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Hey friends! 🙋‍♂️

Hope you all have a great week ahead. I am writing this currently in an indoor playground, and my daughter Teddy and girlfriend are conquering the big slide at the moment. Oh, how old I feel… 👴🏻

Anyway, you all probably clicked this week’s issue because you want to hear how we did the following:

We started the YouTube channel Chris Takes Off in December 2023.

Since then, We have amassed 21.000 subscribers and over 850.000 views. Yup, in just two months. 🤓

His first upload is currently at the moment of writing, around 240.000 views.

Want to know a secret?

I (pretty much) use the same methods to grow every single time.

Let’s dive in.

The initial strategy

When Chris and I got together, we came to the conclusion that we truly wanted to do something special in the travel market. 2024 must be the year that we actually take over this niche, so we needed to start with a bold strategy.

We chose to take a format we knew did well before, and creatively spun it to fit our strategy…

Instead of going for a one-off proven concept, we went for a 14-day daily upload series.

What were the main reasons why we chose this strategy:

• 14 uploads in a row meant tons of data for the algorithm to work with

• Having 14 videos in quick succession meant we took a calculated risk to have one video do really well and waterfall views onto the other episodes

• 14 videos also meant we could truly shape a core audience within a short period of time and get the channel of to a flying start

Now if you are a beginner creator, I would not advise you to take this same route. Simply because it’s a risky strategy. If none of the videos had caught on, Chris would have spent a significant amount of time and, more importantly, money on a flopped series.

But, with our combined experience, we were confident that we could do something of significance here. As long as the following aspects were REALLY thought out well…

Thumbnails

The amount of revisions we did on thumbnails is actually sickening now that I think back on it… LOL. Chris is as tedious and particular about things as I can be, so we really went through revision after revision.

But, I also need to give a huge shoutout to Laird, the man crafting these thumbnails. There is a reason why he’s seen as one of the best.

We always look for the following three boxes to check with thumbnails:

✅ Easy to understand at a glance

✅ Complements the title and helps convey the story

✅ Gives an extra push to get the impression to convert into a click

Let’s break down each main asset in the first thumbnail we ended up with and why we chose them:

Story Structure

To ensure the episodic content kept feeling fresh and could be viewed as standalone pieces of content, we needed to have a structure that we worked within for each episode:

By using the same hook, and the same structure for every daily video we ensured that:

✅ The format became recognizable after one episode

✅ Through this structure we cultivated fans from viewers way faster than with individual weekly uploads

I do show the original hook document and give more context about it in my 0-100k views mini-course, available now for a discounted price on my Gumroad!

Currently, we are focusing on finding Chris’ style and voice through some fun concepts. If we would push, we could get the 1M+ outliers right now, but steady growth is more sustainable in the long run, especially with weekly uploads.

Chris is spending ALL his savings on this channel, and if you would like to stay updated on his progress, do follow him on X and subscribe to the channel:

This might’ve been my most in-depth newsletter to date, so I would REALLY appreciate it if you could share this with someone who might be interested. 🙋‍♂️

See you all next week!

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