Matt Hughes: Hello, welcome to YouTube Success.
My name is Matt Hughes, King of Video.
And I'm here with Louise Brogan.
Louise, that is how you say your name, right?
Louise Brogan: Yes.
Matt Hughes: Okay, good.
I just had to check for a minute there.
My brain went, Matt, you've just pronounced the name wrong.
Always does this to me.
So I'm here with Louise.
Louise is, well, I'll tell you what we normally do Louise, is we get our guests
to introduce themselves and then I'll add a bit of padding around it if I don't feel
like you've sold yourself well enough, but I'm sure you're good enough at doing this.
You know, a lot of people when I asked them to introduce yourself, they just
don't make out that they're amazing.
And I'm always disappointed about that.
So go for it.
Tell us what you do and we can talk about why we got you here.
Louise Brogan: Okay.
So I run a LinkedIn marketing agency.
We are based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
However, we don't have any Northern Irish clients.
We work with clients from all over Europe and North America, a few from Australia,
New Zealand, and we help people.
My goal really is to help people understand how to
use LinkedIn for business.
That's everything it's about, and that's from my free content to my
paid services that we offer, training workshops and done-for-you services.
I'm in business 11 years this year.
And I switched over to LinkedIn about 5 years ago.
So it originally was social media management across all social media.
I actually had a great relationship with Facebook at one time where I was hosting
business breakfasts on behalf of Facebook and Instagram in Northern Ireland.
And then I decided to niche down to LinkedIn for a couple of different
reasons, but mainly because being niched down in social media,
it's just a good idea really.
And allowed me to focus on it.
And yeah, I'm also a small business champion in the UK, which I love.
I get to go to the House of Lords and swan about having canapes and champagne
with other small business owners.
And a year and a half ago, Matt, I got invited to meet the King because of that.
So I was invited to Buckingham Palace to meet King Charles in recognition of
my work with small businesses in the UK.
The small business work is all voluntary stuff that I do, and the main business
is LinkedIn, whether it's done for you or teaching you how to do it yourself.
Matt Hughes: Wicked.
Well, I mean, there's definitely no padding I need to add there.
I think that all sounds very impressive enough.
So small business champion, is that a role that you're given?
How do you end up doing that?
Louise Brogan: Yeah, so in 2017, I entered the small business Saturday Top 100.
It's not an award as such, but basically they focus on 100 businesses every year
in the run up to Small Business Saturday, which is the first Saturday in December.
So I applied to be in that and I was successful.
So that was in 2017 and they liked me and they asked me
to do some webinars for them.
And then they asked me, would I be one of their champions?
So I've been a champion for them since definitely since before the pandemic.
And they made me their business, Small Business Of The Year during
the pandemic, which was hilarious.
So I was at home, I'd just been out like with my son horse riding or something.
So it was whenever we were all allowed to be out and about,
we weren't really traveling.
So I was sitting in my house in my like, you know, sloppy trackies type of
thing, and there's a knock at the door and there's the Small Business Saturday
guys, live streaming and they'd see me as their Small Business Of The Year.
And I was like, better, better,
Matt Hughes: Give me a minute.
Better
Louise Brogan: nervous that it'd be good.
I was like,
Matt Hughes: I mean, I don't watch TV anymore, but it's like those shows
that they do on the Saturdays and they get people and they're always
in the gyms or the ones or whatever.
Louise Brogan: Oh my God.
Matt Hughes: And it gets some lippy on or whatever it is that you do.
Louise Brogan: Hilarious.
It was hilarious.
Matt Hughes: Wicked.
Well, that's
Louise Brogan: were lovely.
And luckily, it was only live streamed to their community.
Thank heavens.
Matt Hughes: Good.
Well, I mean, you know, and I hear that story and it just, although it
sounds really impressive, actually the way you describe it sounds
really just like it's normal.
And actually, it's not normal at all, all of these things that you've achieved.
And I think, you know, I asked about the small business champion thing
because I think all of the people that I speak to on this podcast
are champions of small business.
So not necessarily they maybe have official title or they've not got that
backstory really, but the great thing about the creator community in general
is for the most part, we're all doing stuff actually that we really love doing.
And so it kind of feels weird that we get paid to do it as well.
And so therefore everyone I speak to in the creative community
is really happy to be doing it.
It's not like you're stuck in a corporate job that you hate.
Louise Brogan: No.
Matt Hughes: So, good.
So, thanks for sharing that.
And just like some of the other guests I've had, we've had Judi
Fox, who's LinkedIn as well.
It feels weird having a LinkedIn person on YouTube, but we've got a
really nice YouTube journey to share.
You're a speaker at TubeFest as well for the same reason.
And so what I really wanted to do is dig into this.
And what we just talked about backstage was how people like you and me,
who are classed as small creators.
So there's a guy whose name I forget right now, who started
the hashtag, no small creator.
I think a small creator is defined as like less than a hundred thousand,
which seems ridiculous to me anyway.
Louise Brogan: Oh my Lord.
Matt Hughes: but, or maybe it's less than 10,000.
So maybe you've gone past that.
But the point is we are in a position where we can be great examples for
people that are getting started, people that are thinking about this.
And in your case, YouTube wasn't the focus.
Actually LinkedIn was the focus, like you say, and you've
grown to 10,000 subscribers.
So can we talk about then your YouTube journey and how that all came about?
Louise Brogan: Love to.
So it's, and I'll cover a little bit about this at TubeFest.
So I love that I have a YouTube channel and I have all these people who message
me and ask me questions on YouTube.
It's like a wonderful part of my business.
And it actually has ended up bringing leads to me, but during the pandemic,
it was 2020, I started this.
So I was in a little mastermind group with five people.
It was five of us all together.
I called it my English mastermind.
So there's three guys in England, a woman from Australia
and me in this little group.
We had actually formed a mastermind before the pandemic.
So when the pandemic hit, we were like a lifeline to each other.
And in that group, there's two guys who are really big on YouTube.
Matt Hughes: Who are they?
Can you name them all?
Louise Brogan: Yeah, absolutely.
So Tom Martin, who started the BBC's YouTube channel and Luke Sharon who does,
Matt Hughes: Well.
Yeah.
Louise Brogan: Yeah.
So Luke's on a video marketing agency.
His personal YouTube is all about fitness and Marvel characters.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
Yeah.
Really fascinating.
Actually, I dunno if I've told you this 'cause you must have told me
about Tom before, but the first time I went to VidSummit in the US, the
first session I saw was Tom Martins.
And he was a British guy and I was like, Oh, there's a British guy here.
And it blew me away.
He did like a keyword thing.
I did ask him to speak at TubeFest actually, but he said he wasn't
really doing that stuff anymore.
Louise Brogan: No, he's not doing that now.
Yeah.
Matt Hughes: But it blew me away and he built like this whole
channel around a barbecue food.
And he was like, I'm going to give away this channel.
I've done all the research.
It's going to get loads of subscribers, but I don't want it.
It's just for the presentation.
But oh, that's fascinating that you were in that together.
And then of course, Luke, Luke's channel is growing massively as well, isn't it?
So
Louise Brogan: Yeah.
Yeah.
So Luke actually was in the, he does a lot of YouTube Shorts and he was in the
Shorts programme thing that they did.
I don't know the proper terminology for it, but yeah, he's made a
ton of money from his channel.
It's amazing.
Matt Hughes: Yet?
Louise Brogan: Yes.
And then they said, Louise, you should do a YouTube channel about, you know
about LinkedIn and I'm like, oh, well it turned out, Matt, that I actually had
done, I had tried YouTube previously, and I'd done some videos about Facebook
and I got an email from YouTube one day to say, your video has passed, I don't
know, like a thousand views or 2000 views.
I'm like, what video?
And I said to Tom about it, and he went, Louise, you've got a YouTube
channel and you didn't realise.
Matt Hughes: Do you know how many people I hear that they say that and
they're like, oh, let me just have a look and they log in and they're
like, oh my god, I've got 70,000 views on this video from seven years ago.
Louise Brogan: So he said, I think you could really give this a go.
So it was a pandemic.
I've got three teenagers.
They were at home and you know, people with little kids during
the pandemic had to do a lot of handholding, but when they're
teenagers, They are kind of getting on and doing their own work themselves.
So I'm like, I might as well give it a go.
Sure.
What else am I going to do locked up in the house all day?
So I started making videos and it was hilarious because I had no
idea what the heck I was doing.
And then people started to comment on it, on the videos.
And it was always, I've always come at it from how can I create a video to
answer a question on how to use LinkedIn?
And the comments I get, Matt, from people are things like, I love how
you explain that so clearly, Louise.
Lots of people say, I don't like those other videos where people are like jumping
around and waving their arms in the air.
It's just, we watch your video and you literally answer the
question that I wanted to ask.
So I started, I was getting, I was getting a buzz out of it, right?
It was fun.
And then I thought, Oh, I need to hit this 1,000 subscriber thing.
And then I need to hit this 4,000 watch hours thing.
And then I started to like get some serious traction.
And it was really funny.
I spoke at Uplift Live, which was the UK's first LinkedIn conference.
It was in 21st of March, just only a few weeks ago.
And all the other LinkedIn speakers, there's seven other speakers.
They were all like "Louise, how have you cracked this YouTube thing?"
Like, you know, they're, half of them are posting videos on YouTube
and they're getting nothing.
They're getting nowhere.
And I'm like, well, you know, maybe it's my personality.
I like to learn how to do things.
And it's still, like I said to you, Matt, it's a baby channel.
You know, I've got 10,000 subscribers, which I know is tiny, compared to
most YouTubers, but to the other people who are in my space, they
are all looking at me going, how the heck did you make that work?
Matt Hughes: Okay.
Well that's fascinating and I'll come back to that in a second.
Can we just talk about your strategy?
What?
You said you started in 2020, or you got serious about it in during lockdown.
What was, did you have a strategy?
Did you think about it strategically or did you just think I'm just
going to post some videos?
Louise Brogan: Well, I did think about it strategically.
I did think how do I, I wanted to learn how to do it properly.
I did outsource thumbnails to people on Fiverr for a while.
And then I thought, I'm sure I can do this myself.
So I think while the channel wasn't making any money, I wasn't
prepared to put any money into it.
And I did meet Austin Armstrong in San Diego when we were at
Social Media Marketing World, who is one of the other speakers.
I'm really like, I'm so excited to see the other speakers at TubeFest because I feel
like I'm gonna learn so much from them.
And he said to me, I said, you know, this is where I'm at with the channel.
It's really small, but I am getting business leads from it.
And he said, well, Louise, the channel could be your whole business.
And I'm like, I don't think so.
I don't think that's really, I don't think that's possible.
And he says, absolutely.
It could be says, you know, if you start to invest, you know, in
getting professional editing, help prevent, please don't pitch me.
Anybody watching this?
And I thought, yes.
So, you know, I can see that being the case in the future.
But right now I'm building a LinkedIn business.
and we do, and you can't focus on different things.
So the strategy for the channel turned into 'here is somewhere to send people,
who don't want to pay for our services.'
And that's genuinely, that's what I see it as, because you think about
the small business champion work that I do, a lot of those webinars I do
for the small business community.
Those are small startups.
They are what Americans call the mom and pop shops.
They don't have the money to spend to outsource their LinkedIn work, but they
want me, they want to ask me questions and I want to help them, but I don't
want to spend, you know, I don't want to say, Oh yeah, you can get on a call with
me and pick my brain for half an hour for free, you know, three times a week.
I don't really have time to do that because I have a
team and a business to run.
So instead, I thought, well, why don't I just answer all their
questions and make videos out of them?
And because I know these are the questions people have, then more people
are going to watch those videos, right?
So that's kind of been the strategy.
It's been like a resource that I can send people to.
But then about a year and a half ago, it changed it, but it changed a little
bit for me because I started getting what I call a different level of
followers on YouTube, a different, like this senior people at the big
companies, like the head of venture capital for one of the big accountancy
firms in the UK found me through YouTube.
A client found me through YouTube because he was in China and he was looking for
answers to questions about LinkedIn.
The head of security for one of the big, what do you call, it's a
gang, the Google, Apple, whatever.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
Louise Brogan: Like the head of, one of the head of their
security found me through YouTube.
And I was like, oh, this is interesting.
Somebody who was then the head of LinkedIn advertising in Dublin
found me through, you know.
So these bigger power players, I guess, in industry were starting to
connect with me and they would all say, Oh, we find you on YouTube.
And I thought, Oh, there's more to this than me just answering questions
and sending my lovely small business friends this content for free.
So I need to take this a bit more seriously.
So I'm starting to do more strategic content on the channel that is around
how to use LinkedIn company pages and how to use LinkedIn from that
larger corporation point of view.
But of course, Matt, that doesn't get as many views.
So it's like you're in a juxtaposition here because if I create lots of videos
on how to write your LinkedIn profile, how to write a LinkedIn post, how to
message someone on LinkedIn, how to post on LinkedIn, those videos get thousands
of views, but don't bring me any business.
Matt Hughes: Okay.
Louise Brogan: Whereas,
Matt Hughes: Yeah, well, look, there's so many things I've got to dig into.
Louise Brogan: Sorry, I will stop.
Matt Hughes: It's all right.
It's all right, because it's really important.
And I've been just making notes to talk about these things because I feel
like I'll talk to you for hours if I don't ask some of these questions.
I want to talk about the first thing, which is here's where to
send people who can't afford me.
That is such an abundant way of thinking, and it is so hard for a lot of people
that are not in an abundant mindset.
And I just assume everyone knows what I mean by that.
For anyone that doesn't know, your mind is in one of two places most of the time.
It's either in lack or abundance.
And if you're in lack, it's in a position where I've been
before, where I've been in debt.
And I always describe it as this cloud over me, that this financial
cloud that stops me being thinking about things in a really positive way,
because I'm always worried about money.
When you get into abundance and you don't think about that.
And I'm just talking to this from a financial point of view.
You suddenly start to see the world in a different way.
And the way you described that, here's where to send people who can't afford me.
The reason why that's abundant is because you're giving away your stuff for free.
And it's probably one of the biggest objections people have
with YouTube is like, what happens if I give away all my stuff?
Will people just not hire me?
And actually you recognise that you couldn't help those people at the lower
end, lower financially, not as people.
I want to make that clear.
So you just gave them the content and so you delivered value to them fast.
And of course, a lot of those smaller businesses, those mom and pop shops.
Some of them end up big businesses.
And so you help them in 2020 in the pandemic, when they can't open their shop.
And in two years time, when they can afford you, because things have opened
back up again, they go, I remember Louise.
Louise is the one that helped me when things were really bad for us.
Yeah,
Louise Brogan: Yeah, and I think as well, um, there's, you know, when
you, I've said to people, people say, if I'd had a sales call a week and a
half ago, Matt, with an organisation, it's quite a big organisation and
they were talking to me about LinkedIn training and doing several sessions of
LinkedIn workshops for them and their staff, you know, like from senior level
on, so there'd be multiple workshops.
So it'd be a really good contract to win.
And I just said to them, everything I will teach you, you can learn
for free on my YouTube channel.
So, you know, and that actually won me the contract because they
were like, well, it's, it shows integrity and honesty, I think.
And companies who have the budget don't want to sit and
work through YouTube videos.
They want you to come and deliver it bespoke to them.
And that's something I learned as well.
You know, Gavin, the guy in China, and I've checked with him, he's
going to be on my presentation.
He's okay with that.
You know, everything that I have talked to him about, he could sit
and do on his own, but he is busy off building this global business.
And didn't want to have to do that.
He wanted to outsource and pay for our services and he did for a year.
But he could have sat and did it all himself, but that's not his thing.
It's not that it's not his skillset cause he could have learned it.
He is just on a different level of the business.
And that's, I think, I've been in business 11 years.
And when I started out, if I think about the clients that I started working with,
they were a Pilates instructor, a local businessman who owned three kebab shops,
really fabulous, fabulous businesses.
And now I'm working with global learning and development companies,
you know, my clients turnovers are in the 7 and 8 figures.
And I think when you start out in business, if someone had said that
to me 10 years ago, I'd be like,
Matt Hughes: No way.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm gonna get a call from China to go and deliver some training.
No way.
Louise Brogan: Yeah, exactly.
It's like, what?
It's crazy.
And you learn, you know, and I have the luxury of being in business that
long that it has come incrementally and with the YouTube journey, I think I
started off thinking, could I do this?
But also Matt, you know, I'll be 50 this year and I get a real kick
out of being a woman who's going to be 50, who's a YouTuber because I
don't think we're in the majority.
Matt Hughes: Uh, I think it's a growing area is older people.
But still nothing towards what the gamers and a lot of
the younger people are doing.
That's kind of a natural area for them.
and again, I get that as an objection quite a lot as well is like, why
would I start a YouTube channel?
I'm like, I'm 40, you're almost 50.
And I think that's why I want to see us as like inspirational or
aspirational people, because we're doing it anyway, you know, like you
can sit and complain about how old you are, but actually from my perspective.
And actually from your corporate client's perspective, age brings
experience and you're, you say 11 years.
So if you're almost 50 now, you was 29.
Hold on.
That's my wrong.
39 when you started, right.
And again, in the way you described it as like, I couldn't have imagined
getting those kinds of contracts at that point, but there was someone else
that was 35, who was doing that already.
So it's just experience and the experience can be, you can have it in your twenties,
if you're fortunate enough to have made good decisions in your twenties, I was
too busy having kids and getting drunk.
Or you can get it a bit later on.
And I think that's massively important is understanding where the value is.
And actually the other thing about your clients now is they understand the
value of having the person in the room.
They know that the quick route to success is not learning by yourself.
It's a route to success if you've got no money and you can't make the
investment, you can learn anything now.
Everything is out there.
And you can just get on the ladder.
But if you're further ahead and you've got the money and the funds to invest,
you want to get the best people to give you the best strategies right now.
I need to do it now.
And I want to pay somebody to give me that shortcut to success.
So, that's what you get.
And it's great to see that that's happening.
And I love what Austin said to you as well.
I've made a note of Austin's point because Austin is a fascinating guy.
Again, when I'm
playing down our roles on YouTube that when you meet somebody like Austin.
So if anyone that doesn't know Austin Armstrong, he's got something like 6..
700,000 subscribers across every platform, pretty much.
And he's the kind of person that you meet.
Louise Brogan: So unassuming.
Matt Hughes: He's not only is he a very humble guy, he
will sit and drink with you.
Like he's a great person to hang around with.
I expect to see him in the bar at the after-party.
But he doesn't have any limiting belief about content.
And I think a lot of the time when people look at YouTube, perhaps you
experience this a little bit at the start as well, is thinking like it's
not for me, because why would I do that?
I'm the LinkedIn person.
I'm doing this thing like YouTube's not for me.
Actually, the thing you had, the benefit you had right at that point is Tom and
Luke, because they were the, they were your people that, that were through that
glass ceiling that said to you, shut up, Louise, come on, get on with it.
This is for you.
This is absolutely for you.
So you need that mentor or somebody to help you power through, right?
Louise Brogan: Yeah.
And do you know what's the funny thing about it is, when they look
at, when they look at Tom, you know, cause we're good friends.
When they look at my, the money, the rate, what's the rate
called for a thousand views?
Matt Hughes: Cost per click.
Louise Brogan: Yeah.
Like it's phenomenal compared to what they're..
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
Yeah.
Your niche is the right niche.
Louise Brogan: Because of the niche I'm in and I got a message
from, so Mark Williams is a Mr.
LinkedIn in the UK.
He has had the LinkedIn Informed podcast now called Informed
podcast for six years or something.
And he messaged me and he said, Louise, you have got the most
desirable job in the world.
It's what all the kids want.
You're a YouTuber.
Matt Hughes: Yeah, absolutely.
And
Louise Brogan: I thought it was hilarious.
Matt Hughes: The other great thing about it as well.
And another thing that people fail to recognise is right at the start, you
talked about, you know, I needed to get to that 1000 subscribers and the
watch hours and that kind of thing.
People really focus on the numbers.
And again, you talked about it, like those corporate numbers, a much lower
when you're doing the content for those corporate clients are much lower,
Louise Brogan: Oh yeah.
So much lower.
Matt Hughes: But there's two things there.
The first one is that you realise that you needed to get to 1000 subscribers,
but you know it's compounding.
Everything you do is compounding.
So as long as this channel is growing, it's not dead, it's not flat lined.
Even if it's growing by a little bit.
Over time, as you've demonstrated for years, you've got to 10,000
by being consistent across that.
Louise Brogan: Yeah.
The growth is literally just like that.
It's not, you know, cause even my husband, you know, he's like, my family are
also supportive of what I do and always have been, they don't quite get it.
And, you know, he, I said to him, the growth is going like this.
And he says, Oh, I thought it'd be like that.
I said, no, no, it's not.
It's more like that.
That curve in math and I'm not a mathematician, but it's, yeah,
the growth is just, it's very different to anything else.
Matt Hughes: Yeah, it's because of the compounding..
Louise Brogan: the way it grows..
Matt Hughes: if you look at like, okay, if you look at your LinkedIn
connections, your followers and stuff, that would do the same, it has the same
sort of growth because it's compounding.
But if you look at, I think a lot of the views and stuff on other
platforms, it tends to go up and down.
But I wanted to talk about the corporate thing, cause she said something as well,
like, and this is, we talk about vanity metrics and valuable metrics, or at least
I do, don't really like the word vanity metrics and the way you described it,
you described it in a vanity way, cause you were like, well, I do these profile
review things and they get loads of views.
And then I do the corporate strategic stuff and they get
less views, which is vanity.
But I wanted to just say, which I know, you know, so I apologise for saying
it, but you know that those videos that get less views are more valuable
to you, because you only need one corporate client for that view to be
worth 20 grand, compared to a profile review or something that it might be
a someone that joins your membership.
Have you got a membership?
Louise Brogan: No, I haven't, haven't, I haven't gone, my book, I'm writing a book
at the minute about LinkedIn and my book coach said, Louise, you need a, a smaller
level, entry level, but I haven't got one.
Matt Hughes: Well, well, even, you know, yes, you should have one.
Definitely.
Everyone should have a membership.
But those people that do the,
Louise Brogan: They don't buy anything from me.
Matt Hughes: They'll come in at a membership level, it might not be
as valuable to you in financial terms, but they're also, a lot of
those people are also big advocates.
The corporate people are not going to sing and shout about you as much, of
course, they'll recommend you, which is great, but the other ones engage with you.
They're so delighted to be around you and all that kind of good stuff as well.
Louise Brogan: Well, that very thing happened today, Matt.
So on LinkedIn today, a coach friend of mine in America, who's in, I want to
say North Carolina or Virginia, maybe.
She literally, out of the blue, I didn't ask her to, she's just posted
about people ask her about LinkedIn.
You know, does she get business from LinkedIn?
And she said, I just want to direct you all to Louise Brogan.
She's my go-to for everything LinkedIn.
She has a brilliant channel and you just go learn everything from her.
And that happens regularly now, which is wonderful.
So other people send people to it as a resource as well.
So it's not just me saying here's a free resource.
Like people in my network are also sending people there as
well, which is really cool.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
And it has so much brand equity and authority equity, actually, because if
you think about that scenario normally, and you've been in lots of events,
like I have, you meet someone, they might say, we talked about it when we
were at the airport that time, I was talking to about you, book coaching.
He was like, oh, it's this person going, follow them and chat to
them and that kind of thing.
So I would naturally go to LinkedIn and connect with them or wherever.
The difference with sending someone to a channel is this loads of
valuable content there straight away.
And what you do with that then, if I went to someone's LinkedIn profile, I
probably wouldn't go, Oh, I've got to tell loads of my friends about this.
Just send them the profile randomly.
If I went to a YouTube channel, I'd be like, Oh, this is really valuable.
Or I've learned loads in this, you know, 10 reasons why you should do this thing.
I'll share it with my friends.
So the way, the natural way of people sharing your content and therefore
adding to your compounding effect of growing your channel, it's just huge.
It's just so different to you know, tagging someone in a post as it might be.
Not that that's not valuable as well, you know.
Okay.
So I want to just, to sort of wrap this up really.
As I said, I could talk to you loads about this.
What I want to try and understand then with TubeFest, if people want to come
and see your session, are you talking about a bit of this strategy stuff?
What else are they going to get from you, Louise?
Louise Brogan: Yes.
So I'm going to cover, I'm going to tell a little bit about my story,
but how those leads actually have turned into business from YouTube.
So it's not, you know, it's the people who connect with me because they find
me on YouTube and how that has actually changed into business and the way that
has developed in a really quite an organic way, but there is strategy behind it.
But I also want to talk about, I do a lot of video on LinkedIn and I have
this Methodology, I guess, called COPE, which is how to cope with video,
because actually Matt, a lot of people are terrified of doing video and I've
seen people say, how can I do a YouTube channel and not be on the video?
And yeah, you can, of course you can.
So the COPE strategy is Create Once, Publish Everywhere and how I'm taking
the video content and kind of putting the two together because it is, my
audience is a B2B audience and how do I combine YouTube with LinkedIn?
That gets me more business as a result.
So it gets becoming a lot more strategic around that stuff.
So I'm going to talk about that as well as how, you know, the lessons I've learned,
the mistakes I've made, things I've bombed, things that, you know, advice
I've taken and ignored and advice I've taken and followed that hasn't worked.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
I think
Louise Brogan: So yeah, all of that good stuff.
Matt Hughes: Good.
And I, and I'm really excited about that and I love COPE
(Create Once, Publish Everywhere).
I've written that down as well.
I think that you've benefited definitely from having good people around you.
It's helped.
So I'm always a big advocate of that.
We've got our own community called The Creator Meetup.
We had our first virtual networking event today, which is amazing.
And I think one thing that I will say to kind of wrap up is that, I know
from spending time with you, Louise, you're so giving with your time.
And I think your YouTube channel is a testament to that.
You know, you describing it as a place where people can go and get this
content, especially if they can't afford me, it's a really core value for me.
It's like making sure that everything you do is inclusive
regardless of people's circumstances.
And it's so nice to see that actually, what's come off the back of that
is the reward of getting to 10,000 subscribers, the people come into you
time and time again, now referencing the fact that they've consumed this
content and wouldn't it be so sad, you mentioned faceless channels there.
And we do talk about that a little bit in my community, but wouldn't it have
been, would it have had as much of an impact if your face wasn't on there?
Louise Brogan: No, and you know, you can't be precious about yourself either, Matt.
You know, I'm not, I'm not a bubbly 25 year old.
Matt Hughes: I
Louise Brogan: Not anymore, but actually it lands with my clients,
you know, because they feel like I'm somebody they could work with as well.
So it works, you know, it, yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit.
I think a lot of people are like, I want to make, I want to try this.
I want to make this work.
And actually one of the things you said earlier about being a bit
older, I actually think, I'm trying to convince a couple of my family
members to consider doing this because I see it as a way to consistently
earn money, you know, even after you want to take early retirement, like,
Matt Hughes: Yeah,
Louise Brogan: you know, to me, it's a really, it's not easy, but once
you learn how to do it, it's a really nice income, extra income stream.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
And you know, it takes a while to get to that.
I mean, you know, I talk to people, there's a few unicorns I know in the
YouTube space that blow up really quickly.
But I'd never sell.
It is like, this is the route you should take.
But really the only way you're gonna get to that income stream is to start now for
your 5-year-old later journey, you know?
I watched a session.
It was Ali Abdul, do you know, Ali Abdul?
Ever come across Ali?
Louise Brogan: Is he a doctor?
Matt Hughes: Doctor turned YouTuber.
Yeah.
Louise Brogan: Yeah, I think so.
Matt Hughes: So I'm trying to get Ali on the podcast.
It will be very hard.
I tried to get him to speak at TubeFest, but it didn't work out, but hopefully
a future TubeFest we'll get him there.
I went to a thing with him and Daniel Priestley the other day and Ali
talked about the fact, I'll make it really brief, but he basically said
he spent 350,000 pounds on a house in Manchester and his yield on that.
His return for that was 10 grand a year.
So in order to get his money back, it's going to take 35 years.
Obviously there's creative ways to get your money back, but that's
one of the things, of course, it will appreciate in value and all
that kind of stuff, hopefully.
But he said one of his videos earns more than that every month.
Louise Brogan: It's not bad.
Yeah.
Matt Hughes: And his affiliate review talks about he's got a
course on skillshare and it earns him like 3 or 4 grand a month.
He was like, these digital assets that you create on this platform are just,
you know, huge in terms of income stream.
So, yeah, I don't see why anyone would not want to do it.
Louise Brogan: I, it makes me laugh because I do, I get approached by
people for affiliates for software and a lot of it is like lead gen software
for LinkedIn, which I disagree with.
So I won't take those on.
I regularly get an email from Canva, telling me that somebody
oh you've got a reward Louise and it's the reward is a free image.
I'm like, I pay for Canva anyway.
That's just rubbish.
Matt Hughes: I don't like Canva.
I started a YouTube channel with Canva.
I called it Canva Collective.
And they tried to sue me.
They said I had to, their legal team told me I had
Louise Brogan: Their affiliate programme, Matt, is rubbish.
Like, honestly, I get like one or two a week and I'm
like, just send me some money.
Matt Hughes: Yeah.
Yeah.
They used to have a great affiliate programme they just killed it.
And like I said, I started this channel.
It was a community-based channel.
It was just to advocate their products and their legal teams that
I couldn't use the word Canva in it.
Louise Brogan: oh.
Matt Hughes: Let's not do it then.
Bye.
Anyway, that's on record now on the podcast.
So sorry, Canva, but we won't be friends ever, even though I love your
product, I absolutely love the product.
Thank you so much, Louise, really appreciate your time for this.
I really, really, Louise, just so you know, everyone that Louise was
the first person I asked to speak at TubeFest, because when I was looking
for speakers, the only person I could see speaking about YouTube in such a
positive way all the time was Louise.
And so I was delighted when you said yes at the start and you immediately
said yes, there was no conversation.
You just, I assume you was like, yes,
Louise Brogan: Oh, I can't wait.
I think it's going to be so brilliant.
Can't wait.
Matt Hughes: This episode will go out about 5 or 6 weeks before two fest.
There's plenty of time to grab a ticket.
And we've got The Creator Meetup.
You can come and join us in our community as well.
So thank you so much for your time, Louise.
Looking forward to seeing you on May 23rd in Birmingham and have a
great rest of the week, alright.
Louise Brogan: You too.
Thanks
Matt Hughes: Bye bye.