Thomas: For me, COVID was probably the best thing that could have ever happened. 

Spencer: On the creator space, it was probably the best thing to ever happen. 

Thomas: Start now and shoot as many videos as possible. 

Spencer: Thumbnails and titles are the most important. 

Thomas: That’s the number one area that is going to determine whether or not you’re successful. The most important thing is to actually be able to, you know, see if if your strategy’s working. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. Like always, super excited for another episode. Today, our guest is… Thomas Visgintas. And that’s also the name of his YouTube channel. Thomas, thanks for being on the show. 

Thomas: Thanks, Spencer. 

Spencer: Love getting to meet new people and kind of hear their stories and their skills and expertise. So for our viewers who don’t know you, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what you do? 

Thomas: Yeah. So I’ve been running YouTube channels for about six years now. It all started with uh growing smaller uh dating channels from the start. So I mainly worked with uh this one small um channel that had about like 4,000, 5,000 subscribers. And when I started out with him, I was only managing his clips channel. So I was going through all of his live streams, all this podcasts, and I basically took all of them and then converted them into like a Joe Rogan style uh channel. 

So we took that channel from 6,000 subscribers all the way up to 10,000 subscribers. And from there, I got connected to bigger influencers within the Miami space, which included guys like Fresh and Fit, Justin Waller, Sterling Cooper, uh, Andrew Tate, all those types of uh internet personalities that are pretty well known. And I worked with a lot of um areas of content. So that included live streaming, short form content, creating ads, and most importantly, YouTube, which is one thing that I’m really focused on. So now what I do is I take all that experience that I’ve learned working with like really big influencers, and I apply those strategies for people that are just trying to start on YouTube and trying to scale their online businesses. 

So these are channels that are from you know, from zero subscribers all the way up to you know 5,000 subscribers, sometimes 10,000 subscribers, mainly small channels that are trying to scale their businesses and uh ultimately just get more leads for themselves. Awesome. 

Spencer: That’s that’s perfect because our our podcast is all about like helping you know people who are starting a YouTube channel, or maybe there are current business YouTube channels that need some help or tips and tricks. So you’re like the perfect guest. 

Thank you. Um I’m I’m ready to pick your brain and kind of uh dive into some tips and tricks. But before we do that, really quickly, I always like to know like how you got into the YouTube industry. You know, I don’t know if you have any like an interesting story or if like your friend was like, hey, you should you should edit videos or something. I don’t know. Is there anything like that that got you into the YouTube industry? 

Thomas: Yeah, so with YouTube, I’ve always been watching YouTube since I was young. Uh I think I created my first account when I was maybe 10 years old under like a really long username. And from there, I watched um, I think it started with Minecraft was like the the first types of YouTube videos I used to watch, like as every you know, 10-year-old kid watches. So I started watching those gaming channels, uh, watched other, you know, Call of Duty YouTube channels, and then it did transition out of that into more so like podcast spaces like watching Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, uh, those types of uh people. But when I was 18 years old, um I got introduced to a small podcast, which is Modern Life Dating, and he was like, hey man, like just clip up uh, you know, my podcast, my live streams, and uh turn it into like a clippable YouTube channel. So at the time when I was uh starting out with uh YouTube, I had no aspirations of doing YouTube or any sort of content. 

My my main degree when I was uh when I was studying at uh DePaul University in in college was management information systems. So there was not really like a like a I wanted to do YouTube from the start. Everything was just kind of it just fell into place in uh shorter terms. 

Spencer: That makes sense. You know, I think that’s a lot of that’s the case for a lot of YouTubers. I think the newer generations, like a lot of them want to grow up and be YouTubers, but a lot of the famous YouTubers now, they weren’t growing up wanting to be YouTubers because it wasn’t a thing. And so, you know, it makes sense that for you it just kind of fell into place and COVID. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how many creators I’ve talked to that like got their start during COVID. 

Thomas: COVID, COVID was a great time to start because a lot of businesses kind of shut down. So what that did was it gave a lot of people the opportunity to just kind of like think of new ideas and uh think of like new business ideas to start out with. And um, I can’t count the number of people that I’ve worked with in the past that that was their start. And to this day, I think there’s a lot of people that say that COVID was a bad thing, but for me, COVID was probably the best thing that could have ever happened. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of bad things that came out of it, but on the creator space, it was probably the best thing to ever happen. So let’s go ahead and dive into I’d love to pick your brain, get get some ideas and insights. What would you say is like the the biggest difference between like an individual creator YouTube channel and like a business YouTube channel? Yeah. 

Thomas: So the way that I separate things is there’s there’s really two types of content. There’s entertainment content and then there’s business content. And with business content, it’s more so an educational format with entertainment, you’re really trying to retain people in more so of a storytelling format. 

That’s the area that I really focus on. I don’t touch the entertainment side of things because my specialty has always been working with those types of clients. So with business people, you’re really trying to educate the viewer on what the business model is. 

So like let’s say uh you’re trying to work with a client. One thing that I really focus on is not really uh scripting the creator out, but more so getting them to tell stories about their experiences. The way that we structure things is usually through um having some sort of hook that is more so of a word for word format. 

And then we get them to uh I usually write down like um different bullet points that either come through you know different research from Claude, or what I usually do with most of my creators is um we end up getting on a brainstorming session where we just get them to basically dump uh every single idea that they have. And that’s like the biggest difference between the uh more so entertainment format and the uh the business uh formats. The entertainment format is gonna be more so like you’re trying to kind of plan out like a storyline. 

And in a lot of movies, you’ll have like a hero’s arc. That’s what the the entertainment format’s going to have, versus the business format, it’s gonna be more so raw. It’s gonna be more so uncut. 

A lot of times, a lot of business YouTubers are starting to shift more so towards like the live stream format, and that’s where they’re gonna be a little bit more loose and uh not scripted. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Okay, okay. That makes sense. So do you think it’s viable for businesses to also like create entertaining stuff, or does it just not mix well at all? 

Thomas: Yeah, there’s there’s nothing wrong with creating entertainment, uh entertaining stuff. I’ve seen a lot of creators do it where they’re uh combining like let’s say a news topic, which I I can can sometimes consider like an entertainment format, where like let’s say there’s like a news event that comes out, like let’s say uh like YouTube’s latest um news about how views are gonna be automatically tracked, like you can turn that into more so of an entertainment format by like the reaction style of content versus like let’s say if you were to just kind of give uh information just like step by step, that’s more so of an educational form. But a lot of times when you’re creating videos, like you can always add in your personality. I think that’s the biggest way that people are are able to separate themselves on YouTube is like what are like the different unique things that you can kind of show your your viewers? Like, for example, if like you’re into motorcycles, you can show that you’re into motorcycles. 

If you’re into planes, then show that you’re into planes, and that’s how you you can weave in the entertainment aspect is by showing who you are as a person and then also showing like the educational format, the business content, and then that’s how you can kind of mix the two in between. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Okay, okay. So what about um business organizations, like maybe bigger companies? Say there’s like a retail store that um wants to make a YouTube channel. How do they like incorporate their personality into their channel, or even should they, you know, because they’re an organization, it’s not just like one person. Maybe they have a spokesperson. I don’t know. What are you what is your uh insights on like organizations creating uh a YouTube channel? 

Thomas: The first thing that any business should focus on is understanding who their customer avatar is. So who that person is, like their age, demographic, what their interests are. There’s other ways of also finding those things, usually through um client reviews or uh client sales calls. That’s that’s another way of really understanding your uh who the person you’re trying to target is. That’s the first step that you really have to understand. The next step after that is um basically positioning that person underneath your brand. 

So always speaking to that person. So with some of the people I’ve worked with, like uh in the medical device sales space, they’ll usually have people that’ll either come onto their podcasts and we’ve only focused their faces on the podcast, which is like the the guests that’s coming on and not really the host itself, or the organization ends up finding a different person that has the ability to speak on camera, and then we only market that person. Or um I I don’t know if you’ve ever seen how bigger pockets uh structures their channel, which is a real estate channel, they’ll have multiple personalities that are able to speak on camera and they’re able to create content. 

Um, there’s also people like Dave Ramsey, like uh one of his like uh co-hosts is another guy that there’s Dave Ramsey, and then there’s another person, and those two people kind of are able to run that brand. So you can have multiple personalities, you can find the person that is is this best speaker and then have them run the content. So from my understanding, a lot of companies, if they’re trying to sell their business, they’re trying to uh mainly find a different spokesperson or a different face in the channel, and then use that person instead of just having one person. Because if you end up just using one face for the company, if the person ends up leaving or if they end up getting fired, or whatever it is, that and that person does not run the channel anymore, then the company kind of runs a risk of like, let’s say losing profits off that YouTube channel, or if like the company sells and like let’s say there’s investors involved in that company, then um, they’re gonna be reliant on that one person. 

So it’s it’s really important for like an organization that is a little bit bigger or they’re trying to sell their company to have multiple personalities on that YouTube channel. Gotcha. 

Spencer: That that makes sense. And uh each of those, I guess, people that are focused in the videos each have their own personality. So that that helps. So my next question is you know, businesses vary in size, you know, from like really small to gigantic. From your experience, when is the best time for a business to like seriously consider YouTube? You know, we’ve all heard the phrase like the best time to start is yesterday. Um, but is there like a specific, I guess, threshold that businesses should consider really diving into YouTube? 

Thomas: Yeah, the best time to start is is now because uh I think the biggest fear that most business owners have, and it’s usually the business owner that starts the YouTube channel. It’s uh he he starts usually as as the face of the brand, is like they’re they’re just afraid to get on camera. That’s that’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen with most of them is that they’re not confident how they’re going to speak. 

They’re not going, they’re not confident as to like how they’re going to find ideas. But the only way that you’re gonna find out if your ideas are good or if your speaking ability is good is by shooting your first video and then committing to a schedule that’s going to consistently get you to shoot videos. Once you get into the cadence of shooting videos, what you’re going to notice is that there is different areas of how you speak or the different um areas of like your ideation that can be improved. 

And with feedback, that’s how you’re ultimately going to improve your channel. So my tip for any sort of business channel is just to start now and shoot as many videos as possible. So if you want to start with like one video a week on YouTube, that’s good. If you want to get to uh do two videos a week, two long form videos, that’s even better because now you have two videos that you can kind of uh compare ideas off of. Record your video, you re-watch it, and then you write bullet points for yourself as to what you can improve on for your next video. Create a feedback loop for yourself because that’s the only way that you’re going to improve is by shooting those videos and then giving yourself uh critical feedback. 

Spencer: I I like that. I like that a lot. Moving on to the next thing, I guess. So businesses are trying to sell a product or a service. How do they determine their YouTube audience? Should it be the same as their target customer? Yeah. 

Thomas: The one channel that does really well at figuring out what the target customer is, the target avatar is in my opinion, Jeremy Haynes. So he targets targets only people that are making over 100,000 a month, and he considers them rich people. 

So the way that he communicates the intro is he gives a statistic that says that uh I don’t know what the exact statistic is, but one in a million people will never you know reach millionaire status. And um in this channel, I only talk to X, Y, and Z person. So right off the bat, he says the person that he’s targeting. 

So what that does is it just specifically gets those people into his funnel. So on average, he’s getting about you know 5,000 views, 10,000 views. Uh sometimes you’ll get a 20,000 view video, but it it really doesn’t matter because he’s trying to find um the certain target audience. And a lot of times what people make the mistake of when they’re starting a YouTube channel is they’re going to be really focused on how many views they get. But the more important metric now within 2026, and like this has been more of like a recent thing is getting the right types of viewers. Sometimes getting, you know, a thousand viewers is probably better than getting 100,000 viewers as long as you’re really targeting the right type of person. The content that you create in terms of like the formats, um, the types of videos that you create in terms of like how you speak, the types of language that you use is really going to target a specific person. And it’s and it’s really important to understand who those people you targeting are, and then speaking to them in a certain way. 

Spencer: Okay, that that makes sense. So I guess to kind of sum it up, your target audience is also the same as your target customer. But because it’s on YouTube, you sometimes get casual viewers and that’s okay, but you should really focus on your target customer. Yeah. 

Thomas: And sometimes you’re going to get, you know, a casual audience that comes in through your channel, and it’s it that’s completely fine. The goal is to get, you know, let’s say 70 or 60% of your viewers to watch a video that is within your like your ICP or ideal customer profile. 

And if like let’s say, you know, those 30% of people that don’t fit your uh your demographic, they come in, eventually they’re going to be filtered out because they’re not going to be interested. 

Spencer: Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah, that that makes sense. Thank you for explaining this. My next question is kind of with ads. So a lot of businesses, you know, run ads on YouTube. So what’s the the difference between like running an ad and just like making a YouTube video by itself? Yeah. 

Thomas: So an ad is going to mainly target a colder person. So a person that has no idea who you are, they’ve seen you for the first time on Instagram or on Facebook or on Google or whatever it is. 

They don’t know your brands, they don’t know what your story is. So the way that you attract those people is through the most cold way possible, which is like a video that they’ve never seen in the past versus a YouTube video, on the other hand, is uh a person that watches your first video, and then the algorithm is going to recommend that person more and more videos. So let’s say he starts watching one video and you watch maybe like uh 10 minutes of it. What YouTube’s going to do is it’s going to recommend more videos into his home page. Then he clicks on another video. He watches like, let’s say another 30 minutes. Then that person gets even warmer. 

And then like let’s say one day you release uh another video and he watches his third video and it’s like two hours long and he watches maybe an hour of it. That person ends up getting warmed up with time, which increases his probability of purchasing. One thing you’ll notice on a lot of sales calls is that the uh colder person is going to be more resistant to um questions. He’s gonna be more so of like prove it to me like this this actually works versus a person that’s coming from YouTube is going to be pretty much already sold on what you do because um if you’re doing your strategy correctly and you’re adding in uh call to actions, you’re adding in uh different testimonials, results, that person’s going to know that you like actually know what you’re doing, and it makes a sales process a lot easier. Anytime I’ve spoken to you know, people within like sales organizations that are uh that are coming from like YouTube channels versus ads channels. People most of the sales people like selling to the YouTube leads because it’s it’s an easy uh sale versus the cold person. 

What you might have to do is you might have to send them some of those YouTube videos over, educate them, get them to watch some of your videos that way it warms them up. So there’s a big difference. The cold person is uh is a much less likelihood that they’re going to close versus a warm person is uh more likely to close because that person’s going to like you, they’re gonna be warmed up to what you say, and they’re just they’re just easy to deal with. 

Spencer: That makes a lot of sense. So say you run an ad and funnel it to your YouTube channel. Would that make sense? Because it would like help grow your YouTube channel and generate warm leads, or are ads better just like for cold people and like going to like your website or something. 

Thomas: The best way um Alex Mozi has explained it to me, because I’ve I’ve been to his uh school games before because we won uh like second or third place within his uh school games is like the way he views organic content is like you’re kind of giving up free value for free. And then the ads is like a lot of those people that watch your long form videos will sometimes um also see your ads. So like the the long form content on YouTube is more so it’s like free, you’re giving out a lot of value. They’ll sometimes go through your links and a little and they’ll purchase, but sometimes those same people are going to see your ads on Instagram or on Google or where whatever platform you’re advertising, and that’s like kind of like the one-to punch. Like the the jab is basically like the organic content, and then like let’s say the the hook or like let’s say the the cross is having the uh the ads come in and then closing them on the deal. 

So that’s like how it’s structured. But another way of doing it um is by let’s say a cold viewer doesn’t know who you are, sometimes just sending them the video over through like text message or um through like let’s say a booking page, which is like the the last section of your funnel. So like usually the way it starts out is it’s a questionnaire, they book a call. And once they book a call, they have this page that shows them like um objection questions. So like there’s like maybe like 20 different videos like going over different objections, and maybe one of those videos could be like a YouTube video that you link to, which could be like a full course or like a video that goes over, you know, the different types of questions that they have and just like solves those things. So that’s the different way of doing it. You can either um target them through uh through cold advertising, or you can just send them directly the video. 

They watch the videos, and sometimes the YouTube algorithm is going to uh recommend them more videos be based off of like how much watch time they have, how much of the video they watch. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Okay, okay. So the ads aren’t necessarily funneling to your channel, but the the channel is helping with your ads and closing deals. Yes. It’s like a shortened version. Okay. Okay, cool. 

Thomas: Exactly. And um, I’ve also seen people uh funnel a lot of their the people that they target over to their YouTube channel. So like let’s say um on Facebook you um try to send people over to your cold videos. Like sometimes that does work, but um I do notice that anytime you get viewers that come from one platform and then they go to another, they don’t really convert as well because people that are with an Instagram only want to watch Instagram videos versus a YouTube viewer is gonna only want to watch YouTube videos. Um that’s that’s the only issue with like just following people over from one platform to the other. There’s just a lower likelihood that they’re going to watch, but uh some of them will, but um, I’d recommend that you don’t do that because it’s going to kind of mess up your watch time, which is going to overall kind of flatline your YouTube video. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Okay, okay. If you were to narrow it down, like say a business chip has a YouTube channel and they want to improve just like one thing. Um, what would you say is like the easiest or like best one thing that a business YouTube channel could change that would improve like their overall presence, I guess. 

Thomas: One thing that I think is lacking with most channels that are um at a lower subscriber mark is they’re just not tracking their leads. So a lot of times what a lot of owners won’t do is they’ll they’ll promote their links within the description or their pin comment or whatever it is, but they won’t track and see where those people are coming from. And having metrics is really going to help you determine if your videos are actually converting people into into sales or customers. So I think that one of the most uh important things that you can do as a business owner when you’re starting a channel is to actually set up tracking. And there the different ways you can set up tracking is like through softwares like ClickMagic or Trachio or RevTrack. Um, but just that one simple action is going to give you a lot of good data to see if you know your videos are actually turning into customers because if you’re if you’re running YouTube as a business, the most important thing is to actually be able to, you know, see if if your strategy is working. And if it’s not working, then that’s when you have to opt out optimize and you have to maybe add in more call to actions, or maybe sometimes you have to create different formats of video that are going to get more leads. 

Spencer: Okay. I’ve never heard of like, well, I’ve heard of tracking like your links, but I’ve never heard of those uh softwares that you mentioned. So are they like Chrome extensions or like are they separate apps or how do they I don’t know if you know how they work, but how do they track who clicks on the link? And does it work with like YouTube descriptions and like comments, or is it just descriptions or yeah? 

Thomas: So there’s multiple ways of setting it up. Um a lot of businesses will use uh CRMs, which is where they track a lot of a lot of their sales calls, where um they track a lot of their contacts. Uh one place that most owners use is like it’s called Go High Level or HubSpot. 

So what you’ll usually do is it’s a very technical process, I’ll be honest. It it requires attribution tracking, um, putting in different codes into the landing page, and then basically taking uh the software, like let’s say Trachio or ClickMagic, and then attributing it over to the landing page where you put the tracking codes. Um when you uh track the the pages once you’re like done with the whole setup process, then the three recommended spots that I recommend is putting it in the description um in the comments, and then also in your profile um section of your YouTube channel. 

Where most people end up converting from my experience is through the profile section of YouTube, which is like kind of the most unexpected spot. But people are sometimes they’re curious about like who you are, they’ll press the about section, they’ll read into like what your description is, they’ll click on a link, they’ll watch maybe like say a video sales letter, and then they’ll book a call. That’s usually how things go with most of my clients is like they go through that process. Or sometimes um what will happen is uh a person will watch the video, they’ll go into the description, they’ll be more curious about like what you do, they’ll book a call through there. Um, so there’s multiple ways of doing it. Also, I guess another fourth way is like I don’t know if you know like the slide out seat uh feature on the top right of of YouTube. It’s called info cards. Uh let’s say you say a call to action that’s like five seconds long. You’ll have that thing slide out on the right side, a person clicks on it, and that’s another place where you can um you know click on the tracking link. 

Spencer: Gotcha. Okay. Okay, yeah, that is super fascinating to me. I haven’t heard of that, so I’ll have to try that myself. Um but yeah, tracking tracking your links. That is that is good to know. 

Good advice. I’ve got one more question for you, Thomas. Uh again, thanks for being on the show. Uh lots of great insights. 

And this is one this question we ask all of our guests. Has there been a mistake you’ve made in your, I guess, career, or maybe a YouTube channel, or maybe a business that you’ve helped that you’ve learned from that maybe our audience could benefit from hearing your experience. 

Thomas: Yeah, the biggest mistake that I’ve made, and uh I’ve seen other channels uh commit this mistake is like not doing the proper research process on topics, uh titles and thumbnails. Like that’s that’s the number one area that is going to determine whether or not you’re successful on YouTube. 

And then doing that consistently enough. What the research process looks like is um what I usually do is I look at adjacent um channels on YouTube. So, like let’s say you’re really focused on the real estate space. Uh the adjacent um real estate niches would be like let’s say the ATM uh machine business or uh let’s say buying businesses, or sometimes that could be um, I don’t know, the trucking industry, because you’re trying to find um avatars that are similar to real estate. Then what you do is uh when you find those adjacent niches, you do a YouTube search of like let’s say the ATM machine business. 

Then what you do is you go through the list of videos, find title formats that work, and then replicate the same exact um title process, thumbnail process within the real estate niche. And what that does is it creates a better probability of your uh your YouTube video succeeding because the reason why those videos succeeded with like let’s say the ATM business is because it had psychological things in it that caused them to click and then watch the video. So one thing that I really recommend most business owners is is to do the proper research process, do the proper um you know, due diligence of like just seeing what works within other industries and then replicating that. 

But if you just do that one single um, you know, step, which is doing proper research, then you just have a much higher likelihood of just speeding the process of like uh you getting more results, getting more views, or whatever metric that uh you’re trying to look for. 

Spencer: I completely agree. I think you know, YouTube thumbnails and titles are the most important. And so, yeah, going along with what you said, that research is is vital. So thank you for sharing that. And uh Thomas, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Uh, if our viewers want to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do that? 

Thomas: Yeah, so you can either check on my YouTube channel, Thomas Visgintas on YouTube, or you can just uh DM me either on LinkedIn, just look up uh Thomas Visgantas or on my Instagram account, TomGotVisions. Uh, those are three spots that I’d recommend anyone check out. 

Spencer: Okay, cool. Make sure to check out Thomas and again, thanks for being on the show. And thanks to our viewers and listeners for checking out this episode of Creators Uncut. Make sure to subscribe for more content like this where we talk to real people about the business side of YouTube and behind the scenes. Uh, and just a little plug for ourselves if you need help editing your videos, reach out to us at http://www.creatorluxe.com and we’ll see you in the next one.