing it part ways stopping the saw walk over grab my camera move it change the height change the lens and then finish the cut and that was two seconds but it took me a minute or two minutes to do that that whole setup so that's a one-man show but now that's different now now we got scott we got scott over there and uh hopefully uh he's going to be able to really up the pace of that but there's still you know you still have to physically move a camera and we're going to do a little bit of two camera stuff to speed it up and i think he's got a really good professional background and i think he's going to be able to offer me a lot of advice of like hey let's do it this way because now we don't have to do that type of thing okay do you have a frequency on posting youtube videos i know you mentioned earlier on is that going to change so right now since i've been a one-man shop i've been every four weeks and i could i could sustain that i'd like to get that to maybe definitely three weeks now that i got scott my videographer or uh maybe i think two weeks would be as fast as i could potentially go but i found posting less better content everything went up my views my subscriptions everything when i was posting like filler content oh i got to get a video out this week it hurt everything so important just if it takes two months to get a good video out take two months so it's not the quantity of videos it's the quality today as of may of 2020 that's what i'm noticing with youtube and you know maybe this time next year will be totally changed because youtube goes from favoring short form content to long form and back and forth do you capture emails from your customers do you have an email in lists and all that i do i've been working on getting better at the email list i'm kind of partnering with a guy who's really good at that and so specifically for the email list and he's also helped me with that product the bowtie jig so yeah he is working on my email capture where we have i'm also doing some woodworking plans and so we have some kind of incentives on my website now where hey you can get access to like kind of my down and dirty how to build an epoxy table pdf if you put your email and type of thing and so capturing those emails so then i can send them future products and things that they may be interested in hopefully i'm not spamming them but you know giving them something that they may or may not be able to use how often are you sending in you know previous months so once a month once a week it's been depending on the projects that we're doing so uh and it also depends on the person he's really smart about you know what what brought the person to subscribe where did they come from so it's not one of the daily you know email things it would be you know once or twice a month so let's say somebody's watching right now who's doing youtube but they're not doing the best struggling maybe with cameras what can you share that you've learned as you've evolved to create better content is it just cameras with the lighting i mean what are some tips especially if it's a one-man show one thing at a time is i was uh watching i think it was an mkp marquez brown link whatever his channel is called he's got 15 million subs he's really successful he talks about people saying gosh i can never be where you're at because look he's shooting with these 20 000 cameras he's got crews and studios and robot arms and he goes you're not competing with me now you're competing with me when i started i see and he was you know on an android phone with horrible lights and all that so don't think that you have to be at you know i don't want to say my level is as as if it's the apex but it's a lot better than i started i did i got to over 700 000 subs with my iphone so it's not about the content it's not about the cameras and all that type of stuff just you know listening to the analytics listening to the audience making good content that's amazing blitz time with cam the man of the hour if you could go back in time and tell your younger self don't do this thing what would it be um careful on the sponsors you take i had a pretty good amount of success with building up and i started doing some kind of fringe content and it took kind of a shady sponsor in terms of like it was off brand i did that for several videos and my views and everything just tanked and it took me like a year to get back to where i was before wow okay that's an awesome tip what do you do with your profits you buy fancy cars or you spend it on something else i got a super fancy 2014 toyota tundra so uh no i tried to put it back into the company you met scott my videographer so my first ever employee he's on day three so spending on on back into the company that's awesome and last what's the best part of being an entrepreneur and doing what you do you're you're in control your own destiny you know i love the fact that it's a lot of pressure but nobody can decide what happens for me you know the layoffs or things like that i don't have to worry about as long as i'm taking care of myself then i'll be fine talk to us about your youtube following i mean incredible 1.5 i think when we first met you you were around 1-2 now you're i think north of 1-6 how is that translated to revenue and just business growth and success overall it's it's been phenomenal there's no mistaking it helps my woodworking sales it helps my workshop sales it helps everything if i have a really good video i'll start getting little notifications where i'm like where that video is doing good because now i see some sales coming in and things like that so it is it's phenomenal and it's not something that everybody has access to but i don't think you need 1.6 million for it to make a big difference you know i started with one yeah i remember the first time you know when and this was early on and my affiliate sales i made like a thousand dollars in a month and i was like whoa if i could do that every month you know and now i have a bunch of different revenue sources so it's really great for the income and stability as a business owner who's probably considering doing other products digital products how do you personally gauge demand do you do market research to like you mentioned something that you're you're coming out with right your your actual product sure why do you think that's going to do well did you do some research is it feedback it's coming from listening to the audience i get a lot of people that i do a lot of bow tie inlays in my in my videos and they're really intricate and they take a lot of time and they take a lot of tools and so we have a jig that i'm not the first person to come up with a jig like this but i feel like i'm the first person to make a really cool looking one and so you went from the cool factor yeah like there's functional ones they're just kind of ugly and that's one of the reasons why i never did it and so i just made a cool version of something that is really useful and needed and only requires one tool instead of all the you know dozen tools it takes me to do a you know a nice hand cut inlay can we walk over right now and see it or is it yeah give us a quick sneak peek of what you're talking about here's here's all the iterations that we ran through oh wow okay and what this does is this is cool i think it's pretty neat i can't help but say this is cool and it doesn't really require a ton of skill you're able to just use this old template and you use a router and you cut out the shape and then you use a little offset you cut out the bow tie and it just snaps into place and it's pretty much as simple as that [Music] on youtube obviously a ton of educational free information that people can learn from you and then you've got the course so how did you decide what goes in the course and you can monetize on that and then what stuff gives away for free on youtube how does one replicate what you're doing and decide on that i do have some advice to anybody out there doing youtube or start considering starting youtube and wondering about that give everything away everything that people want to see don't hold anything back and people used to ask me why are you training your competitors how to build this you know these tables on youtube and why are you giving this away and i never had a good answer but for example one of my most common clients that i get would be a dentist that would say i want to build my own table so i watched your video that's way too much work so just build me a table and so i didn't expect that when i started because then they see how much work goes into it so the more i gave away the more i got back and i kept giving more and more away and the more i got in terms of views and subscribers and everything like that [Music] anything else you can add in terms of the youtube algorithm and reaching your intended audience on youtube i would never worry about reaching your intended audience because your intended audience you know for me might be 50 000 woodworkers out there maybe it's 100 000.
What i want is 5 million or 10 million people to watch my videos and then i'll get all 50 000 are all 100 000 of those woodworkers if you aim too niche you really limit yourself and i have to tell this to sponsors all the time is like you don't want you know me really targeting the only the person that wants to sharpen this jig you want me to target target five million people and show people out there oh wow maybe i want to start woodworking and now i'll use that goal reignite that interest in them [Music] what is the number one piece of advice that you have for business owners who want to build a community around a product and service that they have be the best version of yourself you know don't be a youtube personality that you saw somebody else do and you think that it's going to resonate with your audience if it's not you so i had a much different personality than some of the big woodworking youtubers when i started and i was like i can't be like that guy it's just not me and so i just did the best version of myself and engaged with my audience you know listen to them talk to them i do live sessions all that things just genuinely like kind of being a friend of them as much as you can through these virtual platforms and that that comes across when you when you like you said when you're genuine it really makes a difference i i feel i feel like it does and maybe it doesn't work for everybody but that's that's been my formula okay [Music] in terms of you testing the thumbnail and the title how many times are you doing that across what time frame as well sometimes once sometimes you know zero maybe if i have a really successful one sometimes a lot you know people will even comment sometimes you're like i've seen this thumbnail changed five times since last week and it's a little embarrassing because now they can see like something's not working for you but eventually once you hit it you know like you'll see that spike and you're like ah that's that's the thumbnail that's the title we need so it's okay to continue changing it right even if it's two months later and you feel like that needs to be changed i've resurrected dead videos i've had i got a bunch of examples i can give you one example i had a video for the build video they're usually pretty popular and it got about 600 000 views but other ones were getting like 2 million at the time well i thought ah gosh i thought that one would have been better over a year later i changed the thumbnail and that one's now over 6 million and counting no way yeah and i have another one that went from three million which is great and i who like who would think that you could improve on that and i was like oh just mindful try and that one's over 14 million now the resurrection of dead youtube videos i like that what's one mistake grand mistake that you've made in your youtube involvement and how did you correct that i didn't i didn't listen to what the audience was telling me in terms of the analytics and the and really what they wanted to see i had a stage when i moved into this shop and i was going to take a lot to turn this shop into from what it was into what you see now and so i'm like i'll just make videos on that so i had a lot of filler content but i thought i had to make a video a week or a video every two weeks and the content wasn't very good and it just you know you can have one bad video but if you have a few that are tapering down tapering down youtube pretty soon's gonna go wow this guy people don't like his stuff pretty much let's not show it to more people and so doing that filler content with some you know taking the sponsor money that now i turn down a lot of sponsors i mean ridiculous sums that people offer me why because they don't apply to this industry or just your choice yeah yeah it's that's the most people can make it is and it's hard because trust me i am a sellout i have a price but for the most part if if i can't work it in naturally i won't do the ad and give me an example of like something that's just like somebody reached out and be totally wacko for you to be sponsoring and mentioning that in your video oh gosh um is it like a toothbrush company is that what you mean you know maybe like a really weird video game that i don't don't play type of thing and that would be so weird yeah and so and they have big budgets so it's tempting sometimes but yeah if you have uh just something really off-brand really something that your audience doesn't watch and that brand won't let you work it in organically to your thing because they have really set scripts and things that they want you to do so you know people are really enjoying your woodworking video and everything's going and then you just like stop and you're like playing a video game they're like whoa what happened that's a turn off and if you do that enough times i think it can really really hurt your channel all right [Music] content for all the blacktail studio do you do all that do you have somebody on the back end working no well as of up until three days ago 100 of all the content i've ever made is made by me i mentioned i have a new full-time videographer so that we're going to be collaborative now nice but my virtual workshop i mentioned i hired a film crew for that so i had like an actual professional crew for that but as far as my social media i do everything how did you learn the skills though when you got started with the cameras and the lighting is just day by day week by week i saw i saw a billboard that said uh don't be afraid to suck at something new so yeah just being really bad at something new yeah being really bad and then watching it go oh that was really bad let me what can i do to get better that's awesome anything else you want to highlight in terms of improving performance and the effectiveness of the videos you post besides the youtube analytics and i keep uh i keep a fast pace and i don't necessarily mean physically like running around pace but don't give people a chance to leave don't give people a chance to breathe always give elaborate on that what do you mean be giving value every second you know if i'm watching if i'm editing a video and i'm going through and i was like you know i'm standing a table and it's ten seconds long or it's seven seconds long i go there's nothing in that seven seconds that can't be accomplished in two so just cut it down to two now they see i sanded the table yeah and i'm on to the next step and so there's so much filler of people that'll say you know oh let me stop and tell you about this and if it slows the video down if it inhibits the pace i just cut it out yeah you're really trying to do value packed videos skip all the seven seconds sanding you go down to two yeah and i've gotten i've gotten that from my analytics i'll look and i'll see a little little little down tick and i go what happened there and i go to that section of the video and it's where i come on the camera and i'll say hey guys i wanted to tell you about this and they're like okay yeah and i'm like okay don't do that anymore that's amazing okay [Music] talk to us about your workshop how long did it take you who helped you what were the biggest challenges well the good thing is i had done a number of workshops before and i had an outline that i make i gave it out to my students so i was able to start there and i also had a blog that was all the step by steps to building an epoxy table so i kind of bounced those off of each other and spent a lot of hours writing it out because i wanted to have everything in there and not get to section 10 and realize oh wait i didn't even talk about this so it took me probably about two months of writing it out planning it out we were able to film it i believe four days of four long long days uh i had a great videographer and uh yeah so it was it was a lengthy process but i'm really proud of what came out and i haven't really had any negative feedback there's not anybody saying oh i don't understand this i don't understand this and it's been great how do you think you want to improve it moving forward if there's anything if something does change major with how i build these tables i'll add a chapter in there at no expense like i'm not going to have a version 2 for the workshop and that's the question i've gotten from people is they're like well i don't want to buy this one if you're going to have the mark ii version and i'm like no this is the epoxy workshop what i would like to do is have um i might even do like a woodworking business workshop you know it's kind of similar to the stuff that you guys do i might do like a table finishing workshop where i show how to finish tables in a small workshop with different finishes that you know might not be available to everybody so i could show how i do it then hey if you can't get this try this in terms of the following that you have right how do you turn that following into revenue or sales of some sort whether it's your digital products or your woodworking products i think it's just natural i think it's just listening to them you know i'm not trying to shove any products down people's throats that are off brand yeah so i listen to what they want the videos i've had success with making content related to that that's better it's an improvement that's a value and it kind of takes care of itself okay i spend a lot of time reading all our comments on our videos and i've read yours and i got to say you guys so much positive feedback people love you and your presence and your work so kudos to you i appreciate that it's i do have a kind of a running joke at the end of my videos where i'll post the one mean comment and my response to it at the end of my videos always mean comments and so people think that i have so many of those but overwhelmingly they're positive so i really do appreciate i have great great viewers [Music] let's talk about social media again and curious about your expense per month where are you spending the most on social media what's giving you the best roi or exposure social media is free what do you mean yeah but we can we could spend more money and they'll take it i've never advertised on okay that's a lie when i've had like 100 instagram followers i paid to promote some posts and it was a waste but other than that never pay for facebook ads or youtube ads or any of that it's just it's just no expense on social media right now i mean i have a huge expensive you know employee and film and materials like that ad expense never never so what's giving you the boost and what's the video that's that's what we're doing here we're making good content if you make good content people will find it if you promote it fake people will find it or the people that you're not even looking for it doesn't it does it almost hurts you more than it helps you because you'll get in front of the wrong people right well said [Music] what platform do you use to provide your online courses and that is that the same as the plans that you're going to be selling as well the virtual workshop is hosted through a company or a website called podia i've been pretty proud of them yeah i hadn't either you look at some of the teachables and those ones have the bigger names they take a way bigger cut so they don't actually take a cut of the sale it's just like a monthly fee i see so uh podia is the one for that but you wouldn't even know it because it's got kind of like a black tail url attached to it which is actually nice so people don't feel like why am i going to this company i've never heard of this url i've never heard of the plans that i sell which are going to be like how to build i built my wife this really cool custom desk with integrated lights and things so i built i made some custom plans on that or i had an architect draw some up and those are just available through my website just my regular blacktailstudio.com and who's the host for that that is a squarespace site gotcha and you manage that and take care of that as well yeah tell us where the idea of plans came through why did you want to add that as a value as well to your viewers i do know a number of other woodworking youtubers that have had a lot of success with the plans and i don't do a lot of plan-based projects so i was wasn't really on brand and i could have just white labeled some random third-party third-party plans and i never wanted to do that but i remembered my wife's desk i built it's all these really kind of unique solid wood legs there's these cool integrated light switches and a light that's all part of the desk and that's something like that would actually be really good plan based so i had this architect draw them up because i can't do any of the you know blue printing yeah i can't do any of that so i'm really proud of these plans they turned out amazing and those are now available on my website just blackdalestudio.com for free is sloane they give you our email or no no those ones are actually a paid one they're it's 49 and they actually do come with some more beginner plans because one thing that we realized is this is a pretty advanced project and a lot of people want to start small so there's like about i think 15 other smaller plans and then this kind of featured plan that's awesome i want to give you guys a quick shout out check out our blog upflip.com forward slash blog for complete guides on how to start a business what tools you need to use and a lot more engagement it's super important on youtube right to continue building your subscribership add content how do you ask for likes comments and how what does the process look like for you on that end as well i don't think i've ever asked for a like i think people will like i get enough likes you know if i compare my channel to others they always seem pretty good i would like to mention i do ask for the subscriptions and do it earnestly after you give them something you know something that says hey actually i do like this channel and i hadn't thought about it and i cuz i've watched videos and someone will say show me something really cool and then they'll ask for a subscription i'll go oh yeah i wouldn't have even thought but yeah i do want to subscribe thank you for reminding me so you're kind of doing them a favor by like yeah i think that is pretty fitting doing it earnestly along with the comments you get so many people just say like subscribe comment for what like on what and what i'll say is you know i triggered my saw stop which should give him a reason yeah so i triggered my saw stop and it it normally comes in contact with skin is why it'll trigger and i was cutting a piece of foam and it cut half the foam and then triggered in the middle and i go guys maybe some of you out there smart enough to know why this triggered i don't know actually why it triggered on part of the foam board and not other parts so maybe someone out there is smart enough to leave me a comment and i got a lot of comments people like oh it's static electricity like oh cool wow so just asking them a real question that you genuinely want feedback of not just like comment subscribe because it helps the algorithm are you adding more workshops and digital products and what's next for you uh in the next couple years definitely i do see more of these virtual workshops as a big part of what i'm doing so definitely want to have more of the virtual workshops the physical products is something that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg right now i'm working on a couple things that i can't say um they could be game changers for me you know as a business and like products that are actually going to be in the store yeah yeah products like that but i promise one thing is everything is going to come back to youtube is you know you see these brands or these youtubers will grow and then kind of get oh i make more money doing this i'm going to not do youtube and then everything kind of tanks so youtube is always going to be the main focus and just making more better content just keep going with that that's amazing where do you want subscribers to be three years from now give me a grand goal just something that goes i wish i was the guy that said i didn't care about subscribers it doesn't matter because i do i do i really it's how we keep score yeah and then three years yeah what do you think five million five million yeah but here's the thing is everybody has this big uptick or not everybody but the successful pages have a big uptick and then they have a really hard plateau for a while forever sometimes and so i know a lot of pages have got to mine or three million and then now they're growing at like a thousand a month why do you think that is though i think i think it's a lot of youtube just kind of they throttle people and i also think that they kind of get a little bit lazy around their content i gotta be careful saying that because doesn't necessarily mean lazy but not making the most viral content so but there's channels out there like 50 mil 80 mil you know but yes it's a different nature it is and so my goal for three years be 5 million next month i could hit that plateau and it doesn't mean i'm gonna stop creating the content doing all that because i still have a great audience but i'd like to keep it going as long as we can yeah it's never about the subscribers i just said it's about the value that we provide via it it is the subscribers are an ancillary benefit from doing everything else right amen well thank you this has been a pleasure yeah man thanks for coming out anytime awesome well that's a wrap with cam the owner of blacktail studio i hope you guys enjoyed it we always appreciate you a ton for watching it comment below and take a second to like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our videos and make sure you check out the first one with cam