Sean Cannell
Jared:
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Hello everybody and welcome to the Kajabi Edge Podcast where we talk to real entrepreneurs to give you an edge on Kajabi. I’m your host Jared Lohman, Vice President of Customer Experience and today I’m joined by my friend Sean Cannell, Youtuber, international speaker, coach and creator of Think Media. Sean, did I say your last name right?
Sean:
You did. Sean Cannel rhymes with YouTube channel.
Jared:
I love it! I love it. You've even got a ring for it. Give us...I guess give us kind of your elevator pitch, a little bit about what you do and what you’re here for.
Sean:
Jared, thank you for having me on. I’m a small town kid, college dropout. And I started shooting videos in my bedroom in 2010. And today that’s turned into a Youtube channel with almost 2M subscribers. And I really help people find cameras and gear and lighting and equipment to create content. And then I also launched multiple channels, and also teach people how to use YouTube.
After building a 6-figure income, being able to kinda turn my day job into my dream job, reviewing tech and doing affiliate marketing, I started to teach using Kajabi and package what I know into an online course and multiple courses today. And so we have that kind of education business on the side. We say it like this at Think Media. “Bringing you the best tips” - that’s like the strategies for YouTube - “and the best tools” - that’s the gear for creating content - for building your influence with video. So that’s what we’re up to.
Jared:
Very cool! Yeah. I love that you said that because right before we hit record, obviously this being mainly an audio podcast, the first thing I asked you, or the first thing I said “Man! Your camera looks great!” So you obviously know this industry well. You’ve got it. I mean. We’ll probably try to pull a cut up of this just so we can show this off maybe on Instagram or something because you look like cinematic quality here.
Sean:
Yeah. I appreciate that. I’ve been doing it for years. In fact, I started shooting video in 2003 for my local church. So I’ve been doing video since 2003. That’s 18 years! Before YouTube started, back when AOL was sending us CDs in the mail to give us 3 hours free and we had a dial up internet. And so yeah! Excited today to be able to share all the mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned especially as technology has evolved to help people figure out their gear and create the best content possible.
Jared:
Sure! Well, that’s actually kind of a great segue into...I’d love to just kind of share with everyone here like how you in fact got started. What did that journey look like for you and how did you ultimately make it into this kind of online space?
Sean:
Yeah. You know for me...2003, I started volunteering - it was kind of by accident. Although, you know I’m a person of faith. I believe God directs our steps, but I just started volunteering at our local youth ministry. It has like 16 kids in it. And we are an hour north of Seattle. So Seattle of course is super cool, you know. Known for...you have Microsoft and Boeing and you got Nirvana, right - grunge rock, this whole thing. But that was not where we...We lived in the rural community, super small town, one town...one-street town called Marysville Washington. I started volunteering at this church. But the youth pastor handed me a video camera, an Adobe Premiere Pro, which still a lot of our team today use that software, and I started making videos.
And it was those early days of mastering your craft, being terrible at your craft, there was no craft to it really, you know. But I started making videos. And it was sort of building that muscle of content creation that I wouldn’t know would become so valuable in the future. Because I made a video every week. And we encourage people that want to start a YouTube channel, you know, make a video a week. And of course you want not just the videos making your course on Kajabi but how do you also you know put content out there that can let people know about your products, your programs.
Well, I was like cutting my teeth in those early days. I’m just this... simple silly videos for our youth ministry. And then eventually in 2009, that’s probably the start of my entrepreneurial journey, cause I started an LLC called Clear Vision Media and I started to do video production for others, started doing some social media management for others. Because for the last 7 years, I have been, you know, marketing our youth ministry. We set up like a Twitter, and we set up a YouTube channel, we made videos, we’re doing photoshop, we're doing graphic design. And so I got to try it for myself and learned a lot of lessons doing client work, getting just kind of, you know...undercharging, having crazy deliverables, just trying to, you know, earn enough money to keep things going.
And you know the fast forward to today, it was probably 2003 - 2005 that I would call those developmental years, the pre-entrepreneurship years, almost like the biggest towers had the deepest foundations. The biggest trees had the deepest roots. And I was really kind of building my roots, learning all these skill sets, voraciously learning, reading books, attending events. Once online courses kind of became a thing, obsessing over learning from the best and the brightest in the space and buying online courses and then really launched into what we’re doing today over kind of the last 6 years.
Jared:
What a cool place and time to move into this field like I won’t go into my story. I'm here for you but like almost identical, very very similar. I got into video-audio all through like...very very similar channels. I’ve actually been to Marysville Washington ironically you know.
Sean:
That’s crazy! Because most people don’t know what that is.
Jared:
Yeah. I would love to kind of just get an idea of where, you know, you’ve built the skills set like you’ve created a business that surrounded this. I assumed that maybe you started out like...locally? Is that correct? Did you start by working with people around you or you just started right out working with online?
Sean:
Yeah. In 2009 when I started Clear Vision Media, I started doing local wedding videos. I did music videos for this guy named Chad, a Seattle Hip-hop artist. And I remember working with Deborah Eminaff for like local baseball teams, or shooting videos for local Mexican restaurants but they also wanted to get online. So I was essentially like to this day I made a video that like ranks in search for like Marysville Mexican Restaurant. And not a lot of people are searching that, but they’ve been the dominant, you know, Mexican restaurant for the last decade because I was kind of forward thinking and YouTube is a search engine. You need a website more so you need content out there. And so really just saw the potential of what was happening as the social media explosion was happening and I was in the midst of that.
And then eventually you know we moved to Vegas, that’s where we’re based now in 2011 and I took a position as the Director of Communications at a local church but it was much larger. 2.5K person church, TV show, a Facebook page, author had a lot of books, who’s wanting you know to develop his personal brand. And you know I learned this principle from Ken Coleman who wrote the book called The Proximity Principle and that like one of the best ways to become who you may envision yourself - who you want to be one day is to get into proximity of people doing it. And one of the best ways to develop skills is to get into the proximity with people that have those skills that you want.
So I saw it as a huge opportunity to just try to be a part of something bigger than what I was doing and also to get to kind of experiment on and learn from voraciously learning but then also actually doing the stuff to see what I can learn in the process. So for example today my book “YouTube Secrets'' has 70K copies, my friend Benjie and I wrote it. It’s kind of my first book but it’s actually like my 5th book because I launched like 3 books with my pastor and did the cover and helped him write them, and helped him launched them, I wrote you know an ebook.
So there’s always like the hidden projects before you see that quote-unquote overnight success not realizing that it was 10 years in development. And so having the opportunities his name is Benny Perez, he’s a lead pastor in Vegas, I was helping him grow his Instagram and his Twitter and I was
Cutting out video clips, and doing micro content for him, and growing the YouTube channel and trying to optimize the videos, and doing the thumbnails and all that kind of stuff. Well that’s what we do today for Think Media. And we’re doing it at a level that's, you know, pretty advanced because there’s such deep roots of doing client work, doing it for others, helping them grow their brands and getting just that experience.
Jared:
Amazing! You’ve mentioned early, I don’t forget...I don’t remember how you frame this but like we talked about mistakes, struggles. Let’s dig into some of that. I'd love to hear what that journey was like?
Sean:
Yeah. I mean when I think about...I think that’s probably a simultaneous definition of entrepreneurship is struggle. And I think that a lot of times as entrepreneurs sometimes we’re wired different but we’re probably wired somewhat optimistically. You know we're somewhat optimists because you probably won’t go into this if you weren’t optimistic. Because you get punched in the face so much that there’s so many quitting points and chances to give up. I mean I think one of the biggest, the first one that I think about big and scary moments is to start Clear Vision Media, I took out a loan. And it was $7K. I took it out from prosper.com so I could buy a camera and level up some of my gear. But I was terrified!
And I also wasted a lot of that money. Just because I bought, like, unnecessary gear. Cause I was like “I got money!” I started adding stuff to my cart. And that’s actually kind of helped us...I probably wasted half of it. And that actually though...that mistake turned into content and even sort of the birth of my channel Think Media. Because I was like “Hey buy this camera, don’t buy this one. Get these accessories, you don’t need these accessories.
And I began to learn that actually...it’s kind of like, our mess becomes our message. And it’s what we end up being able to help others with. I mean that’s what so many of us do with Kajabi right? Is...we are helping people say “Hey I did it...I made mistakes this way, avoid my mistakes.” You’re paying for speed, you’re paying for wisdom. I mean hiring, you know. Now today, Think Media’s 18 people, which is crazy! Because again a kid just shooting videos in his bedroom didn’t think that I would have to learn how to be a CEO.
But I’ve learned in hiring that sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you meet your prince. And it's probably not their fault because you probably don’t even know how to hire. You’re like early on you get so overwhelmed you’re like you’re breathing you’re hired. You know what I mean? That’s your process of…
And so yeah we’ve made some mistakes in hiring or had people not work out. Or also just learned that you can get burnt where you know, you had people say, yeah you know...we go you know...one person promised us like “Yeah I’m going to be here for the rest of the year.” So because we're like “It’s going to take some time to train you, it can probably take a couple of months. So we don’t...you know...could you be here at least till the end of the year?” And they’re like “Yeah.”
And then as soon as we had just spent money in training and those first couple of months and not a lot of productivity yet they bailed you know. And so in those moments you could get bitter, you could, you know, get frustrated but what’s done is done. And so in entrepreneurship the future is forward and you just gotta keep going. And so I mean mistakes, we've made so many financial mistakes. You start experimenting with ads where you spend $10K trying to promote a webinar something, and you just blunder the whole...I mean here’s a quick story of our mistakes, our first ever webinar.
So I buy Kajabi when the newest Kajabi...had the opportunity to be a founder, when it’s just getting started. We don’t have an online course built yet but we wanted to...I believe if you pay - you pay attention and so we...and you...and there’s transformation in the transaction that made me put my money where my mouth is and kinda motivated me to get it done. So we jumped into that and then it’s a couple of months later I’m getting 1.0 of the course developed and then there’s the first webinar.
And I started the webinar, of course I’m studying how to do a good web class webinar and they’ve...you’re supposed to be at the sale by 45 minutes. Well I’m not at the sale until an hour and a half. So I’m already breaking like the rules this first ever. Okay that’s fine. And then we get there though and I have a call to action so people could go buy our course, first course we ever made called Video Ranking Academy. Well it turns out the URL on every slide is spelled wrong.
Jared:
Oh no!
Sean:
Every single slide. And so I have my friend David who’s kind of like just a business mentor and he’s texted me. I'm already stressed, scared to death, first ever webinar, too long, seeing like the little timer I have - “Oh I should be finishing.” And then he started texting me “The URL is spelled wrong, the URL is spelled wrong!” And I’m like “How does that help me now?” All these bzzz....bzzz...bzzz... that’s stressing me out.
Well additionally we just bought a URL with simple for...and we use URL forwarding to send it over to a Kajabi page because it’s a little bit different. Ours will be like courses-on channel.com-offer whatever. So we simplified it to something like you know start VRA or something and again that was spelled wrong. Academy was...Video Ranking Academy and the academy was spelled wrong. But then here is the other thing if you turned on masking, I don’t know if this is still true, but if you turn on forwarding with masking to Kajabi it wouldn’t even let it go through. So even if you spelled it right you could not get to the sales page.
Jared:
Oh gosh!
Sean:
So first-ever webinar, scared to death, gone, went way way too late, URL spelled wrong, if the person went into it to spell academy right it still takes you to the wrong page and I think again that’s the summary of entrepreneurship. You just got to be willing to get up, fail forward, in fact, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn and then adapt because hey then we get to do another one and correct the URL, and make sure that the link works and test things ahead of time and just do our due diligence.
But man I feel like the last...the entire journey has just been marked by, you could call those again, mistakes and failures for sure but I really believe as a John Maxwell quote “Sometimes you win, not sometimes you lose, sometimes you learn.” It’s just try to...the more you fail, the more you get data and feedback to just do it more intelligently the next time. And so we failed a lot probably more than most and that’s probably why we are where we are because we just keep going forward.
Jared:
Yeah. I love the quote. I don’t know who it is attributed to but failure is the fertilizer of success. I’d love to actually kind of move right into there like what were some of the first successes? Like when did you start realizing that you really had some momentum here? When did that kind of come into the picture for you?
Shannon:
Well you know I think there’s been different momentum points and I think one of the first big ones was.... I had been doing up until about 2015 mostly client work. And partly if I’m honest it was a little bit of fear. I was afraid to be the person and I liked being the person that was kind of behind the scenes helping others. And I think that’s all...it’s all about self-awareness because I think that’s sometimes people’s sweet spot. But if you’re listening to this and maybe you are afraid to be the per...you know you’re afraid to be the person in the course, to be the person on camera, to be the person on the live stream and to be...and so to really step out and kind of go all in I think would be a way to put out I was a little bit afraid of that but it was October 2015 where I’d been doing this stuff.
So I was getting momentum but I was getting more momentum for others. And some momentum for myself. I mean by this time my channel Think Media has 16K subscribers which is significant but it’s not a million, it’s not super great you know. It was because I have been chipping away at it for the past 5 years. Well, October 2015 I’ve got 3 main clients, one is paying me 2K, one is paying me 2k, one is paying me 1K a month. 5K a month, 60K a year, you know, 1099 income. My wife and I, no kids, living in Las Vegas. And I will never forget. Because October 2015, one of the clients calls me and says “Sean we got to let you go, we’re actually hiring some full-time people.”
So I was like “Okay bomber but it happens, not a big deal” 1 of 3. I can probably replace that person. The second week though, October 2015. Ring! Person calls me, “Sean we got to let you go.” This one surprised me. And I had lost the two $2K clients in the first 2 weeks of October. And now I’m like “Dang! That’s...that’s...what are we going to do?” Because we’re making a couple of hundreds of dollars of online income $300 to $500 on online income but now that’s not like pay your bills type money.
But then, 3rd week of October, phone call - “Hey Sean we got to let you go.” So all of that income just evaporated in 3 weeks. I am panicking a little. I'm like “Sonia - my wife - man! I’m so super sorry, I don’t know what we need to do.” And I actually called Dave and I mentioned him earlier, a business mentor who’s super...he actually did super well on online courses in the year 2000. Like he taught a real estate course like before. And you know, before it was so easy with Kajabi and all these different things, they’re like coding their own websites and yet he exited the company.
So he was kind of independently wealthy and really doesn’t have, you know. Him and his wife, Alice, were on vacation. I called David and I’m like “Hey, I’m really worried. I lost all my clients. David, what do you think I should do?” And he goes “I’m not worried.” And I actually got offended. I'm like you’re not...I don’t know if you understood what...Okay, David I just called you I know you’re not worried, David. David, you don’t...you’ve never also paid my bills though bro, you’re chilling drinking a pina colada on a beach as I’m talking to you in Mexico on vacation, and you just kind of living...I don’t know if you heard me. I’m worried, David. I know you...what do you mean you’re not worried?”
But I was so glad he said that because in entrepreneurship eventually, you have to you know take the leap. I kind of felt he goes “You know at some point you have to take a leap it seems like God just kicked you off the cliff though. Like you don’t have a choice, the leap has been decided. It’s time for you to fly.” I was like alright and it was at that point that we went all in. And to be honest Jared, like the momentum was immediate because of the power of focus. Now I wasn’t working for 3 clients, I was working full-time at the start 40,50,60 hour a week, no kids and my wife was bought in and we were 6 months away from zero on our bank account.
And we replaced that $5K a month income from YouTube ad revenue and from affiliate marketing on Amazon talking about tech. And then a few short months, built a 6-figure income with affiliate marketing in YouTube and so immediately I got to work building a course about how I did it. How do you get views on your videos? How do you monetize those views you know with affiliate marketing and other income sources? And I bought Kajabi that December I believe by the end of the year. Again also a little bit stressed and overwhelmed because I was focusing on the day to day doing this stuff but I knew I also wanted to eventually teach on how to do the stuff and I went all-in for like the year-long deal you know one year at a time.
And so that 1st course came out 1.0 real rough by March got polished the last three you know...last couple of months following that. And then today it’s like 4.0. It's our number 1 best selling program called Video Ranking Academy and it’s turned into, we got the community side of it and it’s like a faculty in it now. I mean it literally just started out, it’s just my framework, my proprietary process of really how to create videos that show up and search on YouTube, and how to beat the YouTube algorithm, and then how to monetize views but it’s really evolved.
And it’s been stunning and I think there’s been ups and downs but it’s been kind of really straight up and I attribute that to 2 things. I attribute that to that whole early part of this whole conversation of all that development. Leadership, development, team, ability to build the team, that was... I was learning all those skills a decade previous. And then cutting my teeth and actually doing this stuff on YouTube from 2007 to 2015. And then yeah packaged it up and then we continued to stay, we want to be player coaches so we stay in mastering YouTube and then teaching about it in Video Ranking Academy.
And so I just checked you know our all-time revenue doing Kajabi is 8.8M that has gone through there and that’s been since you know…that March 2015. And I think the first launch we did, we did $10K you know which was really significant, which is crazy! That’s an awesome first you know. First time coming out especially with those mistakes too. Because we were able to...thank god for being able to follow up with an email and be like “Here’s the fixed link” and you know things like that. But yeah man, the journey has been crazy and the momentum has been crazy as well.
Jared:
I’d love to...I guess learn a little bit more about, you have the YouTube channel. You’re doing kind of some professional services still like what was the idea behind like this should be a course? Like I... going back that far like...courses today are one of the things that I think especially now people are thinking about but like you know in many ways you are a pioneer. I mean maybe not as much as your friend who’s doing a course before there was a tool to do a course but still this was a new thing. How did you come up with this idea even?
Sean:
Yeah. You know I would think I was an early adapter but I wasn’t maybe like that bleeding edge and it really goes... I know people like Brendon Burchard and Chalene Johnson are known in this community, probably. And I actually went to Brendon Burchard’s, I don’t know if it’s called a different name now, but it used to be called Expert Academy and he did a video contest. So I’m on staff at a church in Vegas. I've been following Brendon because he wrote a book called Millionaire Messenger and he put out a contest.
And these are days that I like...could be very difficult to afford or even have you know to make it to...it’s not just the ticket price but also travel and you know food and all that kind of stuff. But he said “Hey we’re offering a chance to win a ticket for an all expense paid to Santa Carolita” or something like that to Experts Academy.” And I remember I saw it and in my heart I was like “I’m going to win this!” I was like “I am going to this, I am winning this contest!” Because I’m also like it’s kinda...it’s a video contest! Like I do video. And so I just worked my…
And I remember because my day off was Friday, and for our church we actually worked 5 and 1/2 days a week. So I had Friday off, half of Saturday because Saturday night we had a service, work Sunday and Monday so I have a day and a half off. So Friday morning I got up. I worked the whole day. Scripting my video, outlining it, planning it out, shooting it, editing it a little bit, downloading the footage. Got up Saturday, edited it, put it together, put it on YouTube, submitted it and then just waited weeks and weeks and I’m like “I don't know” and then I got accepted. And I remember going to Experts Academy. And so we’re...even before that there’s maybe the idea but that was really where...of course you know Brendon’s pretty all-time in that. And that really really helped, you know. That gave me some of that initial vision.
Later on, I moved to Irvine California and I was a campus pastor of a church just running a site kind of running the day today as we had a video venue, and discovered that Chalene Johnson like lived in Irvine met James Wedmore on these days too or...And these are the types of characters where I just could reach out and I had an interview show. And nobody knew who I was but I was like...I remember I invited Chalene on our video influencers interview show. I had bought courses from James Wedmore and Lewis Howes in 2010. James had a YouTube course, Lewis had a LinkedIn course.
So I owe...at the end of my book YouTube Secrets I have acknowledgements and those...all those names are in there. Lewis Howes, James Wedmore, Brendon Burchard, Chalene Johnson, and others. But man! Success, it’s clues and there’s so much opportunity to you know...you don’t actually really need to reinvent the wheel. Of course, you just bring your originality to it but there’s a lot of things that you don’t even need time to be creative just follow the people who’ve laid out the blueprints.
And Video Ranking Academy itself was really a direct play by play of going through Chalene Johnson's The Marketing Impact Academy and especially not just in the creation of the course but in the marketing of the course. And really thinking through what you called the infomercial formula and you know all these things like getting testimonials and these things like that like how to do it? How to reach out?
And so to that end too even us doing our first ever kind of mini launch or launch was $10K, I think our second one was about $25K. Those results did not come from me trying to reinvent the wheel. It came from just saying “Okay Chalene, okay Brendon just tell me what to do and I will do exactly what you tell me to do. And I’ll put in the work!”
The long hours to try to figure out how to write copy, and to do the workbooks, and to do the worksheets, and watch as I go into the treadmill, watching you know on my phone the online course modules, and really just putting in the work step by step and watching it grow. And realizing that the 1.0 version of that - pretty remarkable to do like 10K. But I looked at the numbers we’re doing today because we just keep learning and tweaking, and learning and tweaking, investing in ourselves. And so not my idea. That's the answer, Jared! Completely not my idea.
But also felt, you know I had a passion to teach, I think that’s huge. I think what also I was obsessed with is at the end of the day...I think we could summarize the whole thing to win. With Kajabi or anything else. If you could get people actual results, you’ll win. You want to build a strong brand, a strong business? Your website colors, they, maybe, matter and Kajabi can make you look amazing with the newest templates and all these different things. The where you put the button, and if it’s the right thing like that stuff all matters. But like it’s so secondary.
What makes a strong brand is if you solve a real problem for somebody and if you move the needle for people. You know Frank Coronel will call it RIA a Results In Advance. If you could just get someone a result and like move the needle. So I just became so obsessed with mastering YouTube, learning YouTube. Does it work for me? Can I help...can I share this information with somebody else? Will it work for them? Can I get people RIA - Results in Advance on YouTube?
And so I was actually mapping it. Ad Experts Academy even before I was like 2010 and 2015 while I had a day job essentially, I was being very intentional to like these are my developmental seasons to make a course someday or to educate someday but with real deep substance that will bring powerful transformation in someone else’s life. That won’t just be information or won’t just be theory, or won’t just be a hypothesis that work for one person but that’s been tested and tried and it’s like an unbreakable framework. And so anyways, yeah man grateful.
Jared:
Yes. So you have a YouTube channel, you have a course, was it at that point you’re still doing the kind of the professional services at that point in time? Like at what point did this like become and maybe it still hasn’t like...Is the course like kind of the primary driver of your business today is it the YouTube channel?
Sean:
The professional services stopped when the freelance clients stopped.
Jared:
Okay.
Sean:
And that was my vision. You know I’m super...I think and we’ve even considered starting like an agency of professional service. We’ve considered...there’s so much demand for it and so much respect for those who do it but anybody listening that does client work just knows that that’s a certain level of grace and patience and because they’re also just depending on you know others. So I had a clear vision that I wanted to do one too many.
And so I have a great video on YouTube people can look up. It’s...if you looked up like “Think Media 21 Streams of Income” and I go into detail. We have 21 Solid Streams of Income some of those being investments in crypto and some things so probably about 15 of them. Today initially it was the YouTube channel, YouTube ad revenue, affiliate marketing and that was significant because we’re at scale, the channel has grown. And I’m beginning to be very good at answering specific questions comparing 2 cameras. So if someone’s at the point of making the buying decision - do I buy a Canon M50 or Sony a6400, they find my video.
That’s actually a point where then just saying “Hey if you want to check out the links that’s an affiliate link” and we have had $40,000 months of Amazon associate which is shocking. Most people, which makes sense, they’re affiliate marketing is like 3% of their PNL or whatever but that’s significant for us. The courses by far are biggest, Kajabi digital education is and everything. We have a thing called Inner Circle. We have...I looked it up. We have 53 products inside of Kajabi now. That’s crazy! Like you don’t have...that’s almost sound chaos on the sales page or like your course area. It’s because there’s been like...sometimes different versions or different bundles but nevertheless that's what on the backend that can be seen and only probably about 3 are publicly seen.
But the digital products is a huge one but for us brand deals are huge. That’s a million-dollar business for us because sponsoring our podcast or video podcast, sponsoring our actual videos. We have multiple content creators now so we post basically 10 videos a week across 2 channels. And so each one of those has the potential to either be actually sponsored by us. Meaning we could say “Hey you want to check out our free class?” And that could take you to our digital products or this video is brought to you by Stream Yard and that’s a live streaming software.
So brand deals is a significant one. The book YouTube Secrets, the physical ebook and audiobook is a significant income source and monthly membership site. We have an annual event called Grow with Video Live that is grown to be more significant in 2022. It's going to be crazy in Las Vegas, Gary Vaynerchuk, pretty stunned that’s all coming together. And then you know...I don’t even know if I’m thinking to get...What ultimately, and we do like one-on-one coaching is kinda hitting with me and then Heather Torres in our team is also kind of hitting consulting, sort of happens organic.
But I think what’s kind of unique about us...I would assume almost everybody listening to this is creating content at some level but because we are obsessed with being player-coaches, I really guard my focus to create world-class YouTube content as that’s what it means for me to stay in the game. So when it comes to if you...because people say we want you to help us create content. That’s what... Like we have 18 people working on our own video podcasts, shows, customer service, event. And so yeah it’s all in the way insular for Think Media and then our way of packaging that and teaching that is we’re like “Hey we’re doing it and if you want to learn our model that’s in our course or if you want to learn how we’re doing it that’s in our event.”
And to your point yeah we want to do...we want to help everybody meaning the request because we got so many “Hey can you...we want to hire like a couple of people to shoot and edit our videos or can you edit all our videos or manage our YouTube channel for us?” I see an opportunity there and would love to scale into that but you know the power of focus, sure you don’t want to dilute your focus too soon. And how fast do we want to scale, or how do we want to staff around that, or do we want to buy an agency, or partner with somebody so we could get there quicker.
And then another one, this is a huge one I forgot J.B. Partnerships. So for the problems, we can’t answer that’s the power of J.B.’s right? It’s like when someone says “Hey thank you so much for helping us with YouTube, what about this?” Well, that’s here, here’s the person that specializes in that. For example, there are things that a lot of people could benefit listening to these things called Vidchops, one is called Video Husky.
We worked with Vidchops and that’s a video editor that can cost I think as little as under $500 a month for like 4 videos. You just Dropbox in the footage, the video comes back in 2 days. Unlimited, it’s like a 1K a month and basically every 2 days you could be getting your video back. And so that’s like another way...it’s a way through our education trying to point people and equip people with those tools and those resources.
Jared:
You’ve talked a lot about like various names or an inspirational to you, putting you completely on the spot on this one. So I’m really interested like what would you say almost to be that person for everyone else listening to this show...what would be kind of like the key step you would recommend to anyone else considering this entrepreneurial journey?
Sean:
Question number 1 on entrepreneur journey would be “Where do you want to be in 3 years? What would your ideal situation be in 3 years?” Let’s get more specific. What is the actual work and impact you’d want to be doing? Do you want to have a best-selling book? Do you feel like writing is your strength? Do you want to package your information in an online course that is consumed passively? Do you feel passionate to have more of a membership aspect to it where every month you coach a group of women? Do you want to speak on stages? Do you want to build some other types of business or build a non-profit? Man! Clarity is so key because if you don’t know where you’re going how would you know when you get there?
The interesting thing is I think there’s 2 paths on clarity. Number 1: Really dig deep on that because the clearer you are about where you want to go is the better you’ll be able to reverse engineer back from that. And so I think the 2nd option is we learn by doing. Get a decent north star. Be like “What way do you want to go? Well I know I kind of want to go Northeast.” At least you know you don’t want to go southwest. So start going that direction, start creating, start moving, and actually, clarity will come. It won’t come by you sitting on the couch but it will come by you continuing to invest in yourself, read, journal, learn, reflect and create stuff.
And so I think the first of our 7 arts is another way of saying clarity: it's reverse engineer. Start with the end in mind. Could be hard to do but the clearer you are on the end...and that was one of the helpful... You know even a tipping clarity is to pick a person or a group of people that you would like to trade places with. Whose shoes would you want to be in, in terms of their lifestyle, in terms of their impact, in terms of the work they’ve created, in terms of how prolific they are in terms of the kind of work they’re doing.
Because the cool thing is these pioneers have blazed the path and I just didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I always...I mean if I’m honest with you Jared, the way I would build out like websites early on was I would go to like Chalene’s website, Brendon’s website, Lewis Howes’ website and I would just view it as a template. And what’s interesting about that is if you feel like that’s copying it really isn’t. It’s actually more like an apprenticeship. Because if you’re actually apprenticing under somebody in craftsmanship they’re not asking you to go be creative and make your own thing, they’re actually asking you to do it exactly the way they’re doing it as an apprentice.
And then once you become a mentor yourself, once you step out you will have your own unique flair and vibe, and style. But it’s cool to kind of go through and emulate and model people that have gone before you and so I mean that’s...that would be the thing would be clarity. And interestingly enough I know we could go in a lot of steps but I think for everybody listening not only is that where you start but I also think that’s where you revisit at every stage of your career. You got to get clarity again. “Okay where are we going next?” “Okay, what are my next 5 moves?”
And so I think clarity would be an awesome thing that all of us listening could spend some time re-getting clear on “Where is it we’re going and where do we want to go? Who do we want to be? Who do we want to help? What problem do we solve? What do we want to be known for?” Those are some really important questions to not just ask when you are starting. But to...what do we want it to feel like? What are our highest values that we are unwilling to compromise on a journey towards building it? What do we not want to do, you know? What do we not want it to be?
And clarity is power. The more clearer you are...most entrepreneurs I talked to, if I say “Where do you want to be exactly in the next 6 months?” They’re not really sure. They’re like alive. But man the more clarity you have the better you’re going to attract the right coaches and mentors, and team members into your world, it’s going to be a decision-making framework for you. So I think clarity man...clarity is king! Let’s go for clarity.
Jared:
I love the answer and again I put you on the spot that was incredible! A lot of really I mean throughout this entire conversation a lot of incredible nuggets of gold in this. I know that there’s going to be a ton of people listening to this that want to get a hold of you, want to learn more about you if they don’t already know about you so let us know like where should they best find you?
Sean:
Yeah. People want to connect, I’m @seancannel rhymes with YouTube channel on all the social media. Love Instagram, really happy to answer questions in a DM or a comment that’s S-E-A-N and then Think Media though. So for anybody that hasn’t checked out Think Media on YouTube, the word Think Media you type that in YouTube, and that’s going to send you down a crazy rabbit hole of almost any question you have.
So if you were to type in Think Media and the word camera if you need a camera. Think Media and the word live streaming if you’re like man “How do I live stream? Which is a laptop or phone or some budget gear to get me live streaming there or build a studio?” Or just Think Media YouTube tips, just check out the channel, definitely subscribe. We try to pride ourselves on putting out better free content than a lot of people’s paid content.
One of the things that we also do is we don’t really have a paid course on content creation. That is all free. How to create videos, make videos? How to set your YouTube channel even up the practical side from concept to completion, it’s there. So you’ll be surprised by that wealth of resources. If you really want to get in the strategy side that’s where our courses come up.
And then lastly the book, man. The possibly greatest way to bring endless traffic and leads and awareness to your course is to really invest heavily into YouTube. I love all Instagram, and social selling, and DMs, and all these other things, whatever is working for you, cool! But man, go all-in on YouTube and keep it simple. Get my book YouTube Secrets. It’s kinda a hard plug but like just go to Amazon, get YouTube Secrets. What do I do, what do I do first? Just read the book. It will give you the 7 Secrets to YouTube Success to just get you up and running. And then someday if you need more help shoot me a DM. But YouTube Secrets is the book name and I think it will really make a profound impact in you getting your channel set up and really impact the course curriculum that your publishing on Kajabi.
Jared:
Well Sean this has been an absolute pleasure. As I’ve mentioned early, you’ve dropped like a million gold nuggets here. Really great conversation. Thank you for coming on today.
Sean:
Jared, I appreciate you so much and I am so grateful just for Kajabi. Kajabi has been the backbone of our business from the start. Before I was ready I jumped in, I saw the email “Hey there’s this opportunity to like go all in right now as a founder,” and I was like “Ohhhh.” And again these are the...we’re 6 months away from like zero on our bank account and from that day that’s where our business lives. And so Kajabi is a godsend. So grateful for the entire team and for the difference Kajabi’s made in our business. Kajabi is our business and so grateful. Thanks for having me on the podcast and I appreciate you.
Jared:
I love it! Well, that’s all we have today everyone. We really appreciate you listening in. Once again leave us a review on your favorite podcasting source and look forward to seeing everyone next week on the Kajabi Edge Podcast.
