Hello! Right now you’re reading “The Creator Confidential”, a blog where famous and successful YouTubers share their stories and tips they have for growing a YouTube channel. Over the past week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben, and here is the finished result. Enjoy!
This is the story of how Ben Leavitt started his YouTube channel (that now has over 52,000 subscribers and 2.7 million views), created a successful podcast, got featured on CBC News, helped countless small creators, worked with brands, and all the while expanded his network and personal brand - and how YOU can do it too! 3 years ago, when Ben tore his ACL and made a YouTube video out of it, he never could’ve imagined the opportunities that would come with growing his channel. In today’s blog post, Ben Leavitt shares a step-by-step process for small channels to get their videos ranked in YouTube search, how he leveraged getting tons of free podcasting gear, what you should do to get featured in the news, and much much more!
What inspired you to create your channel? When did you start?
I really wanted to start a YouTube channel but I was being lazy with it and not committing. So, when I tore my ACL playing football, I viewed this as my sign from the world to get started. So after my injury I just made videos about my recovery process, and then got hooked from there.
Some of the early videos on your channel are more of a fitness niche. You started posting fitness content, and eventually transferred to social media growth content. What caused you to change your content?
I started first with the ACL videos and fitness content because I’m a huge fan of fitness (it’s one of my big passions). But, I quickly realized that I wasn’t 10/10, I wasn’t special, I wasn’t the best. With YouTube being so competitive, if you’re not truly passionate about something and not willing to become the best, then it can be difficult to grow. When trying to grow my fitness videos, I became very well versed and comfortable with social media platforms and growing those. I realized that those came far easier to me than most people, so I figured that’s where my value was and that’s where I could serve an audience, which in turn would help me grow as well.
Why did you start your podcast, Project Passion?
The reason I started my podcast was to expand on my own circle/network. I looked around at my friends/the people around me, and while they were absolutely awesome, they weren’t doing the things I wanted to do professionally or creatively. They weren’t who I saw myself working with. I asked myself, “How can I provide an opportunity to myself to connect with people that I want to?” If you have a platform or some sort of stage to actually have people on, you can “create your own party”. It’s like the high school party analogy - if you’re the kid who doesn’t get invited to parties, if you start having them and inviting people, in turn, you’re going to be invited down the road. That was my mentality. I wanted to be going to those “parties”. So, I decided I’d start my show and slowly expand my network to learn from other people while also providing value to people who listen to the show.
How do you find people to feature on your show? What’s your process for finding and reaching out to people?
It’s like anything else. There’s going to be some adversity - not everyone you reach out to is going to reply, there’s going to be a lot of people who say no, there’s a lot of people you won’t even hear back from. When I started out, I decided to set myself daily goals that I would stick to.
I would DM 10 random people that I wanted to interview every single day. From that point, it was just a numbers game. I stuck to that daily goal - even had it on my todo list. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how many people did respond. From there, you get your first few guests. It shows you’re actually taking this seriously, so future guests are easier and easier to get. Plus, you can get referrals if you treat people the right way, and I put a pretty big emphasis on doing that. In my early days, whenever I got someone on, I would then send them a free t-shirt and a handwritten note thanking them for coming on my show. That went a long way in them being an advocate for the show from that point forward.
Top 3 tips you would give to small YouTubers trying to start a successful YouTube channel?
Just start. You can’t grow, nothing can happen unless you start getting videos out there. So, start with whatever you have and upgrade as you prove to yourself this is something you’re actually going to do. There should be no excuses for not having enough equipment because you can literally start with just your phone and make quality videos. It’s more about what you’re saying or what’s being delivered than the actual package it’s coming in.
Take the time to actually learn how YouTube functions. YouTube is a search engine - the second largest in the world behind only Google - so understanding how that works and the different challenges that come with it is really going to set you apart from other people. 95% of people that get into YouTube don't invest that time, get discouraged and angry that no one watches their videos, and quit.
This third tip is sort of a two pronged approach. Remain consistent and remain patient. Without these two things, very few people are going to find success on YouTube. YouTube is saturated, but there will always be an opportunity if you remain consistent and patient.
How do you find opportunities with brands?
That’s definitely what I was focused on earlier on, and I’ve kind of gone away from it now because I’m not as tied to it. I’ve built my business and other revenue streams, so I’m not as reliant on that money. But, to create initial brand relationships, I think it’s typically best to create some sort of leverage (an audience is always going to help you out). In addition to that, figuring out how to best position yourself with whatever sort of leverage you have is important. When I would approach brands that make sense, I would tell them the numbers that I think they’d want to hear, numbers they’d also find most impressive.
A big one I had that I mentioned was that I had one of the first podcast related videos that went viral for a podcast video. It got around 100,000 views within a few months. It did very very well, and there weren't a lot of other podcast videos out there, so I would go use that as leverage to talk to so many different podcasting companies - and they would all reply! I got a ton of free gear from them, a ton of deals from them, just because I had leverage and I was speaking their language - I knew what was important to them, and I simply just showed them that I was a vehicle they could use to better themselves.
What is one of the best opportunities you've had because of your channel?
I think it’s all about the people that I get to meet. I think what’s even cooler is that I was always the kid who was trying to reach out to people because I loved the work they were doing and I wanted to learn from them/connect with them. I think it’s really cool that I’ve started to get to the point where I’m that person - people want to connect with me, they want to talk to me. I think that’s incredibly cool and I will always reply to these people because I was that kid. I’m a people person, so the fact that I can connect with people now at scale from the Internet is the coolest thing. Opportunities come in all the time that me 5 years ago couldn’t have even imagined.
Another thing that’s really cool is that I got to build a course for one of my biggest partners, Flip Hashtags. They’re a great team and super awesome guys from the UK. I helped build their course - that was a lot of fun.
What motivates you to continue making videos?
There’s a few different reasons. The biggest one is that there’s so many people out there that are capable of building whatever business, career, or lifestyle that they want; they just don’t know how to best leverage the tools that are out there to make that happen for themselves. As someone who’s always been very entrepreneurial myself, I’ve seen the benefits that I can bring to people’s lives, so I want to try to help as many people as possible to do that. In addition to that, a little more personally, is that I think that it’s a vehicle for me to build a personal brand (along with helping people) which I think eventually will allow me to just help more and more people at scale. It all kind of feeds harmoniously together.
You’ve been featured in CBC News! Can you describe how they got in contact with you in the first place? What was the exchange that occurred?
It’s all about understanding how these pipelines work, and how information flows. I actually got featured on a totally different news media, and that’s what you need to do if you’re trying to get featured on anything, really. Just get started on one, because they typically cannibalize off of each other. If it gets featured in one place, you’re going to be featured on more and more as long as it’s an interesting story.
My buddy was a blogger, his name is Tom Blake (he’s also a YouTuber now as well). He runs a finance blog and YouTube channel. He’s always on press releases trying to get featured in articles, and he came across one about kids making money from social media while in school. It didn’t apply to him, but he told me “You’re a perfect candidate for this”. He connected me with the editor of the piece, and she had an interview with me (she didn’t actually even tell me if I was going to for sure be featured in it, but I was). This was for the US News (usnews.com). After that, all of these Canadian publications reached out to me, and I was featured in 5 different news publications in Canada because I fit the narrative that the writer was trying to deliver. Once it gets featured in one place, everyone is starved for content, so you will get featured by more and more and more - it’s all about telling a story that fits to the narrative they’re trying to write. If you make their job easy, they’re going to help you out.
Since your entire channel is based around giving specific advice to small YouTube channels: Can you talk about the steps to help small channels rank in YouTube search and also the importance of ranking in search?
With YouTube being a search engine, it means that people who are searching in keywords/search terms are coming with a purpose and are highly motivated. So, if you’re able to rank in search, you’re going to get your ideal viewer or subscriber every single time watching your videos. That’s why search is incredibly important - and it’s something you can really work towards. There are set steps or procedures that will give you an opportunity to rank, so if you're a small creator, that’s your best opportunity because (in the beginning) YouTube is not going to start promoting your content. YouTube doesn’t trust you yet. But, you can earn that trust through ranking consistently.
Here’s my process:
Get into the mind of the viewer. I think about what kinds of questions I get all the time, or what I think people would like. And then, I work backwards from there. I never make a video until I’ve planned out the entire thing and there’s proven demand for it.
Then, I’ll try to frame how I think someone would likely search for that video and be very happy that they found it. What I’ve used for that is a Chrome plugin called Keywords Everywhere. The benefits of that is that you can actually see the search volume of specific keywords. I’ll go into the YouTube search bar and see how many people are searching for what I think would be the relevant keyword I’m trying to target.
Finally, I’ll combine the keywords I’m trying to target by writing a scroll stopping title for humans. In addition to that, I’ll use a few other relevant keywords that are related to the topic, put them a few times in the description, and also within the tags. By putting it all together like that (the content is also very relevant), you have a solid chance to rank.
Finally, what is your experience with hate (in real life and in comments) and do you have any advice on how to deal with it?
Hate is inevitable. It says more about haters than it does you. You almost need to develop a raincoat personality, meaning you don’t let the bad stuff impact you, the same way you don’t let the good stuff impact you. I actually have this one instance of hate that was so funny - it was something about my chest hair!
In the span of 5 minutes, there was somebody who said “I love your chest hair” and then, 5 minutes later, someone said “Your chest hair is disgusting”. In 5 minutes, I had totally contrasting comments, and that just speaks to the nature of human beings. You’re playing a numbers game. When you put yourself out on social media, you’re exposing yourself to a massive group of people, you no longer have control over who’s seeing your content. Think about 100 people you know - I guarantee there’s a few negative people within that mix. All you’re doing is exposing yourself to that at scale. If you don’t focus on that in your real life, why would you give haters the opportunity to impact you online?
Thanks for reading! A huge thanks to Ben for taking the time to answer all the questions. Here are the links to all his socials:
Instagram: @benleavitt_ https://www.instagram.com/benleavitt_/
YouTube: Ben Leavitt https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs3lGJvaDVFOjQ3wnv_cggA
Podcast: Project Passion https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/project-passion/id1348197636?mt=2
CBC News Article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/youtube-student-debt-loan-ben-leavitt-1.5412954
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