Dennis: Don’t be that person that’s just like, I’m your everything, because no one wants an everything. They want a specific something. The best bang for your buck if you can only do one. YouTube is definitely the way to go. Most people look at content creation and I think they need to be a 16 year old YouTuber with their three best friends following them around with cameras. YouTube is a platform that takes work. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. I’m Spencer, I’m the host and this is the show about YouTube and the business side and the behind the scenes and all of that good stuff. Today we’ve got somewhat of a unique episode but before we dive into that, let’s introduce our guest who is Dennis. Dennis, thanks for being on the show. 

Dennis: Thank you very much. You see there Dennis, you can call me DM as well. I go by my initials being a junior. So as friends, I tell my friends, call me DM, so call me DM and last name is Metters. But great to be here, thank you. 

Spencer: Awesome, cool. Well, so I don’t know if I’d necessarily call you a YouTuber but it seems like you help a lot of the people that you work with with YouTube and so that’s why we wanted to have you on the show. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and I see in your background, you’ve got the legal podcast network. So tell us a little bit about that as well. 

Dennis: Sure, so I’m kind of a serial lifelong entrepreneur. Been doing various types of entrepreneurship since I was about 14. My early 20s had some good successes with some marketing companies that I started was able to kind of retire. 

And I’ve been in the digital marketing space for well over 20 years and focusing on attorneys for over 20 years. So just been one of those people that, I’m a grandpa on the internet is what I tell people because I used Yahoo, right? Like before like Google was an option and then Google then Facebook and I’ve seen each iteration. 

I’ve had social agencies, I’ve had text agencies, I’ve had SEO companies, I’ve had branding agencies. And so, I’ve been in media my entire career. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s something that just, I guess kind of came natural to me. So I took to it my latest iteration. I had a, I was a part of a company, a partnership where we were doing SEO for attorneys and things like that. 

Me and my partner parted ways. And I keep a book of ideas. I just have like a notebook that has probably anywhere from 30 to 50 viable businesses that have just popped up in my head at one time. 

Me looking around, seeing margins, kind of knowing that stuff. And one of the things that was in my list of top things that I thought very viable opportunity was building a podcast, a turnkey podcast network and system for professionals. And starting out primarily with attorneys because that’s been my niche specialty. But eventually I kind of want to be the Henry Ford of content for professionals where they come in. 

I’ve got a system, I’ve got, you know, everything between AI and people and everything else where they spend minimal time, minimal friction. But yet we come out with genuine content that reflects who they are, how they can help their potential clients. And so that’s what we’re doing with the legal podcast network. It’s essentially, it started off as just attorneys saying, hey, do you do podcasts? And it turned into, you know, podcasts with full social media posting with having a YouTube channel and managing that to creating a month’s worth of content for every show to now we’re looking to kind of create like a matchup service because we keep getting people contacting us. Hey, do you have an attorney that does this in one year? Now, this isn’t like verified by publishers, Clearinghouse or whoever verifies this kind of stuff. But from what I can see, there’s maybe two or three other networks like ours that are legal networks. But within one year, we went from not existing to being the largest. 

Spencer: Gotcha, cool. That sounds awesome. So I guess to narrow it down, you help attorneys create podcasts and you also help them create podcasts on YouTube. Is that right? 

Dennis: Correct, correct. So we stream the podcasts, we provide a host, we create a content plan, we send them the questions ahead of time based on their ideal client profile, based on their jurisdictional profile, based on their brand profile. And then we just do very simple, about 20 minutes, seven to 10 question podcasts that have to do with very specific issues. And then we then take that and we just use, I call it the Gary Vee method. He was saying this how many years ago, 

Speaker 3: you take a video and then you take that video and you make a bunch of short videos out of it and then you put those on Instagram and then you take those and you make them even shorter and you put them on TikTok. And then you gotta get some for the old people to put it on Facebook, right? 

Dennis: So we’re just kind of doing like that sort of method, but utilizing professional knowledge to help them set themselves apart because knowledge work now has become such a commoditized industry. I’ve worked with attorneys, like I said, for over two decades and I’ve literally seen attorneys making less in the last 10, 15 years than they were. There’s not a lot of industries that can say that. Now, granted, they used to make $450 an hour and now they make 325. 

I’m not crying on the river. But at the end of the day, if any of us had a 25, 30% reduction in our earning capability period, in a five, 10 year period, it would hurt our business, no matter what. And so we’re just trying to help them become who they are offline, online, because a lot of attorneys, they think, I just need to get them in the office. And it’s like 82% of people make their decision for an attorney before they ever step foot it in an office. They do it all online. The other 18% is referrals and that’s fine, referrals are great. 

But when you’re talking about over 80% of people now, solely just look at your online presence, you can’t just have a templated website with a couple of little FAQ pages and call it a day. You have to become a creator. And all of these professionals are going, hey, I didn’t go to law school and get a half a million dollars in debt so that I could be good at YouTube. But now they realize they have to be in order to compete in their marketplace. So that’s what we’re trying to do is just like, I call it digital and we’re digital interpreters. Like we’re just taking people who live offline and we’re helping them live online to attract their right clients. 

Spencer: Yeah, that’s awesome. That sounds perfect for them. And I’ve never specifically needed an attorney, but I bet one of the things I would do is just like hop online and Google, hey, attorneys near me or maybe if I had a specific question, I’d go to YouTube and be like, hey, what do I do in this situation? And if an attorney has a channel and they pop up, I feel like I’d be more likely to reach out to them. So that’s awesome. Because… Oh, sorry, go ahead. 

Dennis: I was gonna say, it’s the old no-like trust. We’re just doing the no and like first and then they come into confirmed trust. We’re not pretending that we’re inventing anything. We’re just wrapping things in an easier to consume package. And that is content production, content creation. Because most people look at content creation and I think they need to be a 16 year old YouTuber with their three best friends, following them around with cameras and tripping over things and running pranks and things like that. And it’s like, no, that’s not what content is for someone like you. 

Spencer: Right, yeah. So you have a ton of experience in marketing and having an online presence. Do you feel like one platform is better for putting yourself out there versus another? Or do you feel like it evolves constantly? Like, do you think YouTube is more… better for your clients to get found or is it other platforms? 

Dennis: So what I tell people is I am platform agnostic. And the reality is there is no one platform. You need to be, you can call it multi-channel, you can call it multi-platform, but everyone needs to be diversified because we all have our digital preferences, our digital languages. So while you might go straight to YouTube, someone else might go straight to chat GPT, someone else might go straight to whatever else. And so with our clients, most of them come to us and they’re like, I think we have a Facebook page and I have a LinkedIn with like 300 people that I’m connected to. And I might have an Instagram and like literally that’s where we start them. And we build 10 channels out, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, Threads, basically anything we can put them on and then we just start chopping up and putting them in those places because, and we’ll have a turn to say, I don’t wanna be on TikTok, that’s not where my clients are. And my first question is always like, well, how do you know where your clients are? Because unless they’re in your office, you don’t know where your clients are. 

That’s just reality, right? But the second thing is maybe you have a higher percentile of demographically appropriate individuals on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a percentage on TikTok that’s never gonna go to Facebook, that if you don’t have a presence there and reach them there, then you’re going to miss out on those opportunities for relationships. So you don’t just dig in where the demographics are, because even if TikTok only has 10% of that market, is your market, if they’re on TikTok, they’re just on TikTok. You know, if they’re on Pinterest, they’re pretty much just on Pinterest. 

Now that being said right now, and for the past years, the best bang for your buck, if you can only do one because of time, ability, desire, or whatever else, YouTube is definitely the way to go, because not only do you have video, not only is it evergreen, but because of query-based stuff that’s going on right now, all search is going away into these LLMs and query-based searches. So that’s preparing you for what is it? GEO is what it’s being called now. SEO is changing to, I think it’s GEO or AIEO, which sounds like we’re singing the farmer’s song. 

So I have trouble saying that one. But so even YouTube helps you with, it helps you with SEO or AI, search scaling, GPT scaling, whatever, it helps with, again, over 80% of people would rather watch a video than read an article. So again, why wouldn’t you, when you just do a podcast, why not record that video, make shorts, make reels, what we call quick question editions, where it’s like five minutes and it answers one question completely. Why not make a 20-minute podcast that’s about high asset divorce as a man and how to get custody and answer these very specific issues, but when that individual listens to that podcast and goes to your site and sees you have other content for him and his archetype, they’re going to automatically make the assumption that you’re the best person to help them. Whereas if they go to like a generic site that’s like, divorces, yep, we do that, custody, we can help you, it’s just like, don’t be that person, that’s just like, I’m your everything, because no one wants an everything. They want a specific something. We don’t search the internet for everything, we search the internet for something. 

And yet everybody tries to be everything to everyone and wonders why they’re not getting traction on marketing, on branding, on a show, on whatever it is, it’s because they’re trying to appeal to all people instead of me she down to that person, they really want to reach and then crafting the content around them. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. Adding on to that, I am biased about YouTube because I live and breathe on YouTube, but diversifying to all of the platforms, another great benefit of that is on a previous episode of our podcast, one of our guests said that one of his, I think it was his YouTube channel got hacked and so he couldn’t post on there. 

I listened to that one, yeah. Because he had diversified his portfolio to other platforms and had a community, he was still able to reach out to people and share content even though one of them was down. So that’s just another benefit to diversifying. Absolutely. Sharing your stuff. 

Don’t put all your money in one bank. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I kind of want to jump back just a little bit. So was there a point in time throughout your career where you knew you’re like, hey, this is what I want to do. I want to go all in and help people, attorneys create this social presence or was it kind of gradually over time? 

Dennis: I think it was gradual. I mean, I got into selling advertising over the phone at like 19 years old and I went from making minimum wage at the time to making 30, 40 bucks an hour and I was just like, holy cow, like it kind of opened up things to me. I definitely grew up in lower middle class type of situation. 

And so when all of a sudden at like 19 years old, I’m making 70 grand and that’s more than my parents make combined and all I’m doing is selling ads, it kind of turned a light on for me. So then I did some hospital patient handbooks. I did paper up until about early 2000s, I think it was like 2003 maybe. And then in 2003, I was just like this internet thing, like it’s not a supplement, it’s a new place to live. And if I don’t move on to this new society that’s coming, then I’m going to be one of those old people walking around, hey kids, come here, get my phone, get my email. No, my email’s not on that phone, go get my laptop. 

It’s got my email on it, you know? So I didn’t want to be that guy. And that’s what also kept me in social. I have three kids that are grown, 25, 23 and 19 year old. And I refuse to be that parent that didn’t know what my kids were saying when they were around me. I actually became the parent that put my kids on to like Childish Gambino back like 10 years ago or so. And like, you know, Chance the Rapper before he hit and he was just doing his mixtapes underground. I’m into hip hop, I’ve been into it since I was like a little kid. So, but like I would put my kids on to stuff and I would be on Instagram and like my kids are just like, I was one of the first people in Austin to like, I’d say probably one of the first 10, 20 people in Austin. It was like 2014 to become a foodie influencer. 

And then it kind of got so like tacky and the way it was being done, I stepped away from it. But I’ve always tried to pay attention to those things so that I can speak any language around me. Even if it’s like, you know, like I could do a little bit of Spanish, I can get by, I could do a little bit of TikTok, I can get by. 

I’m not fluent, but I definitely can speak the language and understand what’s going on around me. And so I’ve always tried to do that with every platform, every iteration, everything. So switching to going back to your question, was there like a light bulb moment? When I started working with attorneys, I got recruited into working with them. And actually the guy who recruited me now 20 years ago is actually works on my team now. It’s kind of, we’ve worked together off and on for like 20 years. He’s had a business and I’d work for him and I’d have a business and he’d work for me or I think we had one or two businesses together. 

We were always just, you know, it’s funny. He’s like somebody that I know probably better than most anybody in my life and we’ve met one time because we like, I live in Belize. He lives in Pennsylvania. Like, you know, our lives are very different but our business sense and our business like ideations, like they mesh so well that we’ve become these like, I call them business friends. And so he recruited me into the legal industry and all of a sudden I’m selling $5,000 a month packages. And now instead of making, you know, eight, 10 grand a month I’m making even more than that. And I’m just like, okay, attorneys is where it’s at. Where it’s at. I like attorneys, they have money, but more importantly, they’re trained to argue in a respectful way, which allows you to use logic and illustrations and actually get them from no to, okay, yeah, that sounds good. 

We’ll give it a try. Whereas stereotypically in other industries when they feel like you’re trying to change their mind, they take it as almost an affront. How dare you? I’ve had a business for 20, you don’t know more than I do. And I’m like, I know more than you do about marketing. So, you know, so I got into that working with attorneys. I just like working with people who you can just have logical conversations with. I don’t like sales tactics, you know? Doing things like, how different would your life be if I brought you three clients a month at 50, that’s $15,000, that’s $180,000 a year. 

Do you think your wife would be happy if you were making an extra 200 grand a year? You know, like those sort of like slimy old school, you know, hot box them in a room or keep them on a phone call, buy or die sort of mentality. I really just, I don’t like that. 

It feels slimy to me. And so I’ve always made my money in sales, but it’s always been with the archetype of an individual that I can just have a conversation, an intelligent conversation where we have point counterpoint and we walk away and one either says, huh, I say, yeah, this isn’t right for them. They don’t wanna do it, I can’t make them. 

Or they go, yeah, let’s give this a shot. You’ve got my attention. So that’s what I’ve liked about attorneys is being able to sell to them, but it’s a, in my opinion, a respectful sell. That’s not to say that it doesn’t get ugly sometimes and I don’t get cussed out. That’s just nature of the business, right? But for the most part, that’s why I’ve really kind of chosen to work with attorneys and especially smaller firms. 

Spencer: Gotcha. That’s cool. It sounds like it was like a natural progression, you know, throughout your career going in this direction. So that makes sense. And I don’t know if anyone likes sales tactics. 

Dennis: So totally, totally understand that. But they get used and people still fall for them, you know? Yeah. They’re still black liquorish. Who knows why? 

Spencer: Yeah. That stuff is gross. Anyways. 

Speaker 3: So I guess diving a little bit into the details, if you don’t mind, what exactly do you provide for your clients? Like how do you set them up for success for their podcast shows on all these platforms? 

Dennis: So when they come on, there’s a few things we do. One is, and I just think long term, this is the best strategy. I still have attorneys that question me on this, but we do exclusivity. So whatever their jurisdictional profile is, so maybe it’s like a three counties in the Atlanta metro area and they’re a divorce lawyer. 

So for those three counties, they would be the only divorce lawyer that we would work with with our system. So that is one kind of like byproduct advantage because now they know, wow, like there’s this great system that produces content. And as designed to be professional, it’s for attorneys that makes me look good. It’s minimal time. The cost isn’t that much. And if my competitor gets this, it’s going to kill me. So I need to be the one to get it. But what we do is so they sign up, they sign on for their market. And then the first thing we do obviously is onboarding and we’re looking for their ideal client profile. We’re looking for, which is, you know, it’s not, I’m a divorce lawyer. It’s a I’m a divorce lawyer for high net worth individuals that have ugly custody issues. There’s riches and niches, right? 

That’s what we’ve been saying forever. And it’s true for attorneys. So we find out what their niche is and sometimes they don’t know what their niche is. And I just, we just asking questions like, okay, let’s say all of your clients were just one of your particular clients. And you know of all your clients were this one client, you’d be super happy with the way your practice is. Tell me about that client. 

Who are they? And then they describe them. And I’m like, okay, so that’s your ideal client profile. 

We use that, we put together a content plan that basically covers the things that we know that people that their clients would be searching, mostly using question based search. That’s why we do the podcast. We do seven to 10 questions. So then they come into the studio, they can book an hour or two hours. And I say come into the studio, it’s all streaming there at their desk, all of that. And we do some things like tech check recommendations on camera with the tech check, we’ll look at their angles, their lighting, their background, their camera, their microphone, all of that. 

And you know, make sure that they’re gonna look good. And then we get in, we provide a host, the host sits down. So it’s like a regular podcast, but it says like it’s all branded for the attorney. So it’s like the John Jones law firm, you know, or divorce hurts, you know, podcast or whatever it’s called. And, but we provide a co-host who sits there and asks the attorney the questions. 

So now they’re positioned as the expert. We then take that, now we’ve got 17 to 21 minutes of content. We take that, we do an intro and outro, edit, you know, everything we can do. 

We have a full editing team. We’ve got about 40 people in the company now. And we just started a little over a year ago. We started no clients. 

I think we’re roughly 135, 140 clients. So, you know, it’s progressed very well, very fast. So we take, and then we shoot the episode, then we make 10 reels per episode. We make 10 audiograms per episode. And then we make 10 like, hey, episode seven, here’s a quote from it, you should go check it out. We create like a link tree bio link. Everything is, you know, click link in bio. 

That’s got their website, Apple pod, YouTube pay, you know, all of that so they could just click through. We always say better, faster, less friction. That’s like our internal mantra. And it’s not just internally for us to be better and do it faster and have less friction internally, but for our clients. We want them to have a better product. We want it to be delivered faster. And we want them to have basically no friction where they feel like this is a chore. 

We want them to feel like they’re just sitting down, like they would any other day talking for about half hour to a potential client or 20 minutes. And so that’s what we do. We take in, we harness that time and multiply it. 

We then take those shorts, those reels, and we create a content plan for the month because now we’ve got 30 pieces of content. We could be on up to 10 different outlets. We can plug them in through a program called Metricool. 

I’m so old school, I still thought like Metricool and Sprout, Social and all of that hurt your reach because I haven’t been in charge of that for years. I’ve had people doing it. So I was like, we’ve got to post natively. My whole team’s like, we can’t post 300 types per client natively. Like, I’m like, okay, so what like, so we did like a big survey and looked at everything and my guy that’s in charge of that brought me all the proof and he’s like, we don’t need to post natively. I’m like, okay, I was wrong. 

Let’s do it. And obviously that helps us. Cause like I said, we can post on, we create 30 pieces of content. 

We rotate those 30 pieces of content throughout 10 different, up to 10 different platforms. And then just churning out like, hey, go watch the podcast, go watch the podcast. Now there’s social clout behind it. There’s YouTube behind it. 

It’s on Apple podcast, Spotify, blah, blah, blah. We put it on about 25 different outlets and formats. So then that builds. We also create FAQ pages for their website. We can also create a YouTube page or not a YouTube, but a podcast page for their site. So we just kind of come in and I’ve tried to be like super sticky where, you know, I wanted to be like, if I get rid of my podcast, I also get rid of all of my social media posting. I also get rid of all of my guest spots on other podcasts because I’m on the legal pod match, you know, platform too. Cause we’re in the midst of creating a platform for matching up guests and hosts because we get so much of that. And so like my clients will be free in it. 

But then people who come to me that just want to participate, give me a little bit of money that way I can at least pay the person who runs it. So that’s everything we do in a short seven minute tirade. 

Spencer: Wow. That’s awesome. That sounds like the perfect setup. And it sparked a lot of questions in my mind. The first one, how much creative freedom does the attorney have? Like if they’re like, oh, I don’t like this. 

Can we stop that? Or, and then also with that, like have you had any attorneys that want to have like a, a fun podcast, I don’t know, or are they all like really serious? 

Dennis: They all say, not they all say, but a lot of them will say, I want to do it different. I want to do it. And we’re like, okay. And then we’ll come in and be like, we’ll do this, do this, and they’re like, well, I need to get clients from this. And we’re like, so you want authoritative positioning? 

Yes, I want to be like, okay, like that’s what we said in the beginning. So we do have some interesting shows, I would say, that, you know, kind of are a little bit different. So that was your main question was just about the clients and having different shows, correct? 

Spencer: And also, do they have creative freedom or are you like creative director? So we’re kind of like the creative director, but what we’ll typically do is in the beginning, like what we’ll do is just be like, do you like your website? Can we use that logo? Can we use that color? Can we use like, so we can pretty much just like scrape the website and just be consistent. 

And that’s the easiest route to go. So what we’ll usually do is come and present them like, you know, if they don’t have a name in mind, we’ll create a name, we’ll create the skins, we’ll create the branding for the show, we’ll create their thumbnails and everything we do, they have to approve. But now what we do is they’ve got about, they’ve got about 72 hours from the time we send it to them. And then if they don’t approve it by basically Thursday morning, then we send it over to the next department and say, auto approved, put out their content next week. 

So what I say is we use a collaborative approach with guardrails. So if an attorney doesn’t participate, we’re still going to put out a show as long as they show it for their podcast. But if an attorney is like, oh, can I go to royal blue instead of this shade of blue and they want to be that granular, we’ll do that to an extent. I mean, you know, if they’re just being picky forever, eventually we’re going to sell like I’ve had to fire clients for that, where I’m just like, listen, like you paid $600 for a podcast, we’re doing a month’s worth of marketing out of it. You signed a four month contract and you’re trying to treat me like I’m a Hollywood executive production firm. 

When the reality is you’re better than 99.9% but you think you have to be better what you see on network television. If you want that, like we can get there. Like, I mean, I’m standing in a room in a 800 square foot house on a little island in Belize. 

And I would say for the most part, I have a pretty decent look to what I’m doing. So you don’t have to like have all of this like go to a studio. And it’s just, I think sometimes the old world thinking of what media was where it was you had to be invited or pay a bunch of money. And so now all of a sudden it’s like, you don’t have to be invited or, you know, I mean, you don’t have to technically pay money if you’re good at production and stuff. 

If you’re not, then you can work with someone like us who parses all that out for you. So the short answer is yes, they have creative control, but ultimately we have to put in guardrail so that we’re not just stuck waiting around for our clients to make a decision. Right. 

Spencer: No, that totally makes sense. And then the other question that you kind of sparked when you were saying what kind of content you create for them, how often do you record and do you feel like it’s necessary to, you know, produce all of that in order to grow? Or do you think there’s like a minimum amount? Like, do you just need the episode? Or do you think you need like all the clips and shorts and audiograms and all of that to grow? 

Dennis: I think we need them. I mean, I think anybody needs them. You know, I like to use the comparison and, you know, to me it was the best comparison in the world because I’m a big Chick-fil-A fan. I don’t know if you are. I know there’s a whole political side to it. Okay. Okay. So thank you. 

Good. Finally, I’m talking to a fellow Chick-fil-A person. Now, when you grew up, was there a Chick-fil-A in your mall or did you just have you just been to freestanding in your life? Do you remember the mall and the food court and there’d be a Chick-fil-A there? 

Spencer: I think I went to a few in a mall, but most of them I’ve been to have been freestanding. 

Dennis: Our freestanding. Yeah, they’re mostly freestanding now. But when I grew up, like they’re mostly in malls. And there would always be someone standing outside of it with a tray, with little chicken nuggets and they would have the toothpick in the nugget and they would hand you that chicken nugget. Oh, yeah. Now, here’s the thing. 

Everyone’s been to Chick-fil-A. What were they doing? They were handing out free samples to make that, to make you go, oh, I want more of that. So you don’t go get, you know, three-day-old Chinese at the next stall over. So you get your Chick-fil-A sandwich and that’s what all of these pieces are. 

Is there that nugget of a piece of what was handed out? And so I think people do, if they can, need that balanced approach of being on different platforms having video, letting people interact, because people are so narrow-minded with their time. If you ask somebody for 30 minutes right off the bat, that’s like going on a first date and being like, hey, I got the plane warmed up. We’re getting ready to fly to Tahiti. Now, there might be a few girls or guys that would be down for that. But the reality is you’re probably moving a little too fast. And so it’s the same thing like to make the barrier of entry 20, 30 minutes an hour or two hours instead of 32 seconds where you just get like the little bit of the personality and a little bit of the like vibe of the show. Then you’re like, yeah, I want to check these people out. Like that’s why we do all of that. 

I’m the kind of person that when I do something I want to, I need to, I’m going to do all I can to be successful. And that includes for my clients. So if me losing two points on my margins or five points or whatever it ends up being in the end allows me to provide a service that is so sticky and so like, we’ve had clients that are like, you know what, the podcast hasn’t done great, but those FAQ pages that you get, we get tons of traffic and people calling and we’re just not quitting because of that. So I like to do so much stuff that it’s like, how can you fail when you’re doing everything possible? And so that’s why I’m a big proponent of using every method that you can get a hold of. Gotcha. 

Spencer: That totally makes sense. Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, if you have the bandwidth in order to do all of those extra little things, I really do think it’s beneficial for creators and online presence. So I’m assuming you post these podcasts on all of the main platforms, you know, like Apple, Spotify, YouTube. 

Dennis: Honorable everything. Yeah, all of that. So I guess my main question, because we’re focused on YouTube, have you seen a difference in sharing podcasts on, you know, the audio only platforms versus YouTube and what are the pros and cons, I guess, between the two from your experience? I definitely have seen a difference. The biggest difference is like just peer number wise, you’re just going to get more on YouTube. Like people are moving, they’re flipping through, like podcast experience is not designed, excuse me, for discovery. Podcast experience has really been designed for comfort. When you’re trying to find like a show to watch or answer questions, whatever, like that audio component, don’t get me wrong, it’s not important. But because people just prefer YouTube, the other thing is, you know, like on an Apple podcast, and maybe they’re there and I just don’t know it. But, you know, like with YouTube, you know, all of our videos, we put the subtitles in them. You know, we make them look good, we do kind of like the whole style that we stylized and we put b-roll and everything. 

We’re not just like chopping clips and throwing them out there. And so with doing that, that enables us to, you know, for our clients to be able to get more traction through, you know, the actual like YouTube itself. It’s like yesterday I had a client, she’s like, I just don’t even know what this is doing. And I pulled it up and she had had like 7,000 views on her YouTube channel last month. And she’s like, oh, you know, she’s like, I didn’t. 

And then she’s like, well, I guess probably some of those calls did come from you. You know, it’s just like, yeah, like once they kind of see that, whereas, so we’ll have like 7,000, 8,000, 15,000, 30,000, whatever views for our clients. And then their podcast will be like 30 downloads across all of them. And it’s not because we’re bad at podcasting. It’s because these are specialty podcasts for a moment in time in people’s lives. So they’re not designed to have a large view, viewership, they’re designed to be available to people at the time they need them so that our clients can then in turn become that person that is trusted. 

So it’s a totally, it’s a different approach. We’re not like, you know, one thing like I tell my attorneys all the time, because they’ll be like, well, how do I go viral? You know, you can help me go viral. And I’m just like, no. Like, well, what do you mean? And I’m like, well, first of all, if you get a million views on YouTube, you make what is it a thousand or 2000, I read different things. You’re the YouTube guy, probably depends on the demographics, but it’s about 1000 bucks, right? 

Spencer: Oh, it depends on your type of content. And like there’s RPMs and CPMs and stuff. 

Dennis: Right. Yeah. It depends on, but roughly it’s 1000 bucks, right? If I said that, I wouldn’t be like ludicrous. Okay. So you are an attorney and a million people watch your video, but no one calls you because they’re in India, they’re in Florida and you’re in Texas, they’re in Canada, they’re all over the world. So YouTube sends you a check for $1000. Congratulations, you went viral. Is that more valuable than 50 people watching that episode? But they’re all local, 30 of them end up calling you and 10 of them end up hiring you. And now for typical fee is, let’s say 10 grand, you made a hundred grand off of 50 views instead of $1000 off of a million views. No, I’m not a mathematician, but if I was running a business, I would rather take 50 views with a hundred grand in the bank than I would take a million views with a thousand dollar check. Yeah. 

Spencer: Oh my goodness. That is, I wish more people understood that because there’s a lot of niche YouTube channels out there. And I think a lot of people get discouraged because they don’t see the virality in their content. But if you’re a business and you have a specific niche, like you just said, a few people watching your video and then reaching out to your business is way more beneficial than your video going viral and not getting any business. 

Dennis: So, well, I think I read the other day and the numbers again are kind of skewed on this. They don’t have an exact number, but I have in a couple places read that roughly one out of every, like it’s either a thousand or 10,000 videos go what’s considered viral. And there’s two considerations. One is a million and one is two to three because of the platforms themselves. So, whether it’s two to three million or it’s just a million, it’s not really that important. 

What is important is understanding that it takes at least a thousand, if not 10,000 videos, where you have all the same people are pouring over them. They’ve thought about them. They’ve put time together. They’ve got a guess. 

They put together an outline. And then it doesn’t pop in the way that we think is the goal. We’re looking at the exceptions to the rule and wondering why we aren’t in that instead of looking for ways to monetize and make a living with these outlets outside of them sending us checks. Because if we make our living outside of their platform, but by using their platform, then like your other guest said, if something happens to that platform, we just, hey, we just email all our clients, hey, don’t worry about this. We got, don’t, YouTube has changed. No more legal content on YouTube, but don’t worry about it. We’ve got this new platform. We’re switching everything. 

Vimeo’s great. We’re going to, like, we can do all of that. And I think that so often with creators, it’s like, if I go to the bar and I sing a song, like I like to sing and it’s in a band in Austin. And so living on an island, we’ve got the same five guys, they run around to the different bars and sing. 

And so I go up to the bar and I sing one night and three people, you know, put me on their cell phone because they think I’m halfway decent or whatever. I’m not going to get mad that I didn’t get a contract from Capitol Records the next day. I’m going to enjoy the moment that I got to create and give my art or comedy or whatever you want to say to the world or my opinion. 

I have to enjoy that process. And then if I want to monetize it, don’t just sit back and go, well, I got to wait for YouTube to send me money or someone to email me and say, Hey, you talk about dogs, we’ll give you $10,000 to say that your dog loves this dog food. It’s like, you know, like that’s what they’re waiting for when there’s so many other ways to monetize a YouTube show, a YouTube channel. There’s just so many different ways that you can make a living out of all this stuff. And yet the vast majority sit around and wait for the powers that be in YouTube land or virality land or whatever you want to, you know, christen them, anoint them with the oil of greatness. 

And it’s like, you’re already great. You don’t need YouTube to spread your video around to tell you that. Just believe in what you’re doing, have some conviction in your content. I like that phrase. 

I’m going to use that have some conviction in your content. And do it for the passion and the love. And then slowly but surely find a way to monetize it where, you know, at least pay for your passion. That’s I always tell people, at least find a way to pay for your passion. If you can find a way to pay for your passion. Now, that’s going to open your mind to other ways. 

Now you can expand that. So, you know, your equipment, your time, whatever, however you look at paying for your passion, find a way to pay for your passion, look at alternative different ways. There’s probably five to seven ways to monetize on YouTube, not just through YouTube. You know what I mean? 

Ways to have money, make, let me use the word make money through YouTube, not monetize on YouTube, because then people think the exact monetization strategy. So, that’s kind of, that’s my tirade on having our, you know, content and all of that that we just talked about. 

Spencer: Yeah. To add on to that, you know, I think so many people, and this is one of the reasons why we created this podcast is so we can get behind the scenes and see like what it’s actually like. And because so many people see like the famous YouTubers and they’re like, oh, this is the one path to success when in reality, there’s a lot more behind the scenes and different ways to become successful and not just, you know, being super big on YouTube. And I feel like a lot of the really big ones on YouTube started when YouTube was brand new, you know, and so they were able to ride the wave of popularity when YouTube grew a whole bunch. So, yeah, Mr. 

Dennis: B started when he was what 14? Yeah. Like, you know, yeah, I mean, and he didn’t make money. And then I think he said he got his first $10,000 check from YouTube and then he like told his mom, okay, I’m going to spend this $10,000 because it’ll make me 100. And he’s just been doing that the whole time. 

Like that’s been his whole strategy. So, and we could look at other, we don’t have to talk about Mr. Beast because that’s kind of on a different level. But you know, even just podcasters that you know, that are making a ton of money. And let’s not talk about Joe Rogan. That’s a, you know, that guy has a following in and of itself. But you know, the guy diary of diary of a CEO, the guy from England, I forget his name. But you know, he’s a good business owner. He’s a good marketing earner. And, you know, he just puts out a good podcast. So, you know, there’s, there’s just so many ways. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, I kind of want to start switching gears to wrapping up the episode. This has been some really great advice. And I want to dive a little bit more into the advice portion, I guess. 

Okay. So, So, you’ve had a lot of experience through marketing and doing the legal podcast network. We ask this to a lot of our guests, but is there any mistakes in your journey through doing this that you’ve made that you wish you hadn’t or you learned from that you think would be beneficial to our listeners? 

Dennis: So, I’ve had two or three pretty stout partnerships in the past where we took companies from less than a mill to three, four, five million in a short time. I was the driver, product development, sales process development, that’s kind of my thing. 

But because of just the way things ended, I was like, I’m not taking on any partners. So when I started this, I kind of thought, I’ll just help with everything and get things set up and then I’ll get them set up and going. And I got outside of, I started managing and trying to learn as I did it as an authority outside of my core strengths, which was internal processes and because our whole system of like from the time a client signs a contract till four months later when they walk away, we have 303 steps in that process. All of this stuff that I like had to start. So we started off with spreadsheets, then we moved to Monday, then we moved to a different program. 

Now we use ClickUp. I hired an outside company that’s on retainer that just consistently works and helps us with our systems. I now have an internal person that just does AI that’s like supposed to help with AI better and then improvements in the company. So I would say that don’t be the business owner who thinks I’m smart, I can figure it out. 

Because that’s not the point. Every moment you stop doing the things that you’re best at, you’re hurting your company. So put people in place that can step into the roles that you’re not great at or you’re not best at and you stay in your strengths, let them do their thing, you do your thing. 

That is the biggest lesson I’ve learned. And I’m, I mean, I’m 40, I was 46 when I started this 48, I just turned 48 a couple of weeks ago. So like, and I’ve had, I’ve had businesses since I was 14, but I usually had a partner. They were usually the fulfillment side of thing, but it just always went bad because we would always structure it a certain way. And within two, three years, I was making more money than them. 

And instead of being like, Hey, I’m making five times more money than I’ve ever made in my life, they would just look at what I made. So I made the mistake of starting a company without some of the right pieces in place. Now, fortunately, I had some tremendous pieces in place that made up for it. We didn’t end up losing clients. We launched what we call 2.0, we fit, we fix what we called communication and accountability, the communication, communication from my team and them wasn’t great and the accountability of what’s happening and the results of what you’re getting wasn’t great. They just saw the podcast high production value and, you know, they stayed happy. That was great. But eventually, we had to start kind of launching, like I said, what we call 2.0 internally, which was just a whole, we like 10 X star our content output because we realize if we don’t market these people shows, they’re not going to market them and then they’re not going to get any watches, they’re not going to get any clients and they’re going to blame us. 

So we’re just like, Hey, plug in the Metricool, let us create all these outlets, let us create all this content for you and let us just do all of this. But not having again, just the piece of advice, the thing that I regret is I should have found a systems, a, you know, process person that was just great at it. I could have let them do their thing and I’m doing my thing. Now that being said, we’re still a company that went from zero to 40 employees and zero to almost 130, 3,540 clients in a year. So like we didn’t crash and burn. 

But if I had to go back about a year and a half, I would be that would be my first tire is that great systems processes person. So know your strengths, stay in your strengths and hire your weaknesses out, or at least your lesser strengths. 

Spencer: Yeah, don’t don’t rely solely on yourself, you know, especially when it comes to content creation. There’s so many tools out there. And, you know, you yourself may not know that they exist. So reach out to people that that do know those system tools. 

So yeah, great advice. So this is the final question. And we may have to tweak it just a little bit because it’s very YouTube specific. But okay, we asked this to Oliver, I guess, and it’s what myths about YouTube, do you think need to be busted? You know, so maybe we can twist it into the podcast world. What myths about podcasting do you think need to be busted? 

Dennis: Well, I think we could talk about YouTube because like I said, YouTube’s our biggest driver, you know, we’re holistic. We just use podcasts at the front because it’s what’s trending. 

If next year it was everything’s YouTube, and all the attorneys thought they needed a YouTube channel, we would be the legal YouTube network. You know what I mean? It’s a means to an end. But with that being said, myths about YouTube. Number one is that it’s easy. 

Yeah, right? It’s easy. You just grab a cell phone, you point it at you, you do something stupid, you upload it in your millionaire. That’s YouTube. That’s what a lot of people think YouTube is. And so, you know, YouTube is a platform that takes work. A yard needs work. 

A house needs work. YouTube needs work. Everybody thinks that all these digital things are just, oh, they’re just so easy. Listen, 40 people, I only have three people in the sales team. That means 37 people are doing some sort of social media, video editing, like full time people just all day, every day, churning them out, not every day, five days a week. So if that’s what it takes for a company like mine to produce what we’re producing, you as whatever you do need to understand that you just throwing up a video you spent an hour on isn’t guaranteed success. And I think it’s just like, we see the results and we, and I think we kind of talked about this earlier, but we see the results that we see the small percentile. And we think anything outside of that is failure. 

But yet it should be just so easy. And you think about podcasts, there are so many ghost podcasts, so many ghost YouTube channels. I had a YouTube show in Austin, Texas called ATX AF. 

We did 60 episodes, we shot it at festivals, we shot it on site, I had three, four cameras, two, I had like a crew of 10, and we would interview artists, entrepreneurs, things like I did it for three months, put out 60 episodes, spent 150 grand and then walked away from it. And it was like, I don’t think I really want to do this. Now, I wasn’t trying to be a YouTube star. What I was trying to do is build relationships and kind of see what YouTube was about. And I knew that if I was ever going to teach and grow and help people with YouTube, I had to have had some personal experience with it. I had some people like Ali Khan from Food Network, Chi Beatz, like he was on my show, a lot of like well-known artists and musicians in Austin. 

And so it was like, it was a great time and it was a great show and it had a great impact on that community. But it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t cheap. And even in spite of all that I did, I never made a dime off of it. So I just did that for the lessons. Yet people think I spent $500 and I made three videos and I’m not famous yet. I don’t understand this YouTube thing. Yeah. So that’s the big one, I think. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. Completely agree. And yeah, like we mentioned before, like people see the big YouTube stars and like you said, think it’s easy just because they’re big, but there is a lot of work to it. So thanks, Dennis, for being on the show. Thanks for your advice and your insights. I think it was very well said. And I think our listeners can really benefit if they paid attention to what you said. So really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Well, thanks again and thanks for our listeners for checking out this episode. If you ever need help with content creation, feel free to reach out to us at creatorluxe.com and we will see you in the next episode.