Today on Creators Uncut, Spencer is joined by Mel Stubbs from Christy Capital Management! Mel uncovers the unconventional strategies behind building a thriving niche YouTube channel in the often-complex world of financial planning. Discover how Mel transformed a “begrudgingly” maintained channel into a powerful tool for client engagement and business growth, hitting 9,000 subscribers by focusing on invaluable touchpoints and expert, compliant content. Get ready to learn how Mel, wearing many hats, navigates the strict rules of the financial industry to create content that not only attracts but also serves and retains clients, making financial education accessible and engaging.
Check out Mel’s channel on YouTube: / @christycapitalmanagement
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Transcript
Mel: Man, the views. Like, evidently, this niche does not want that.
Spencer: And I’m assuming it’s probably a good change of pace, you know, doing like the financial stuff and then kind of switching gears and being more, I guess, creative.
Mel: I see these people that just have like hundreds of thousands of followers or subscribers and like, man, how did they get there?
Spencer: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. This is the show about YouTube and the behind the scenes. Today, I am joined with Mel from the channel Christie Capital Management. Mel, thanks for being on the show.
Mel: Great to be here.
Spencer: So like we usually do, we like to get to know our guests a little bit. So if you don’t mind telling us a little bit about yourself, you know, maybe where you’re from, what you like to do, and also, more importantly, what your channel is and what it’s about.
Mel: Yeah, my name is Mel Stubbs. I’m a financial planner with Christie Capital Management. We’re helping people that are retired age realize that they have enough, help them retire. Our niche is kind of federal employees. So their system, they get a pension, there’s some specialties there where it’s a little more complicated.
So most all the content we are putting out is related to federal employees. It is complicated or can be complicated. And so have people reach out to somebody that is kind of an expert in that area. And that’s kind of what we do.
Spencer: Gotcha, cool. Well, I’m glad there’s people out there like you that do that type of stuff because I definitely don’t understand that. I mean, I’m not at that age yet, so that makes sense. But I’m glad there’s channels like yours out there because I feel like it’s important information to know.
Mel: Yeah, anybody you’re searching for that help you with something, it’d be great if they kind of specialized in whatever you got going on. I guess you got to make sure whatever niche you’re in is large enough that you can actually have a business. Yeah. Now, there are a handful of people throughout the US that also specialize in this. But most of the people don’t. So hopefully we’re limiting who we’re actually really competing with.
Spencer: Right. Have you found that there’s other channels that are also in this specific niche or do you feel like you’re like the main one?
Mel: No, there are others spread out and out. We’re in South Carolina, our home office is in Georgia. So we’re kind of Southeast. I know there’s one in the Arizona area. I know there’s somebody in Alaska. But I mean, there’s a bunch of federal employees.
Spencer: Yeah, gotcha. So how did it, it’s for your business, right? Yes. So how did you, I guess, get into creating a YouTube channel for the business? Yeah.
Mel: So I mean, I’ve been here probably 12 years or so. They had a YouTube channel already. I think they were probably begrudgingly doing it. They weren’t super excited about it. It was during the COVID time of four or five years ago where I am a YouTube consumer. And so I’m watching a lot of it, of just other stuff, of how to record music, how to record video.
Just how to do anything. And then I’m looking at our YouTube stuff and like, man, it’s not that great. Like we can do that. And so I asked, hey, do you mind if I start coming up with stuff? And they said yes. And kind of started from there. I also found we meet with people at a retirement age.
And I found that, hey, we’re talking today. We’ll probably talk again in seven or 10 days. It would be great if I could send them something, a little three minute video they could watch in between. To just be reminded of it.
And then I’m looking at our channel, like, man, we don’t have a video on that topic. Let me go make it. Let me go make it. So yes, we’re making videos for just a standalone video, but it’s also like stuff of extra touch points between now and the next time I talk to you, I’d be great to send that video to that person.
Spencer: Gotcha. So it’s like a resource. Not only is it like to help grow awareness of your business, but it’s also a resource that you can give to your clients. Like if they have a specific question, they can be like, you can send them this video. Yes.
Mel: And just so, I mean, they don’t forget about you. You know, I’m body in two weeks or so, they can grow cold on you. So just trying to have enough little videos to have different touch points. So, you know, hopefully every few days, they’re at least reminded of you. Gotcha.
Spencer: Yeah, that sounds good. So your business already had a YouTube channel. Sounds like they were just doing it because it was the trendy thing to do.
Mel: I mean, somebody told them to do it. You know, I don’t know if they had somebody else doing scripting or if they were doing scripting. I know, you know, our owner that was on camera. I mean, he would do it, but he wasn’t excited about doing it. And I think, you know, they had to get somebody to come in to film him and then somebody else would edit and like the thumbnails were, they could have been for sure. And so, you know, just some of that stuff where it hopefully got better.
Spencer: Yeah. Well, from what I’ve seen, it looks like it’s pretty good. Like it’s growing, right? Yeah.
Mel: I mean, I think we just hit 9,000 subscribers, which I mean, this is a niche. So, I mean, you know, retirement age, federal employees is not a huge niche. Topics have gotten more specific so that we can send videos. It’s also helpful when people call in and say, you know, I watched a video you did on whatever, let’s go. Like they already know I am. They’ve already heard it once. Let’s talk about it again. Like some of that type stuff is definitely helpful.
Spencer: I think it’s important to point out, like you are in a specific niche. Like not everyone can be Mr. Beast, where his like, his niche is like everyone. I think every channel has a purpose and yours 9,000 subscribers, that’s still really successful, especially for like how niche your channel is. So, I feel like that’s important to point out.
Mel: Yeah. I mean, we need, I mean, it’s probably two or three people. Like, you know, the videos are saying, go to our website and click talk to an advisor and give us some information and we’ll reach out to you. I mean, it seems like two or three a week do that. Oh yeah. And not everybody works out, obviously. You know, some people are there just to, like their self-advice, they do everything themselves. They get some info, great.
You know, but if we can find the people that don’t want to do it themselves, but they want somebody that they think is an expert in that area, that’s what we’re trying to, you know, show up for. Gotcha. And it’s just a piece of some other things too. It’s not only YouTube. Right. Yeah.
Spencer: Definitely. So, do you have like a team that kind of helps you out with, you know, writing and shooting and editing and all of that stuff? Or do you kind of handle that all of yourself since you were the one that was like, you know what? I think I want to make the channel better.
Mel: It’s all me. And we have a compliance person that has to watch every video, make sure I don’t say anything non-compliant. But I am coming up with the ideas. I script them, you know, I was, I was outlining in the beginning.
And then I would say stuff that was not compliant. And it’s like, what do you want me to do? Like I can’t, you know, you want me to cut that line out.
Now it doesn’t make sense. My bad habit was you’re going to want to, like you’re going to want to do, do, do, do, do, like really everybody, like 100% of everybody’s going to want to do that. I’ve now learned you might, you know, you may, you may want to look at it. Like when you script it, you can read it and you can catch some of those non-compliant things.
And, you know, got the teleprompter and then, you know, I guess it’s just learning how to read a teleprompter without it being like reading a teleprompter. And, you know, you just put out more material that hopefully is better that doesn’t get flagged by the compliance person. And, you know, I’m scripting it, recording it. I use Camtasia to edit it. We use Trello, like a Trello board where there’s columns for, you know, an idea for I’ve shot it, but I haven’t edited it for I have edited it, getting approval from the compliance person. I mean, it’s all the way down until it’s like posted on YouTube to where we can drag it and the compliance person can watch it and leave a note and whatever.
You drag the thumbnail there, kind of everything’s in a Trello board. Yeah. We do have an outside marketing company that helps us with the website and Facebook posts and stuff like that.
They are the ones that actually take the video and upload it to YouTube and they do whatever tag words or that kind of stuff. But everything up to that point to all me.
Spencer: Gotcha. Wow. That is that is impressive. A man with many hats. So the compliance person, is that someone that’s like inside your company? Or is that like a third party that you send it to?
Mel: No. So I mean, we’ve got there like the chief compliance officer in the financial world. They just make it more difficult. I mean, I’m driving down the highway and there’s some like billboard of like, you know, some lawyer that just made $8 million for somebody in the settlement. And yet there are certain things we can’t say. I mean, I think it may until recently, we couldn’t even get like a, you know, a client couldn’t even write something nice about us on Facebook. Like, could you please take that down? You’re not allowed to do that, which makes no sense.
Yeah. So there’s just lots of rules in the financial world about what you can’t and can’t say. But then I watch other videos and a man, they are so not compliant. They are saying, man, I could never say that. And they’re saying it like, but, you know, I guess we’re trying to do it the right way. So we have, you know, the first, you know, like in today’s video, we’re going to talk about whatever. And then it goes to a little three second disclosure that has to show at the beginning of every video, because that’s just the way it is.
Spencer: Gosh, that sounds difficult to work with. Have you feel like over time you’ve gotten better about saying things that are compliant or is still kind of kind of hard to naturally say that?
Mel: The scripting has helped a lot. And I’ve just learned, you know, that you’re going to want to say 99% of people might want to. Sometimes the compliance department gets mentioned in the video. Just so the compliance department doesn’t get mad at me. Let me just say somebody out there this might not apply for, but for the majority of people, and I say, we don’t want to say. But the scripting has helped.
Yes, I don’t fail much. The problem with it is I’d like to put out, I guess, more content. And so, you know, we do one video a week, one short a week, and it’s being limited now by, you know, how much I mean, compliance person does other stuff. So they don’t have just, you know, I’d like to put out three videos a week. Can you just watch more of my videos, please? That’s that’s the bottleneck right now. Gotcha.
Spencer: Well, that’s interesting. I feel like a lot of other YouTubers don’t necessarily have to worry about compliance, you know, because there’s a lot of channels out there that are just like, you know, vlog style or random stuff. Whereas yours is like, because it’s so niche, like you got to make sure you say the right thing. So that’s interesting.
Mel: One of the necessary evils, I guess, to stay out of trouble. Yeah. Every once in a while, you’ll hear of some, you know, financial place getting like sued by the government. They owe millions of dollars because they did something. Anybody read it like, oh, that was really stupid. You should have done that. But we got to keep everything legal.
Spencer: So you’re trying to avoid that. That makes sense. Absolutely. So like, like we mentioned earlier, your channel is, is pretty niche. And you’re the you said you’re the one that comes up with the ideas. So how do you, I guess, decide what videos to make content about? Do you get like comments from people or do you, you know, like do your own research on YouTube? You said you’re a consumer. Do you like find where there’s no content about a specific topic? Or I guess, how do you decide what videos to make?
Mel: Yeah. Well, some of it is, I mean, you have a meeting with somebody and they ask a question and you have a meeting with somebody else. They ask the same question. I’m like, well, dad, go on.
I guess this is a question that they need more, you know, help with. You know, some of it I watch or read other articles and like, man, that’s a good idea. Let me, you know, I’ll just take the title. I don’t even need to read your article, sir. I don’t the title is good enough.
I will make my own about this. So, you know, is that borrowing the idea? Yes. I didn’t even read your article. So, you know, we can have a, we can have an article on the same thing. At least twice a month, they’re taking these scripts from the videos and somebody, the marketing place is kind of doctoring them up a little bit and they’re making an article like a blog post as well. So that, I guess is another way we’re kind of using it, but it’s multiple questions from prospects or clients. You just read in the news and then, you know, there’s certain, I guess, topics that, you know, you can kind of always talk about and make up, you know, something new about, you know, how much more would you get if you worked one more year? Let’s do a video about that. I like that part of it, the kind of invention of coming up with new ideas.
Spencer: Yeah. The creative stuff. That makes sense. Cause you also do like, you’re not just the marketing person. Like you also do the financial side of things too. Right. Yes.
Mel: I am actively, I guess, looking for new clients and helping current clients. And so what’s great is when they do watch the videos and they’re like, wow, I actually get to talk to you. Yeah. I mean, yes, please. Yeah. Some of them already sort of know you if they’ve watched. And usually if they’ve watched one video, they’d probably watch five or six to finally reach out. Yeah.
Spencer: And I’m assuming it’s probably a good change of pace, you know, doing like the financial stuff and then kind of switching gears and being more, I guess, creative with, you know, making videos and stuff like that. Do you feel like that’s kind of nice, kind of doing two different Yeah.
Mel: With the videos, you get to say what you want to say and there’s no rebuttal. It’s great. You know, you don’t have somebody like, well, hold up. Let me ask a question. No, let’s just talk about this. Yeah.
So that means all. persuasive talking about certain topics to hopefully lead someone to, this is a good idea. Now, some people are like, this is a good idea. You don’t have to use us. You can just do it yourself. But hopefully there’s enough people that like, yeah, that’s a good idea. I didn’t think about that. Man, could you help me with this? Yes, we can.
Spencer: Cool. So do you feel like your content is mostly evergreen content, like stuff that people can look up years down the road? Or do you feel like it’s pretty new and trending? Like, do things change a lot in this specific niche?
Mel: Probably 90% of it is. I mean, every once in a while, they change the rules on some things. You know, like the IRS changes certain rules. And then, you know, what you said two years ago, didn’t write anymore. And some of the videos are, you know, we’re talking about tax brackets. And so like, hey, in 2025, the top of this tax bracket is this dollar amount. Well, next year, that dollar amount will be different. The idea is the same, but the actual dollar amount is different. And that’s one of the problems.
You know, one of them, trying to think of like what mistakes have been made. Some of the stuff is I’ve got content for probably the next six months, that’s already out like ready, that’s just the compliance person has got to watch it. So then every once in a while, you know, like, we’ll have a video in April of 2025, that’s, you know, the tax bracket in 2024 is whatever, like it’s taken so long for the video to get posted that it’s like it sounds out of date.
It’s not real, but you know, it’s not the best when, you know, it’s it just got posted. Why are you talking about 2024? Okay, commenter, like this, go do something else with your life.
Spencer: It’s not, it’s just don’t worry about it. Yeah. So when, when there is like a change, like for example, the IRS changes something, do you like prioritize making a video on that like as soon as possible? Because you want to like be on top of it or how does that work?
Mel: Well, we just had, it’s kind of the first time, but December, January, I guess, you know, Trump and the whole doge thing where they’re just, you know, giving everybody the option to go ahead and retire and turn in your resignation type of thing. We did come up with two fresh videos where I had to shoot it, get it, you know, cut in line, have the person approve it, because it was, I guess timely. And of course they got a lot more views. I mean, so yes, but that does kind of put a damper on some of the other stuff. If like, if every week I’ve got, this is a new cutting edge video, you got to watch it today.
The people that work around me won’t be as happy if I keep asking for exceptions over and over again. So, and then the like the marketing company we have that it used to be, I think, like every video, well, probably two of the two of the four videos for the month would get an article written. And so they need some time to, okay, this is the video we’re going to do a month from now. The person goes ahead and like turns it into an article.
And so like some of that, they need some heads up. We’ve got a place in the Fed world is called Fed Smith, where it’s just like an article, it’s just articles on federal stuff. So right now, one of our articles a month gets posted there. And I can, when I go to the YouTube, I guess views, you can see like, man, why did that video suddenly get a whole lot more views?
And you look like, oh, it just got posted on Fed Smith. And now, you know, 1000 people just saw the article. And some people are lazy that don’t want to read. So they go watch the video. But there’s other things like that to try to help push to YouTube.
Spencer: Gotcha. That makes sense. So I’m assuming they like embed the video in the article. So it’s just like directly, that’s cool. Correct.
Mel: So I guess on the YouTube looking at it like external views on this video that like the last week, I’ve gotten seven views. What’s it like? Oh, sweet. Yeah. Now I wish I could post there every week, but they don’t let me do it every week.
Spencer: Yeah. So I have a question about the marketing team. Does the marketing team do like stuff for your business as well? Is that why they upload the YouTube videos to your channel?
Mel: So they’re outside marketing company, you know, that I guess they help multiple people. But, you know, they’ve helped kind of redo the website. They’ve helped, you know, we’ve got like a talk to an advisor form that, you know, get some information.
So, you know, they kind of handle that piece. I think we’ve just in the last month or so started doing some Facebook advertising. Of course, we had to shoot the videos and just render it different. So it would be right for Facebook. But they, you know, post Facebook, they manage the email list. They’re certain, like when they write a new article, they’re posting it on our website, but they’re also sending it out to the email list. We do probably eight times a year like monthly webinars.
I think this year we’ve decided the three months of summer and December we’re not going to do. But, you know, the webinar ends up being like a 45 minute video. I’m shooting a video. So it’s not a live webinar. It’s recorded like a YouTube video. They post that for us. I’ve also now been going in sometimes for shorts, sometimes for just a video and just taking a chunk of the webinar.
And let me put an intro on it and then put this six minute piece of the webinar, you know, try to get more content that way. So they’re doing several things. I just think for other people, they’re probably helping script and help edit and help. I think they like the fact that I do so much of it. Gotcha.
Spencer: Okay, cool. I was just wondering, because I feel like a lot of YouTubers I’ve talked to don’t necessarily have an outside like marketing team that uploads for them. They kind of do it themselves. So I was just curious about that. So, but that makes sense.
Mel: I guess we’re a for profit business trying to, a lot of YouTube stuff, it’s, you know, tinkering on YouTube and it’s getting a little bit bigger. But I mean, there’s not money to pay an outside marketer for certain YouTube channels.
Spencer: Yeah, no, that makes sense. So I see in the background, you’ve got a book there and you kind of mentioned this when we first talked. You’ve written a book for your company and I’m curious, has that had any influence on your YouTube videos or have your YouTube videos had any influence on, you know, selling the book or how has the book gone? I guess.
Mel: How’s the book going? So it came out in early March, maybe? I just looked today, I think in the last 30 days, we’ve sold 52 copies. Okay. And that’s like, that’s not us buying that.
But I mean, it’s not terrible. I mean, we mainly made the book. So as we are meeting people there again, you know, hey, we’ll meet again in 10 days and we might meet again in 10 days after that, let’s send something so they can be reading and learning about us in the meantime. So I mean, most, the purpose of the book is for us to give it to people we’re already working with.
It is for sale. We’re just finishing up. There’s 10 chapters in the book.
It’s going over the 10 decisions that they have to make at their retirement. On YouTube for the last 10 weeks, we’ve had a chapter video. I have noticed YouTube views have come down some because it’s just like book, book, book, book, book. You know, so the last 10 weeks have been books. They have upped it to instead of one short a week, we’ve been doing three shorts a week, but they’re all about the same chapter. And so I don’t know, maybe it’s like book overload to where, you know, I think a couple months ago we had like 18,000 views that month. I think now we’re down like 15,000 views this past month, but I think it might be book overbook. Gotcha.
But, you know, trying to, you know, mark it that way. One of our webinars was on the book. And so these chapter videos were actually the piece of the webinar, just reused the webinar.
You mentioned evergreen. I guess that webinar is going to be something that is evergreen, that is advertised on Facebook or wherever, where they could access it at any time talking about the book. But we have had, you know, even some of the people we’ve worked with, you know, like, Hey, can I have your address so I can mail you this book? I’m like, Oh, I already bought the book.
There we go. You know, but, you know, a lot of it was, you know, we had a book that our company had written six, seven, eight years ago, but it was all technical stuff of like doing the math of how many years you work there, times a certain percentage. And like it goes out of date quickly because, you know, different rules and numbers. This is more of the decision of when to retire. Let’s talk about that. You know, what are you going to do in retirement? Let’s talk about that.
What should you do with your money? And so right now, I think there’s nothing in this book that will go out of date. So that, it’s not like you got to update it every year, new numbers. And so hopefully that will be helpful. But just another way of, as we are meeting with people, give them something that hopefully if they read it, if they are inclined to work with somebody, hopefully it would be a convincing thing to maybe bring up areas they hadn’t thought of that would help. We’ve probably gotten YouTube videos already on some of these topics. You know, so as in writing the book, we were able to go to, we’re going to talk about this subject.
Why got a YouTube video on that? Let me go look at that script and, you know, maneuver it some to make it less scripty and more booky. But it’s still, you know, it’s just a culmination of lots of other stuff in one place. Gotcha.
Spencer: So do you have like one video specifically about the book, or is it just like little segments in a bunch of videos?
Mel: We just did, you know, 10 chapters and there’s 10 videos. You know, today we’re going to talk about the wind of retired decision coming up next, the video on that. Today we’re going to talk about what do you do with your money coming up next? Should you take Medicare next?
Should you do social, you know, wind eternal social security? So there is a video per chapter. I’ve also got a little thing now that pops up every video, you know, where like a lower third comes up from the bottom mentioning the book and I was able to do something where in the lower third, I actually stand up and I’m pointing, you know, like, hey, right here, you know, shrink down to something to draw people’s attention to where it’s less in your face. It could be a normal video, but there’s still some mention of if you want this book, you can go get it. Cool.
Spencer: Let’s move on to the next question. And this is, I guess, more about your experience doing the YouTube channel. Or I guess a quick question, how long have you been, I guess, kind of taking the lead on the channel?
I think this is year five. Cool. So over those five years, has there been anything that you’ve done that you feel like has been a mistake that, you know, you’ve learned from as you’ve kind of done these videos that you think our listeners might benefit from?
Mel: I mean, the doing the video so in the future, you know, I probably got 25 videos ready to go, depending on how long it takes for them to get out. Like you don’t want to be out of date or like some rule to change. And it’s like, well, dang, that video is no good anymore.
I mean, just watching the views, I can see the last 10 weeks where everything’s been so book focused, I can see views are down. You know, every once in a while, a video will do really good and I have no idea why. Like, how do I recreate that?
I don’t know. One time we had a video that I think Google actually pushed. I mean, I mean, to where like, it got 27,000 views in like the first three weeks.
That’s crazy in my world. I don’t know how it did that. Why it did that? Like, why, let’s do that again, please. Yeah, you know, we just monetized like two weeks ago. There again, we could have monetized a long time ago, but like for us to monetize, we have to fill out certain paperwork, send it to the SEC to let them know we might make $5 from YouTube. Like you can’t just turn it on anytime.
There’s all compliance issues. But you know, I think so far in the first two months, it’s been averaging like $100 a month, which better than nothing. There you go.
I mean, it’s something, you know, some videos are awful. We tried a few, you know, so it’s federal retirement. We tried a few, we also helped people with, you know, Christian beliefs, you know, if you want your values to be represented in your money and kind of like what the Bible says about money, we had probably four different videos like sprinkled in about what the Bible said about money. Man, the views, like evidently this niche does not want that. And, you know, like videos would, you know, after six months or so, you know, there might be a thousand views. Yeah, there’d be like 85 views after six months.
Like it just, it was, you know, so I’m telling my people if we want to do this, great, let’s start a new channel. But like just throwing those in here is not working. That’s not what they want.
They’re here for federal stuff. I’ve yet to convince them to start a new channel. But I guess making sure your videos are on your point, if you just have a random video in there, it’s probably not going to do well.
Spencer: Yeah, that makes sense. You know, I feel like viewers, at least maybe this is just how I watch YouTube because I watch a lot of YouTube. But when I subscribe to a channel, I subscribe because I want to see that specific, you know, topic.
And so if that person, you know, uploads a video that’s a little bit different than what I’m used to, then I probably won’t watch it. So yeah, cool. So I’ve got, I’ve got one final question for you. And this is kind of along the same lines. But, you know, every, every YouTuber has a different experience, you know, doing their YouTube channel. And there’s a lot of, I feel like, misconceptions out there about YouTube. So do you feel like there’s anything specifically about YouTube that you think is a myth that needs to be busted? Like a lot of people think this certain thing?
Mel: I mean, I see these people that just have like hundreds of thousands of followers or subscribers, like, man, how did they get there? I mean, I joined, I guess I joined the channel late. I mean, we might have had 3000 subscribers and now five years later, we got 9000.
But, you know, some of the ones that just have tons, like I don’t, we’ve never really had anything, you know, catch fire. And then suddenly there’s just hundreds of thousands of you, I think probably 60,000 is the most views of any one video. But I know we are, I guess, fairly niched. But I just don’t know how this people get so many views. I guess if people knew that, they would just do it.
But it seems like the more broad you get it that might have, like, reach out to more people, there’s probably so much competition. And so I don’t know, you know, in our world, we don’t need to find 20 clients per month. I mean, if we could find one or two per month, we’re doing awesome. So, you know, it’s okay that our view numbers are lower, I would love them to be higher. Of course, if they were a lot higher, that might mean the phone rings a whole lot more. And then like, are we set up to handle the phone ringing a whole lot more?
You know, maybe there’s some business issues there. But I’m sure it starts slow in the beginning. I joined late and it was slow. And it, you know, still seems slow.
Spencer: Well, it seems like it’s grown quite a bit. But I think you do bring up a good point. Like, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, but you have to take into account, like, your specific audience. And, you know, those who have like a broader audience, it’s easier for them to grow just because the pool of viewers is much bigger. Whereas, like, you know, yours is really niche.
And so the amount of people that, you know, need to watch a video is smaller. So, the fact that you’ve grown that much with this specific niche of an audience, I think is impressive. So, awesome. We’re gonna keep after it.
Yeah. Well, Mel, thanks for being on the show. So your channel is Christie Capital Management on YouTube. If our listeners want to check you out on any other platform, is there anywhere else that they should go? Yeah.
Mel: I mean, ChristieCapital.com is the website. You know, there’s a little talk to an advisor thing that you can get some information to talk with us or, I mean, that’s the website. There’s all the, you know, the YouTube videos that become blogs are there. So, I also see like how a blog looks with a video embedded, that type of thing. But yeah, ChristyCapital.com.
Spencer: Okay. Cool. Well, thanks again for being on the show. And thanks to our listeners and watchers for checking out this episode. Make sure to like and subscribe for more content. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
Episode Recap
Guest Introduction
- Mel Stubbs is a financial planner with Christie Capital Management.
- The channel focuses on helping federal employees nearing retirement understand their pensions and make informed decisions.
- Videos provide guidance on complex retirement topics, particularly for federal employees.
Channel Purpose & Strategy
- Serves as both a resource for prospective clients and a way to maintain engagement with current clients.
- Mel began taking the lead five years ago after noticing the existing channel content could be improved.
- Motivation: create helpful, client-focused videos and provide additional touchpoints between meetings.
Production & Team
- Mel handles ideation, scripting, recording, and initial editing.
- Compliance officer reviews all videos to ensure legal and regulatory standards are met.
- Uses Camtasia for editing and Trello to manage ideas, production, and approvals.
- Outside marketing company handles uploading, SEO, embedding videos in blogs, website updates, and social media posts.
Content Approach
- Focus on evergreen content, with occasional timely videos for IRS or regulatory changes.
- Topics come from client questions, news articles, and areas where content is lacking.
- Channel targets a specific niche to ensure videos remain relevant to federal retirement topics.
- Shorts and webinar segments are repurposed to maximize content output.
Compliance Challenges
- Financial content is heavily regulated; certain claims require careful scripting.
- Scripting helps produce compliant videos while keeping them natural and informative.
- Compliance review can bottleneck video release frequency.
Book & Related Content
- Mel’s book, released in early March, covers the 10 major retirement decisions.
- Each chapter has a dedicated video, often from webinar content.
- Lower-thirds subtly highlight the book without distracting from the video content.
- Consecutive book-focused videos caused a slight drop in overall viewership.
Lessons Learned
- Stay on topic: videos outside the niche (e.g., Christian financial advice) underperformed.
- Not every video will go viral; modest views can still meet business goals.
- Monetization is limited by compliance, but small revenue is possible.
- Channel grew from roughly 3,000 to over 9,000 subscribers.
- Success measured by engagement and business impact, not broad reach.
- Niche channels can thrive without viral videos if the audience is targeted.
Channel Info
- YouTube: Christie Capital Management
- Website: ChristieCapital.com
