IFH 227: How to Make Money with YouTube with Christopher Sharpe

Alex Ferrari 0:13
So today on the show, we have a treat for you guys, we have an absolute bonafide certified YouTube guru. His name is Christopher Sharpe
, and he's a good buddy of mine. And we've been I've been like picking his brain about YouTube now for months. And he actually wrote a book called YouTube black book, how to create a channel, build an audience and make money on YouTube. And he has definitely been able to do all of that. He is currently the co founder of yoga with Adrian. And if you just go to YouTube and type the word yoga, he is the first I think seven out of 10 videos, you'll see, he has over 3 million followers on yoga by Adrian. And before that he built up a whole channel with him. His wife wasn't his wife at the beginning, but his soon to be wife. And it's called Hilda's kitchen and build up a whole cooking channel on YouTube. Now Chris is a filmmaker and the filmmaker. And he decided to jump into this space because he saw an opportunity. And he started building content for the YouTube space. Now, he discusses. In this interview, we're going to discuss how he's able to monetize not only on YouTube, because honestly, the money that you make on YouTube is kind of like bonus money. It's all the ancillary things that he does, how he's able to build out product lines, and feed the audience, the rabid audience that follows his his content. And he's really discusses and shows us how he was able to build out a mini Empire on our YouTube Empire by building out these different ancillary revenue streams, as well as building out creating the content that they want. How do you get your foot your videos ranked? How do you know what your audience wants to little tricks of the trade like that. And it is just a plumb full episode of amazing stuff. If you want to know anything about YouTube, how to build a channel, and this goes for all filmmakers to filmmakers. We're just going to be putting up their trailers, their production company, their own directors stuff. Everything we're going to be talking about in this episode, also is for you. So without any further ado, here is my conversation with Christopher Sharpe
. I'd like to welcome the show Christopher Sharpe
brother, thank you so much for being on the show, man.

Christopher Sharpe 4:10
Thanks for having me. I've been a fan of the show for a long time. So it's an honor to be on.

Alex Ferrari 4:14
It's an honor that you were a fencer I wanted to I wanted to bring you on because there's so many filmmakers trying to figure out how to make a living in the film industry and kind of build up an empire and doing what they love to do. And you have been able to do that in spades. So I wanted to kind of bring on the show and pick your brain. So before we get started, man, how did you even get into this business?

Christopher Sharpe 4:37
Well, it's interesting, and particularly for your audience in that I actually got into this business because I failed at the indie film business. I'd worked on short films, after college, directed a lot of commercials, music videos, that type of thing. And then finally done my first feature that did pretty well. This was back in the days when DVD was still strong. So we got a home video distribution deal and it was pretty exciting. I spent the Next year or so putting together money for a follow up feature, but this was like 2008, right when everything fell out of the economy. So that ended up kind of going upside down, we got like 80% of the movie shot, and it kind of fell apart because of the financing. And left me as, you know, realizing that this wasn't going to be viable for me to go forward and count on making a living from indie films at that time. So I moved back in with my mom for a few months and trained myself on how to do websites and search engine optimization and that type of thing. moved back to Austin got a job, super boring, stable job with insurance. And I was like, Okay, this is taken care of, but I still want to be making stuff. So what can I make that doesn't require me to get producers money? And what can I do cheap. So I got together with one of my friends that we'd worked on sketch comedy videos together, she was a great cook, and super funny. Her name is hyla. And we started the highlight cooking channel, which was instructional cooking channel. And I was able to put together all my filmmaking stuff with all the nerd stuff that I'd learned about the internet and search engine optimization and get this channel going.

Alex Ferrari 6:09
And cooking cooking channels on YouTube. pretty intense competition

Christopher Sharpe 6:14
I would say, it was a little easier back then I would say there was maybe 10 serious cooking channels at the time. So what are we talking about? This was 2010 2011. Yeah, 2011.

Alex Ferrari 6:29
It's just starting to get it wasn't starting to become a thing. But I think Google had already purchased them at that point.

Christopher Sharpe 6:35
Yeah. And it was they had just started the partner program, like maybe a year before that. And it was still you had to apply and everything and to do monetization. So we didn't even have things monetized at the beginning. We just wanted to like build an audience, because we thought we could potentially sell it as a TV show later, you know, if we had if we had proven that we had an audience and people are into it, we could just go to Food Network or something, which is what our thinking was at the time.

Alex Ferrari 7:00
So yeah, so you didn't see a master plan of how you can build an online Empire with all of this kind of stuff going on. You were still thinking traditional. But you were using this as a tool to build the, you know, go down a traditional path.

Christopher Sharpe 7:12
Yeah, we wanted to show people what we could do. But I also felt like we could build this substantial audience. And so that hadn't been done that much at that time. So it seems like, yeah, I didn't have the master plan for what we have now that just kind of came in bits and pieces as we tried to figure out how to turn it into an actual business.

Alex Ferrari 7:32
Right! You're you're learning along the way because it's kind of like a wild, wild west. But it still lives in a lot of ways.

Christopher Sharpe 7:38
It's changing fast, man, I have to get up and read the news every day to figure out how you know what's what to plan for next. So

Alex Ferrari 7:46
Remember the days we could just like, you know, just do the same thing for 20 years?

Christopher Sharpe 7:51
Yeah, don't think those days are over man. And it was kind of like, I had to get out of that mindset to be successful. Really.

Alex Ferrari 7:59
Now you when we talked before you were talking about how you actually started getting some videos ranked and what your content plan was for for Hylas cooking. So how did you how did you even pick what you were gonna start doing?

Christopher Sharpe 8:13
So yeah, we didn't have any money for advertising or anything else. We literally just started it with like one video camera and a lamp from Target and a shower curtain and a $22 Wireless level here. So she was wired, actually. So we had no money to promote. So since you know, during my time trying to re educate myself to get a job, I'd learned about search engine optimization. So like, Okay, what if we use what if we build our videos around things people are actually searching for so that we can build an audience that way and not have to pay. So I did some keyword research and just targeted a few 100 recipes, food and related topics that people that had a decent search volume, and then I printed out that list, Hyland I got together and she checked off the ones that she was excited about. So we so we started so we weren't doing anything that was outside her skill set or interest or mine. But it was things that we knew people were searching for. So we started the show with a list of 100 keywords that we're going to go after. And so when we would get ready to plan a shoot, we'd pick things off that list and build the episodes around those.

Alex Ferrari 9:18
So you were actually creating content for what people want. It was a concept.

Christopher Sharpe 9:23
It was a huge adjustment for me from that that was maybe the biggest adjustment change from being in the indie filmmaker mindset that I was in at the time to Okay, let's do this YouTube thing and let's figure let's build an art let's let's really focus on building an audience. So that was that was a huge shift for me.

Alex Ferrari 9:39
So how did you and then obviously as as the, the channel progressed, you started building it up little by little, it started to kind of build up steam. Then you started adjusting, I'm assuming on a daily basis, a weekly basis depending on what you saw happening.

Christopher Sharpe 9:57
Yeah, and after, we'd been You know, so we did it for a year for a year with no income at all from it. So we didn't have monetization turned on, we just wanted this to be one get out to as many people as possible for the first year. And so we didn't, we were really focused on that we both had jobs. But then we started, then, you know, the YouTube, the YouTube ecosystem has changed a lot. I mean, it's always changing. But at that time, it was particularly the changing fast, and that there was a lot of brands coming in to sponsor videos. And that was interesting to us. And then we watched a few YouTube competitions. And we were able to like, you know, which came with some upgraded equipment and stuff. So we were able to increase the quality of the show a little bit. And they, they're the ones that really encouraged us to turn on monetization, because, of course, YouTube wants to show ads. So I think I feel like channels without ads turned on, possibly don't rank as well. This is kind of a conspiracy theory. But based on my personal tests, it's proven to be true. So we turned on ads started to make a little bit of money, did some sponsorship deals, did an ebook. So we're just putting together these pieces, these different revenue streams. And then then we eventually started getting hired to produce shows for companies like Scripps Food Network, and Tastemade for their digital platforms, as they were all trying to figure that out. So we got paid to produce short series for their digital platforms. And that was when we're like, okay, we're too busy to go to work anymore. Let's just do this full time. And so we did.

Alex Ferrari 11:30
And that's how you got in. That's how you were able to start, you know, living the dream, as they say,

Christopher Sharpe 11:35
Yeah, but it was not, it wasn't income from one place ever. So even from the, from the beginning, I realized that we were going to need to build multiple revenue streams to to be able to count on the income rather than Oh, we're getting a here's a, here's this amount of money to do this series. It's not something that you can really count on or make plans based on.

Alex Ferrari 11:57
Right. So that's something I want to kind of dive into a little bit is revenue streams. I spoken so much on this show about multiple revenue streams off of projects, and off of properties. And you've done this again, in spades with with Eilis cooking, where can you just kind of lay down? What were the revenue streams, the major revenue streams that came in and, and how that worked as far as your ecosystem was concerned?

Christopher Sharpe 12:22
Yeah, so for I love cooking, we so we have the YouTube revenue stream based on the the ads that play before your YouTube videos. Then we started bringing out ebooks, and eventually a print book, and it was all just done through Amazon, you know, like the Kindle, and then CreateSpace. So those started doing really well for us. And then I think we've now produced five series for other companies. So these would be like 10 to 12 episode, series of videos, sometimes they'll have a sponsor, sometimes they won't, but we would get paid based, we get paid from the company. And, you know, it's just a work for hire deal where we make a series for them. And then sponsorship in revenue, which was, you know, which is signal if you can build up to a certain size, and you have the demographics that that advertisers want can be lucrative as well. So it was really those, those were the core revenue streams for that.

Alex Ferrari 13:17
And that, and that basically put food on your table and kept you kept you busy all the time. Well, you didn't have to have a full time job. Yep. Just not quite enough food. Not exactly. You were eating just above ramen. Yeah.

Christopher Sharpe 13:32
But but but yeah, it was great. When? Because once you can, once you have the thing that you're passionate about, and you can work on it full time. It's, I mean, it's hard for me to imagine anybody not, you know, dramatically increasing what they're doing.

Alex Ferrari 13:46
Know exactly, especially when you start seeing something. And I found that with my world, as well, when you start seeing something work, you want to put a little bit of gas on the fire? Definitely. Because we don't know, like, at the end of the day, nobody really knows anything. You don't know if anything is going to go viral. You don't you know, you have a general idea of what things are going to do, especially in the YouTube world. But sometimes I'm assuming sometimes you thought something was gonna hit and it didn't. And then sometimes you thought that's just a throw away, and it blows up.

Christopher Sharpe 14:14
Is that correct? Totally. Yeah, totally. And it's Yeah, the idea that there's no, by the time there's a proven model for something, you know, like, there's, there's people that are like, oh, here's a here's a course on how to do Facebook advertising, or here's a course on how to optimize YouTube videos. By the time those techniques have gotten codified enough to like, get into an internet marketing course, it's already time to be looking for the next thing, you know, you know what I mean? So it's like, you have to, like, if you're serious about this, I think you have to constantly be testing and experimenting to see what works because sometimes, you know, like, we can get into the yoga with Adrian stuff, too. But like, you know, like, we wouldn't have imagined that our streaming video on demand service would have like, totally changed that business. We were just kind of testing it and it blew up. So yeah, so Oh, you get to always be testing and trying new stuff and seeing how it lands.

Alex Ferrari 15:03
Now, let's get into yoga with Adrian. Oh, by the way, highlights cooking, how many subscribers last time I saw was like with almost 400,000?

Christopher Sharpe 15:11
Yeah, it's about four. It's Yeah, we we did that show for seven years. And now we've officially ended the show, even though we occasionally make a new video, but so it's it's dropped a little bit, but it was at 400,000. And so it's kind of declined a little bit since we have no longer been publishing new videos on a regular basis.

Alex Ferrari 15:27
But off of that, all of that work, you still get a monthly revenue stream. Yep.

Christopher Sharpe 15:32
Yeah. And we still sell books. And she still gets offers to do talent type projects, you know, where she would go be on camera for for a cooking project. So so it's great. It's got her on chopped and Kelly Ripa and Food Network and all these things like that. So it's been, it's been, it's been great. And it continues to be great.

Alex Ferrari 15:52
So that's the thing that people understand that listeners have to understand is like, let's say you put in C, you know, seven years of work into something. And it's like, when you turn it off, you're like, I'm not going to do it anymore. The revenue doesn't stop a keynote.

Christopher Sharpe 16:06
It's Yeah, it's don't mean like, depending on the month, sometimes it's still as big as it ever was, you know, I mean, overall, overall, I would say there's been a slight decline in revenue, but

Alex Ferrari 16:14
But it's for doing no more work. Like it's it's working off with residuals, it's residuals, basically. It's basically residuals. It's like, what do they call it mailbox money, it just kind of shows up. And that's the business model of I think the future as opposed to just creating just one product. And that's it, you sell it, and that's all. It just hungry, keeps going and keeps going. So let's jump into yoga with Adrian, which, you know, when when we met, I was like yoga. And you were like, Yeah, I don't know, man. Because I'm like, You don't seem the yoga type. He's, it's so how did yoga with Adrian come to be?

Christopher Sharpe 16:53
So Adrian was another actor in the failed movie that I mentioned earlier. So it was kind of like, we got to, we got to know each other in this like trial by fire type, type situation. And I knew she was a yoga teacher and had the highlight cooking channel had gotten to a certain point where I wanted to use the same kind of like template for the business, but do it in a different area. So I knew, I knew that yoga was huge, you know, it's a massive, massive industry. And I knew Adrian had a unique take on it, I knew she was great on camera, and I wanted to work with her some more money. So I pitched her the idea and she was into it, it took us about a year to get it started. And then we just started making videos. And even with that, one, we didn't really have a, like, I knew I wanted to build the channel. But I didn't really have an idea for revenue beyond what we would make from YouTube, or sponsorships. So we just like concentrated on making the best videos that we could and building an audience for it. And that audience has really become a amazing community of people that's built up around the show. And that's changed everything for us. So. So we, you know, it's like we still, we still have ads on YouTube for ranking reasons. But the majority of our revenue comes from our streaming video on demand service. So it's like, it's like exclusive videos that you can access through your phone, or your Apple TV, or your Roku, or whatever. And people subscribe for 999 a month. And that's how we do everything else that we do.

Alex Ferrari 18:30
So with us talking about a community, your community now is getting close to 3 million, if I'm not mistaken.

Christopher Sharpe 18:37
Yeah. So that's sorry. So we've got Yeah, I think we should hit 3 million subscribers by the end of the year on the YouTube channel. And then, like, those are those those are our, that's our audience. But then as they get involved in some of our private communities, that's, that's when we consider them like, they're like more invested in their like part of the community. And they're interacting with each other and all that kind of stuff. And so that's probably about 30 to 40,000 people right now,

Alex Ferrari 19:02
I'd have to tally that up. That's amazing. So but so the the other thing is, and that's what I found so fascinating about your story is that you guys went after yoga, which is a fairly competitive, broad term. It's Yeah, it's it's insanely competitive, actually, because it's it's a sub niche of, of health and well, health, health and fitness. But you guys own the term yoga.

Christopher Sharpe 19:32
Now, man, every time I have this conversation, I feel like I have to. I have to look Check it out. Check it out on YouTube. But yeah, last time I checked, we were pretty pretty strong on the on the top results for yoga.

Alex Ferrari 19:44
Yeah, you're like, I think you think like you seven out of the top 10 videos. In the top five are all you guys which is massive. It is a massive Feat. So how there are some tricks you do I don't know how much you want to reveal.

Christopher Sharpe 20:00
Yeah, talk talk stuff out. I don't have any secrets. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 20:03
So how to how do you how do you, like go after of such a major q a keyword like yoga and, and rank? And I know it didn't happen overnight. But how do you do it? Like? Well, some techniques?

Christopher Sharpe 20:16
Yeah. So I think it's also important to realize that even though Yoga is a niche of health and fitness and wellness, we specifically go after yoga. For the at the at home yoga, like we're trying to give people the tools to have an at home yoga practice, so they don't have to go to a studio or that type of thing. So we're kind of a niche of a niche of a niche. So what we did, we weren't ranking for anything for a long time. It was like all the big brands, Jillian Michaels, all the stuff outrank us for everything. So we started, you know, I did more keyword research, and I knew that yoga for weight loss would be a good one to go after. There's a ton of volume for that. And that's a weird one, we had to have a lot of discussions about that one, because calling something yoga for weight loss is a little for the yoga space. It's a little it's not not Yeah, it's a little spammy. It's not quite delicate enough, I guess, as we'd like, most of our messaging and stuff. So we'd have a lot of conversations about that. And ultimately, it came down to like, Okay, well, if we can expose a lot more people to these videos, then it's worth using, it's worth going after yoga for weight loss and putting that in the title. So we did a series of videos, which is our yoga for weight loss series, to go after that keyword. So once and that was like a hard fight, man, that was really hard to move past the people that were ranked for that already. But once we were able to rank for that, it kind of open, you know, that is really what turned the tables on it on every edge, which changed everything. So we started getting a substantial amount of traffic for that. And then we picked other things like morning yoga, yoga for beginners, things like that, that that we knew that there was search volume for and then we started just like on a micro level going after those. So as we started to rank higher for each of the individual keywords, it just kind of masked, our overall your overall traffic grew. And it started to look like it was starting to look like there was some potential there. But once again, there was two years of yoga with agent, absolutely no revenue.

Alex Ferrari 22:22
So there was this, it actually took you longer to get

Christopher Sharpe 22:25
It did it was it was it was a hard it was a hard one. And and you know, it was it was a I didn't even there were times that I didn't think it was gonna be possible. But we did it. It was just like chipping chipping away. I was very determined.

Alex Ferrari 22:40
Yeah, you, you, you, you do again, what I preach about a lot, which is like you look at the long game, because people go I've been doing this for six months. I'm not getting anywhere. I'm like, what doesn't work in six months? Right? Takes a year, two years, and you are going after a fairly big fish? You know, yeah. You know, cooking a high level cooking was a different time. less competition. If you would start a cooking channel today. It would probably be it's just insane. Yeah. And yeah, it's

Christopher Sharpe 23:10
Like, there's definitely, you know, I think it's good to go into a competitive market, but it's not good to go into a oversaturated market and cooking and recipes, I tend to think is oversaturated. Yeah. Yeah, it's not my experience, I don't want to discourage anybody from doing what they want to do. But I like that's gonna be a hard one. Because even the big companies, their videos aren't doing so good anymore in that space. So it's a tricky one.

Alex Ferrari 23:38
So can we talk a little bit about the ecosystem because you have an insane ecosystem you've created with yoga with Adrian. So as far as the revenue streams and projects and things like that, that you're doing with, with yoga with Adrian?

Christopher Sharpe 23:51
Sure. So like, as far as revenue streams, you know, we have the YouTube, you know, the what we make from YouTube ads, we do a few sponsorships and partnerships, like, Adidas is one of our partners that we love a lot right now, just because it's a great fit, what they're doing is a great fit for us. So it's not necessarily just about the money. It's about, like being in with Adidas helps us move our message more. That's the most important thing about that one, and we really like working with them. So it's like, yeah, so YouTube revenue, sponsorships, we have a T shirt store. So we do t shirts and other like physical merchandise, and then so core courses on a transactional basis. So it's like you get a course a calendar and ebook, these exclusive videos that aren't on the YouTube channel. That's to a private community for like encouragement and accountability. So that's, that's how people like really start getting into our the community side of things. And then we have our s VOD or streaming video on demand service, which is kind of like Netflix for yoga. And so that's what I mentioned earlier that you can access you know from TVs and phones. And

Alex Ferrari 25:00
How much content you have in your streaming service now?

Christopher Sharpe 25:04
Dude, that's a great question. I have someone I have someone like adding up all the hours right now, but it's it's a lot the hundreds of videos and over 50 now that are exclusive to the to the streaming video service. So, so we're in, we're really ramping that up next year. So we'll have, in addition to a new video every week on the YouTube channel, we'll have new content every week in the membership.

Alex Ferrari 25:29
Now, let me ask you a question, do you because the brand is so connected to Adrian? So it's not like, you know, a big a big brand another like a nameless brand, if you will, but it has, you know, yoga with Adrian, will you ever venture out into creating content with other other yoga instructors other content that you would put into the streaming service? Or is everything so specific to Adrian? Well, yeah,

Christopher Sharpe 25:53
We're gonna be expanding that because one of the one of the things that has come out of the community is this concept of find what feels good. And that's like, really what separates our yoga from other Yoga is other other yoga teachers in that it's not super strict, it's about what's finding that works for you and your body, because like we have, we have a very different community around this, then, then you would find another, then you would find with other yoga teachers or other yoga brands. So we're very, very specific into that. So find what feels good is our umbrella brand. And that's actually the name of that spot service. It's fine, what feels good.com or fwfg.com. So, next year, we'll start having Adrian introduce these other teachers that have influenced her on that in that she's learned a lot from she could because she wants to work with other teachers so that she can learn in addition to getting content for our community. But yeah, we will bring we will be bringing in some cool people that I think are all really fresh, that I don't think they've been seen in yoga videos yet.

Alex Ferrari 26:57
So the Can you talk a little bit about community and building that community because you have a very interesting culture within your community? Can you talk a little bit about what you do to kind of engage with your community, build a community, the relationship that you have with your community, because it's all the your entire Empire is all reliant on this concept of being able to connect with people on a human level, and in a community, give them something that they're looking for that they're not finding anywhere else? So how do you what can you give us as far as tips are concerned on how you are able to build and maintain this relationship in such a noisy world?

Christopher Sharpe 27:40
Yeah, it's that's a great question. And I'm not sure I have an easy takeaway answer for that. But it's it started very. So we first started our private Facebook group, in conjunction with our first course that we sold, it was called a reboot. And it was designed to start in January, it was designed to last over the month of January. So we promoted it, we were like, We didn't know how it was gonna do. But we we sold this course there was videos and a calendar and an E book. And then we at the last minute, we decided that we need to like add something else to this, it seems like it's too expensive or something. So we added a private Facebook community. So that was how it really started. And that's actually what really caused things to grow, in my opinion. So it was just a private space for everyone to talk about how they were doing, as they went through this, this yoga program, and they started talking to each other. And then when we saw how that started to work, we became very focused on Okay, this is how do we serve this community that's already growing here? How do we give them? Like, how do we feed that community? How do you know, it's just basically almost like you would people, and I mean, it is similar to how you would cultivate a community in real life, we just, we just tried to encourage that communication. And then we would use, what we were hearing in the community would use that feedback to actually make the next batches of videos and, you know, we would see what they wanted us to make. So like the next big request was for a yoga plus high intensity interval training type course. So we did that. And then it continued to grow from there, but now and even so we have a community manager now. And that's someone that was very active in the community from the beginning. So she's like, now on full time as like a community manager listening to the community, and helping us to, it's easy to, to just just get concentrated on all this new stuff that you're making and throwing out there. But now like our messaging, we all the messaging, whether it's through email, or how we're going to promote something, or when we're going to announce a live event. It's filtered through, it's filtered with that community in mind and serving that community because I feel like if we continue to take care of that, I mean, that's the most important part of the business honestly. So as long as we continue to cultivate that and care for those people, I think will, everything else kind of takes care of itself.

Alex Ferrari 30:06
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. It's kind of a very different mindset of what independent filmmakers do. Because in a lot of ways, they just make a product sometimes for themselves, and they hope to go find an audience for it. And it's a one off, right, it's generally not something you keep, you know, feeding. This is a completely different mindset. And I've kind of learned a little bit about that through indie film, hustle. But it's just such a different way of looking at content creating, and and what you can create with that, as far as your revenues are concerned, as far as communities, and you're actually, you know, we're talking about the business side of this, but you're helping people you're like, I know.

Christopher Sharpe 30:58
Yeah, and, and that's what the so none of this stuff that we're doing now, I, I couldn't have anticipated any of it. It was really like listening and responding. And some of these stories, like we have people that have because we really tried to design our YouTube channel so that it attracts people that may never go to a yoga class, for whatever reason, it's expensive, they don't feel like they can do it, maybe they have body image issues, like those type of people. And those are the people that we bring in gently, you know, it's as all these free videos for them to build a home practice with. And then eventually they get involved in the community. We've seen people that had serious health problems that had trouble even walking. And they started doing these videos. And now some of those people are yoga teachers. So we've been able to like follow them on their journey. So this is like, this is actually kind of I like, I never would have anticipated that I would be involved in something like this, because I'm kind of the I'm kind of the bad guy. And you know, behind the scenes, not not bad. But like I'm kind of the one that's always like pushing, you know, traditionally, I've been the one that's pushing to, like build this into a business. And Adrian's the yogi, that's out, balancing me out. But now I've, I'm kind of on that side to where it's like, the most important thing to me is that we do actually like serve this community because it's become important all around.

Alex Ferrari 32:14
And I mean, the one thing that people have to understand who are listening is you have to create value for your audience, whatever that value might be. It could be, it could be humor, it could be education, it could be inspiration, right,

Christopher Sharpe 32:28
And try to get all those. Yeah, I mean, if you can get all of them, then your gold

Alex Ferrari 32:31
That you're in that you got the trifecta, because you've got everything. All together, I try to do the same thing with indie film, hustle. And you know, you've been doing this a lot longer than I have. But even in the two years that I've been doing indie film, hustle, and building up the tribe and everything, it's it's been very educational to me about how you, you talk to your community, how you build your community, how you serve your community. And I think that's the big place where a lot of a lot of people make the mistake is they don't they think about money, money, money, money, money, money. And it's not about that it's about serving and money will come once you serve. Well, along those lines. And one of the things that I that I didn't mention earlier, when I talked about our different revenue streams, because it's turned out to not be in revenue streams, it's turned out to kind of be a breakeven stream or lose a little money stream is our live event. So yeah,

Christopher Sharpe 33:21
We just we just finished a big tour. And touring is different, you know, it's a totally different deal. And it's just really hard, especially when you're going across the country with merchandise and all this kind of stuff. You know, there's a lot of logistics, and I think we did an awesome job on it. But when the tour, we know that it's going to be we know when we when we do live events, or when we do a tour, then for various reasons, a live event is different in yoga, you can fit a lot less people into a venue because of the mats and all that kind of stuff. So it's logistically tricky. But we don't really do that. Because, you know, it'd be nice if we will, it'd be nice if it became a reliable revenue stream. But it's really there to serve the community. Because when we get people together in these live events, they're meeting in real life, all these people that they have connected with online, it becomes a totally different thing. And that sends that that creates even more momentum. But even better than that, on this tour, we hadn't done merchandise at a tour before and I really wanted to work the merchandise table as much as possible, so that I can make sure all of our you know, like square readers and stuff were working but but most importantly, so that I could have like these lots of conversations with a lot of people as they were coming through and to get ideas for what people really wanted for our next batch of merchandise. So Atlanta, so listening to all those people as they came through at the merchandise table and getting their feedback on the products and what they would like to see changed our direction for our upcoming physical products as well. So like listening, man, it's like, it's,

Alex Ferrari 34:49
It's like the most important thing. And you could do the same thing in a lot of ways. When you're trying to create an independent film or series. You can talk to an audience and go Hey, I'm thinking about making a movie about this, what would you like to see in it and kind of build up that community around you making a movie? Yeah. And I've seen that happen many times where it works out very, very well. Now, if you were going to start a YouTube channel today, a brand new one, how would you go about it? Well, can you give me a subject? That's the question. So first things first,

Christopher Sharpe 35:23
You gotta First things first, you got to decide what you're going to do. And it should be a balance of I mean, it shouldn't be like, it's gonna be a grind. So it's got to be something that you're actually into, if you're going to be you know, if you're behind the scenes producing or if you're on camera, either way, there's gonna be a lot of you know, there's gonna be a lot of grinding grinding away. So you got to you got to be prepared to at least, like, edit those videos on on a weekly basis and love

Alex Ferrari 35:48
What you're doing. Yeah, yes, of course, if you're all of a sudden, you're like, the hand sanitizer guy. You're not gonna love and sanitizer, this is a pro zactly.

Christopher Sharpe 36:00
So and I think, you know, obviously, we're in a much more fragmented space now, with everything. So people aren't, you know, there's not that many mass media things anymore, that everybody's watching. People are going like, more and more, it's a more and more fragmented. So people are looking for stuff that's much more targeted. So like, yeah, even with, you know, even if you're going to make a movie, or you're going to make a series, I think that there's ways to dig into that, like, say, you're going to make a series about you know, yeah.

Alex Ferrari 36:37
I see, I always use this example, a series about a vegan chef,

Christopher Sharpe 36:41
A vegan chef, which is great. Yeah. So, yeah, this is a great example. So then you would want to like, because, like, you, you may think that veganism is you know, so within veganism, there's several sub niches within that, you know what I mean? So you may want to, I would like to, I always recommend going to the most narrow niche that you can dominate, because that's pretty easy, but it may be small, but then that gives you a little bit of momentum to, like, start expanding it out. Because if it's a if it's about a vegan chef, you know, it's probably there's gonna be vegetarians that are interested in it as well. And then it's like your RV, and Chef, yeah, you got the whole so like to go into these like sub subsets, you know, sub sub niches and start creating content to capture those people and like, Okay, well, yeah, I've only I'm only like, my audience in this sub niche is like 5000 people, we'll get those people and then you can expand from there and start and I still am a big believer in search engine optimization. So I do look for what people are searching. And there's easy ways to do that. Like you can even go to just the search bar at the top of YouTube and I'm looking up like vegan, and it starts filling in so like I typed in vegan and like see Vegan Gains vegan recipes, vegan Thanksgiving vegan meal prep vegan what I eat in a day, that'd be a great one to go after first vegan breakfast, that'd be another great one to go after. So you could go after these little things and incorporate the story of the movie that you're making with some actual useful entertaining content while you go.

Alex Ferrari 38:16
It's a whole it's a whole other world isn't it's a brand new world. Yeah.

Christopher Sharpe 38:19
People are searching for this stuff people are searching for very, you know, everything is becoming much more specific, I think,

Alex Ferrari 38:26
Right! It's everything's about your rights fragmented. It's all niche. I mean, back in the day when you know, mash and cheers, finales were like, you know, 50 million people. 70 million people, 100 million people. That was because it was nothing else.

Christopher Sharpe 38:42
Yeah, and it's like, that's just doesn't Yeah, if you think of man, it's, I was thinking about this yesterday of how few shows and movies were produced, just like back when we were kids.

Alex Ferrari 38:51
Yeah, you know, there was like, hardly, and then you compare it now. There's probably 500 scripted shows on television.

Christopher Sharpe 38:57
Yeah, yeah. And it's almost impossible to keep up. But they're very, you know, those scripted shows are, especially on Netflix, they're targeting very specific demographics.

Alex Ferrari 39:07
And they don't really care about advertisers with that in that model. So they can be a little bit really be niche and go farther than other places that other channels like the network channels that doodlee

Christopher Sharpe 39:18
It's, and I come at this from a very working class background, you know, so I'm like, I'm not expecting to knock one out of the park. I just want to keep working. Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 39:30
And that's the other thing that filmmakers and people listening should understand that this is not about get rich quick. It's not like you're rolling around in a Rolls Royce living in the Hollywood Hills, you know, but, but you but you're able to make a living, how you know, keep a staff of people working for you, and work and do what you love to do and continue to build and build and build to and you're just building up a company and building multiple companies doing this but it's not about like, you know, in a year from now. I'm going to be millions and millions like, no, it doesn't work like that. It just doesn't. Don't unless

Christopher Sharpe 40:06
You have a million to throw at advertising. And

Alex Ferrari 40:09
That's a whole a whole different ballgame. Like, yeah, we're working our way up. And we're and we're both coming from a place of the street, if you will, like we started with nothing, and just kind of grinded and clawed our way up in our, in our respective arenas and continue to do so on a daily basis.

Christopher Sharpe 40:29
Yeah, I don't see that ending. Because this is all this is all changing. everything's changing every day. So

Alex Ferrari 40:35
Right, exactly. And even in business, that's the other thing, even these big brands who have tons of cash, they can't make headway.

Christopher Sharpe 40:43
Yeah, I mean, I was just reading about like tube filter just laid off a bunch of I mean, not to filter, but fullscreen just laid off a bunch of people and closed down their s VOD service. So like, if they've got a ton of money,

Alex Ferrari 40:55
it's not about money. It's it's you've got to kind of have to build a better mousetrap. And

Christopher Sharpe 41:00
I think it's about legitimate connection. Yep, with your audience is so huge, particularly on YouTube, like I like I knew hyla and Adrian would be, I knew people would like them. But I knew that we could build a format that a show format that really facilitated that audience to host connection. And it's, it's amazing, because, you know, people spend so many hours and hours like watching these videos. So when they, they they really feel like they know them, like the audience really feels like they know them. So there's like a connection. There. That's incredibly important on YouTube, I think.

Alex Ferrari 41:36
Now you also you also started creating, I know with hyla. And with I think you as well with your own brand. Now you've ventured out into podcasting, and other platforms as well to get the message out. So YouTube was a starting point for you. Like podcasting was a starting point for me. And then as the audience builds you, like, let me go, let me go find more in another bit more people, or build my audience on other platforms? Definitely. That's something is a part of your strategy, I'm assuming.

Christopher Sharpe 42:05
Yeah. And it's something to you know, like, my, like, my audio and video podcast, you know, that's kind of an experiment in podcasting. There's not really like a business goal on that one. I just love talking to people about video, and I love like helping people with their, with their channels and stuff. So there's not like a real business strategy behind that one. But yeah, so so we do have an iOS podcast, which is continued to, you know, continue that relationship with her audience, potentially on a deeper level. And it's allowed her to do things that are not, you know, after seven years of a cooking video, every week, at least, you can get a little burned out. And so she, she wanted to like talk about other stuff. So and her audiences followed her over there, and it's very successful. And then we'll be starting a new podcast, with Adrian as the hosts in 2018. And that one's gonna be really interesting, because it lets us it's not instructional content anymore. But once again, it allows her to talk to some of the people that she wants to learn from talk to some big names and kind of expand it a little bit to topics that are related to yoga and not world but not actual, here's how to do yoga. Got it? So yeah, we will be doing that as well. Well, yeah, it

Alex Ferrari 43:15
Would be the equivalent of, you know, me starting a I'm going to talk about movies, instead of educating people about the making of movies. I'm like, hey, this week, we're just going to talk about the Justice League, and yeah, and why it only made $5 now. Now, what is the biggest mistake, new youtubers make in your opinion,

Christopher Sharpe 43:38
Not not designing a show that you can produce on at least a weekly basis. So because so consistency is like super important. So a lot of times people just over engineer their, their format, so that it's almost impossible to produce on a weekly basis. So I like to encourage people to start with a minimum viable show, you know, in that they keep their format really simple, so that you can at least get those videos out every week at the same time every week to start building that momentum with the algorithm. That's the big one.

Alex Ferrari 44:11
Now you were talking about momentum and, and consistency. Can you please elaborate for people who don't know, I know you and I both know it, but the how creating content a certain amount of content every week, and being religious to it every week is so important in the YouTube world.

Christopher Sharpe 44:29
Yeah, it's important because your audience comes to expect, you know, people people are super into YouTube. And they expect they're the people that they follow to have stuff out on a regular basis. So it's one one part, it's just like living up to like your audience expectations, because we're still kind of in this world where expect shows to come out once a week or whatever. And then also, you know, Google has this algorithm that control that, that they use. It's actually like an artificial intelligence thing called the Google brain. And so that's how They decide what they're going to show in search results, but also in suggested videos and different things like that. So you kind of have to put in some time getting the algorithm used to what you're doing. And so that they can start easily, they realize that other kind of expecting those shows those videos on a regular basis, and then they send them out to your subscribers and put them in the supported, you know, in the recommended videos and in the search results. So the longer you're in the system, you're kind of like leveling up in the algorithm, as long as you're doing, you know, long you're not doing shady stuff. So the consistent schedule really helps the algorithm to understand what you're doing and start recommending your videos to more people.

Alex Ferrari 45:34
So can we just Can you discuss a little bit about how YouTube's algorithm looks at your channel and individual videos? Yeah,

Christopher Sharpe 45:42
A little bit, because the YouTube algorithm is super, super mysterious, even when you're talking to people at YouTube, they won't tell you too much. And it almost seems like they don't really know either. Like, it's just like these engineers know, but I know that there's like several key factors. One, it looks at your individual videos. So the first 48 to 72 hours are super important. So that's when it hasn't used, the algorithm hasn't seen how you're how people are reacting to your video yet, it doesn't have enough data. So it's looking at your title, your description, your tags. And if you want to like if you want to accelerate this process, I would have your videos professionally transcribed and upload the transcripts, so then it then it has the accurate text of your video to actually read in the first that's super important window right after you launch. So it looks at that. So it's going to start ranking your videos based on all that stuff that you put in, in the in the captions, but then it also takes into account the rest of your channel. So that's why it's so hard in the beginning, because you don't have very many videos, you don't have very many subscribers and you don't have very much watched him on your channel. So in all honesty, it's much easier for me to rank for yoga terms now because we have just so so many people watching the videos, and we've got almost 3 million subscribers. So it's kind of vetted, I guess you're,

Alex Ferrari 47:01
You're recording. Yeah.

Christopher Sharpe 47:04
So there's that. And then it also takes into account like how much time people are watching your videos. So that's what we would consider watch time. So they've recently changed the metrics from views to watch time, you know that that's what they're you can even see this in the analytics, they prioritize watch time over views. So that's like how much how many minutes of time you know how much time people are watching your channel, then you also get a little bit of a boost from say, someone starts watching videos on the indie film, hustle channel, then they jump, then they follow a link to another channel and they're watching a video that you've recommended there, you still get some credit for that as far as like session duration. So YouTube is just rewarding your channel and your videos for getting people to stay on YouTube and watch stuff and watch ads.

Alex Ferrari 47:54
That's what YouTube YouTube wants people to be on YouTube 24 seven. And if you can be the catalyst to getting someone to log into YouTube and watch not only your videos, but a lot of other videos as well, then you get credit for that as well. As far as your ranking and, and cachet within the YouTube world.

Christopher Sharpe 48:13
Yeah, just think about it, YouTube's a company, and they want to make money. So that is something that I think about and like decisions about, you know, and when I'm making those trying to make a decision about something new. It's like, okay, does this help you to achieve their goals? Then do that, you know, just think shouldn't just kind of think about it from YouTube's perspective, too. And not just don't just look at it as a distribution point, I think that can help strategic strategy wise

Alex Ferrari 48:39
And perfect example, you were saying about how the algorithm works. You know, I've I launched the indie film hustle YouTube channel back when I launched indie film also, which was almost a little bit over two and a half years ago. But I really never took it very seriously because I just didn't have the time nor the content really to be putting stuff up. I put some stuff up here and there. But what I decided to do is just start popping up the my podcasts as literally a throwaway. Like, just let me just put it's YouTube who's gonna listen to podcasts on YouTube. Like it didn't make any sense to me. But I just kept popping them out. And slowly but surely, people started listening. And it just started to grow and grow and grown because I'm a maniac and produce so much content. I ended up having close to 300 videos. Within the in the last two years I created 300 videos, all key termed out everyone talking about filmmaking. You know, I had a closed caption, and I slowly started to see it grow. The subscriber count started going and going and getting bigger, bigger and bigger. And as you said this before when we spoken the first 10 1000s the toughest.

Christopher Sharpe 49:47
Yeah, that's a that's a tipping point. I think that's one of the metrics like if you can get to 10,000 subscribers, things get easier and I have been watching your stats because you got to 12,000 super fast. Yeah, after that, you know,

Alex Ferrari 49:59
Like once You know, when I broke 10,000 subscribers, for whatever reason, now I'm at 12,000. And it trust me, it did not take me a week or two to get to 12 to 2000. The first 2000

Christopher Sharpe 50:13
Yeah, so like, yeah, usually, you know, I think you'll get to 100,000 way faster than you got to 10,000 and then people people usually do,

Alex Ferrari 50:23
That's, that would be insane. I would, I would love your your, your,

Christopher Sharpe 50:26
Your your content schedule is a little different. Your your, your strategy up to this point has been a little different than a traditional YouTube channel. But normally, people that kind of do it by the established book, you know, anybody established current guidelines on YouTube? They can usually get from 10,000 to 100,000. And then same amount of time it took them to get to 10,000.

Alex Ferrari 50:47
Wow, that's, that's pretty insane. Yeah. And then you've you've been looking at my YouTube channel, you've been seeing all the analytics and how it's growing. And the second change to a, a more strict. We daily or weekly schedule. So I do three shows a week, non stop, which is the director series, the indie film, hustle, film, film, school, and then the podcast. And those three that are are the bedrock of the channel. But then I throw extras in like, I'll throw in a Monday ifH TV episode or, or I'll throw an extra podcast I never uploaded on a Friday or Saturday just for bonus. Is that a good thing? To do that dad or doesn't? Totally?

Christopher Sharpe 51:30
Yeah, because I'm you know, I guess it's, you know, we've been talking about your YouTube channel. Off the record. But yeah, I just had to look at your stats again. But your, your watch time has quadrupled. Since October is over the last 28 days. It's quadrupled, which is amazing.

Alex Ferrari 51:49
That's pretty insane. Yeah, cuz

Christopher Sharpe 51:51
You went, you were averaging around. Let's see. Let's Let's sorry. You know, it's easy to get to get me distracted once we start talking about this stuff. Yeah, but it looks like you're Yeah, yeah. It's quadrupled in views and watch time over the last 28 days. So that's pretty amazing growth.

Alex Ferrari 52:09
Yeah, it is. It's it's pretty, it's pretty insane. And it's, it seems to be getting bigger and bigger. So it's, for people listening, understand that. I mean, it took me two years just to even get close to 10,000 subscribers. But I didn't really I wasn't really feeding it either.

Christopher Sharpe 52:26
Right. So that's why I think you'll get to 100 really fast, because I'm feeding in less than two years. Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 52:31
I'm feeding it pretty, pretty, pretty regularly now. And it's becoming now its own thing. So you know, within the ecosystem of indie film, hustle, I have multiple platforms that I'm trying to share the message with. And that's the thing that you know, what, again, why I wanted to have you on the show is to show filmmakers that you can do that for your own production company for your own shows, or you want to create your own channels. This is this is the this is there's it's possible. Yep, definitely without question. So I'm going to ask you a few questions I asked all of my guests are. So prepare yourself. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business or into YouTube today?

Christopher Sharpe 53:11
This is actually something I've been thinking a lot about lately in YouTube. Like, I'm just like feeling the move towards series as opposed to like standalone movies a lot. Like if you're looking at how people are consuming things. So I think YouTube would be a great place, I still think it's a great place to do web series, there's been like several web series that have gone to like, broadcast series that were started on YouTube. But I would look at really, I would look at YouTube, first and foremost as a place to like cultivate that community and get them interested in you as a filmmaker or in interested in your, your crew of filmmaker, people, your production company or whatever. Like get them interested behind the scenes, because there is a big audience for behind the scenes content on on YouTube. But then figure out a way to maybe your channel has like a behind the scenes section. Or maybe it has a section for the actual show that you're releasing. I mean, you could still you could still build up an audience. If they if you can use YouTube to build a relationship with you. And within your niche, then I think you can move that audience really successfully to a feature film or to a series.

Alex Ferrari 54:24
Can you tell me what book had the biggest impact in your life or career?

Christopher Sharpe 54:30
Um, man, you've mentioned it before, but it's the War of Art.

Alex Ferrari 54:33
Yes, yes,

Christopher Sharpe 54:35
By far and it's also the book I've given to the most people.

Alex Ferrari 54:38
It's such an amazing book. An amazing book,

Christopher Sharpe 54:42
And it's a great book to go back to whenever you're questioning the grind. Yes, you know, you just got to, because you just got to lean in and do it and see what happened. The resistance the resistance, yeah.

Alex Ferrari 54:54
What lesson took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?

Christopher Sharpe 54:59
I think Put them. I think the big thing. I'm trying to crystallize this down into a lesson, but I just when I started, you know, I didn't understand how money or business worked at all, you know, I wasn't I was raised like with, I was raised, like, really poor. Like, for me, it was like I go to a job, you punch the clock, you get the insurance and you get this amount of money and you budget everything around that. And then that was it. However many years later,

Alex Ferrari 55:26
You do that for 30 years?

Christopher Sharpe 55:28
Yeah, yeah. So, and that's something that's like viable for people anymore. So like, my relationship to money had to like, definitely change. And I'm not like a person that likes to like, you know, I don't even really spend that much or buy that much stuff. But the idea of this kind of getting to weird stuff, but money is like a river that needs to flow rather than something that you collect and put somewhere, you know, so it's like this entirely different relationship to money, which, I don't know if I can crystallize that down into a lesson. I just feel like I was really scammed as a kid for never being, like, taught about how adults think about money.

Alex Ferrari 56:09
No, you know what, it's, it's very interesting, you say that, because I do believe it's very similarly the same way where you, you know, money is like a river, it needs to flow and keep moving. Because if you just stack it in a corner, it does nothing for you. Right? Or for it doesn't do anyone else, and you get either. That's the other thing. So if you're creating something that is helping people, or at least having your money work for you, in one way, shape, or form, whether that be investments, whether that be creating product, you know, creating content, something that's moving forward, I think is is extremely beneficial. We have gone down more of the metaphysical road now.

Christopher Sharpe 56:49
Yeah, like, you know, I never would have expected it's the it's the yoga community that has like, changed my perspective on a lot of things.

Alex Ferrari 56:58
You're getting softer. You're getting soft. Yep. Now, what are three of your favorite films of all time?

Christopher Sharpe 57:06
All right. I gotta go for the Godfather 2. Yeah, okay. Okay. And then, man, this is this is always a hard one. Chungking Express was a highly so be and then Raging Bull.

Alex Ferrari 57:27
Okay, good. Good choices are good choices. And where can people find you and your many worlds that you've created?

Christopher Sharpe 57:35
Yeah, well, I have a blog at christophersharpe.com. That is at least a good jumping off point for all the other stuff. And I also have a book in Amazon called YouTube black book that kind of goes in more detail about the whole story of us doing that. And it's got some good practical tips, but it also gets into the story of starting all these channels and stuff. So it can be it can be interesting, if you'd like to know a little bit more.

Alex Ferrari 58:00
And then what are the what are the channels, yoga with Adrian?

Christopher Sharpe 58:04
Yeah, yoga with Adrian and then hilah cooking and that's spelled h i l a h cooking.

Alex Ferrari 58:10
And I'll put all the links to all of his his creations in the in the show notes. Chris man thank you so much for being

Christopher Sharpe 58:18
It's been fun. It's been exciting to see what happens with your YouTube channel.

Alex Ferrari 58:21
Yeah, me too, sir. Me too. Thanks again, brother. I told you this episode wouldn't not disappoint. There is so much information in this episode. I hope you guys listen to it two or three times and take notes, Chris, literally brain dumped in this episode. So thank you so much, Chris, for sharing all of your knowledge. I truly, truly appreciate it. Thank you so much for helping me on my channel and helping me my channel grow as much as it has over the course of the last few months as well. So this stuff works, guys, his stuff he's talking about in this episode, and in his book, really do work. And I am a proof of the pudding if you will. So if you want to get links to anything we talked about, including his book, head over to indiefilmhustle.com/227. And guys, thanks again, for all the great comments and emails and messages about the the trailer for on the corner of ego and desire. It's been kind of overwhelming how well it's being received. We're almost at 20,000 views among all of our social media outlets. For the trailer, which is sick, it's crazy, that you know, we've been able to do that so far. So thank you so much. If you like it on Facebook, please share it with your friends. Get it out there as much as possible. I really want to get this. I want to get this little movie blown up as much as humanly possible, and get it out to filmmakers who I know are going to enjoy this. And again, coming in the next few weeks and months. I'm going to be going I'm going to be doing special series of episodes, discussing the making of it, how we were able to put the whole thing together some of the technical information we're gonna be bringing on guests that worked on it with me so we can kind of really break down this process. And then months and months from now, we'll probably put together a detailed course on how we were able to put the whole thing together for the master circle as well. So, as always, keep the hustle going. Keep that dream alive. And I'll talk to you soon.