#202: Zack Honarvar – What he learned from working with 10,000 creators

Zach Honarvar [00:00:00]:
We actually ran, like, an analysis to see what are some of the best indicators towards, like, the top 10 percentile of of growth. Consistency in posting was not correlated to that top 10 percentile.

Jay Clouse [00:00:11]:
Wow. Meet Zach Honevar. He got his start managing YouTubers like Yes Theory and Airrack before they were the massive channels you know them as today. Zach has worked with more than 10,000 creators since 2017, so I wanted to ask him. What separates the top 0.1% from the rest?

Zach Honarvar [00:00:29]:
There's a curiosity, like a like a relentless curiosity.

Jay Clouse [00:00:33]:
In this episode, you'll learn the traits of highly successful creators.

Zach Honarvar [00:00:37]:
It's an unhealthy amount of obsession that goes into being the biggest creator in the world.

Jay Clouse [00:00:42]:
How you should measure growth?

Zach Honarvar [00:00:43]:
With Yes Theory, we used to say, what's our golden metric? Is it views? Is it revenue? Is it whatever? None of those matter.

Jay Clouse [00:00:50]:
And how to set yourself up for long term success?

Zach Honarvar [00:00:53]:
You really don't know how long, you know, the thing that you're doing will work for. Optimizing for money and chasing that is not, in my opinion, a very good metric of success. It also leaves you feeling very empty and it's a hamster wheel that never ends.

Jay Clouse [00:01:09]:
Thank you to Artlist for sponsoring this video. How many people have you seen go through Creator now at this point? Estimated.

Zach Honarvar [00:01:16]:
Approximately 10,000. Wow. In total.

Jay Clouse [00:01:21]:
Do you ever have anybody come in to Creator Now and you just have, like, an immediate feeling that this person has it.

Zach Honarvar [00:01:28]:
Yeah. Actually, you interviewed one of them. Jenny Hoyos came in to Creator Now with essentially 0 followers and, like, no subscribers, barely had made videos. And she was on every single call, in every single workshop. And we were like, how do you don't you go to school? Like, what are you doing? And she was like, you know, I've I've like accelerated through school and like, I wanna do this thing now. And she was just asking such smart questions and she was just so bright. And I was like, I remember telling her, I was like, I would buy stock in you if I could buy stock in you. And lo and behold, you know, now she's crushing it and she's like the shorts wizard for everyone.

Zach Honarvar [00:02:04]:
And so, that was one person. There's been a few, but, you know, she's, you know, because it's related to your channel and you've done a great interview with her. That's the one that comes to mind.

Jay Clouse [00:02:13]:
I wanna dig into that. So whether it's her or some of the other people that come to mind, I'd love to hear what is it about these people that sends a signal where you having seen now 1,000, 10000 different creators try this stuff. You have some sort of feeling that this person has it. I would love to explore what that might be.

Zach Honarvar [00:02:34]:
I think one of the things and Jenny definitely had this, but a lot of people do, even Iraq did. And it was one of the reasons I really wanted to work with him was there's a curiosity, like a relentless curiosity of, what could I get better at? What is missing from this content? What do, what are people looking for? How does attention work? How does, how does attention, get captured, and how do you earn trust? What does that even mean with a stranger that doesn't know who I am? The that is not just about, you know, some hack or some, like, trick in an editing room. It's almost an energetic thing that someone starts to understand, in a very deep way. And I think people who have that curiosity and understand that it's not a shortcut, and it's not just in something that happens in a cap cut template, but that it's a almost a lifelong thing that you're trying to uncover. And it has a deeper meaning for them as well. It's not just about how to get views, but about how to also, you know, make content that that fulfill something for them, but also then connects with someone at the end of this screen on the other side of the camera. I think people who understand that it's a more holistic, thing, that tends to be a big alarm bell for me that, like, this person knows what's going on.

Jay Clouse [00:03:57]:
I love this answer because you you start with the word curiosity, and then you mentioned a whole bunch of skills about, you know, things that are involved in creating videos and building an audience and publishing. But you didn't say, oh, they're great video editors. They already are great at building trust. They know exactly what people want. You're saying they have a desire and they have curiosity and they indulge that curiosity and figure things out, which I think is really empowering because that means that anybody watching this, if you do have the curiosity, you can learn the things that you need. It's not that you have a prerequisite set of skills. It's you have, like, a temperament, it sounds like.

Zach Honarvar [00:04:33]:
Yeah. 100%. I would say Eric is a great example of this. Like, Eric, you know, originally, when I met him, he was editing his own videos. He's filming his own videos. He was not the best editor in the world. He's not the best filmer in the world. But he had a temperament and an and a curiosity that and and a desire to learn that I think was unmatched, connected with a willingness to put in the work to incrementally improve based on the feedback loop that he was getting.

Zach Honarvar [00:05:01]:
Because I think that's the other part of it is you can be very curious. You could ask a lot of questions. You can hear a lot of information, but if you're not willing to put in the work or also put your ego aside to sometimes, you know, experiment or, you know, try a video out differently than it was before with leaving space for failure, because that might be an outcome from something that is an experimentation. A lot of people, you know, I think subscribe to like the I'm going to put out and we're also we do this a lot. We tell creators, you know, put out a video every single week and just stay consistent. And then a lot of creators fall into this this habit of, I'm just gonna make the exact same video every single week. And then they get to, like, 20, 30 videos in a row every week, and they're like, why am I not getting better? Why are they all getting 500 views? And it's because they're they're also not listening to the feedback or implementing that feedback because they're worried that it's gonna actually go down. And whether it's, you know, you're used to 500 views or 5000 or 50,000 or 500,000, the the room for experimentation might mean that you take a few steps back in order to take a lot of steps forward.

Zach Honarvar [00:06:09]:
And so I think that also that ability to be okay with failure and not worry about what other people are gonna say about you because your videos are not performing as well as they used to, whatever your baseline of expectation is, that's also a huge scale that falls within that emotional intelligence.

Jay Clouse [00:06:24]:
I see so much of the same tried advice of people saying you have to be consistent. You have to just publish consistently over and over again. And, like, there's truth to that, but it fails to hit some of the nuance of what you're saying which is improvement matters a lot. A lot of times when people say, well, I was successful because I was consistent. They're underplaying or understating the value of this implicit thing, which was not only was I consistent, but I was consistently getting better. I was really focused on the next one had to be a little bit better in this way or had to try something a little bit differently because you're right. If you just focus on publishing the same thing or the same quality thing over and over again you're gonna get the same results And this this this focus on improvement is something that I would have guessed you would have said, hey, the people that we see come through that are succeeding, that is an element. I'm glad that it's come up already.

Zach Honarvar [00:07:16]:
Also, you know, of of the 10,000 creators that we had that came through CreatorNow, at the end of last year, we actually ran, like, an analysis to see what are some of the best indicators towards, like, the top 10 percentile of of growth, in subscribers and viewership. And and, actually, we were surprised because consistency in posting was not correlated to that top 10 percentile. And we have for a long time, you know, said the thing you need to do if you wanna become a creator is you need to post weekly videos, and that's the thing. And although I think it there's probably a little bit of, like, indication that a lot of people need to stop overthinking it and just get into the motion of making videos, That by itself is not the thing that's caused aided towards success into growth. That's just the prerequisite to be getting the feedback loop and the information that you need in order to then implement the changes to then grow and succeed. And so I think, you know, people just took that initial thing is at face value or sometimes took that initial thing at face value. I think we were guilty of it and then realized later on, wait a second, that's not that's not the only thing.

Jay Clouse [00:08:21]:
Let me double click on that because I wanna really dig into this and get into the weeds here, but I feel like it's really important to say. If you are unable or have not yet exhibited the ability to publish on command, that is like the most important prerequisite thing. If you can't get yourself to publish and put stuff out there, that's like the mountain decline. But once you get to a point of like, I can publish and I can be consistent that is kind of effortless. I agree with you that especially on YouTube, but I think this is gonna be true across any platform. We're moving into a period of time when consistency of publishing matters less than consistency of experience. I wanted to know that when I engage with a piece of content you've created, I consistently have a good experience with it. I don't actually care how often you publish as long as when you do and I engage with it, I am rewarded by having a consistently good experience.

Jay Clouse [00:09:17]:
There is this there's this guy, Paul Saffo, who gave this really great lecture to a place called the Long Now Foundation. You heard of the Long Now Foundation? I have it. It's super interesting. It's this group that is all about long term thinking. They've put, like, this giant clock up in the mountains to show you, like, how important long term, thinking is. But they're all futurists. And he gave a talk in, I think, like, 2017 about the creator economy. And he was talking about the evolution of industries and how every time there is a, abundance of something new, it creates a new adjacent scarcity.

Jay Clouse [00:09:54]:
I have a point. I promise. So for a long time, the ability to publish a lot and be on multiple platforms, that was a hard thing to do. There are few people that were doing that that was scarce. And now with the tools that are out there, it's getting easier and easier to publish a volume of things. So what does the new adjacent scarcity to volume look like? And I think it's quality. I think it's super high quality, really thoughtful, incredible experiences. And that's what we're gonna move to is more people saying, you know what? I'm gonna publish when it makes sense to publish and my audience can have a good experience.

Zach Honarvar [00:10:29]:
I fully agree with that. There's another example that comes to mind is, there's a short form creator that I've been a huge fan of recently. The channel's called Buy Maximize. He makes these, like, video essay kinda, like, uses sound bites from various interviews and then puts these, like, really beautiful cinematic shots over them. But one of the things he does is he plays around with subtitles. So subtitles will go around some of the framing in the shots. They will pop up in screen in different sizes, And he's obviously done that manually. And it was fascinating to me that in a world when everyone hated subtitling and everyone was like, this is the least enjoyable process of any video editing process.

Zach Honarvar [00:11:09]:
And, then, you know, all this auto captioning functionality came out and everyone was like, this saves us. And everyone moved to just auto captioning. Everything kinda looked the same. There were these cap cut templates that everything followed. And he went the other direction and said, I'm not I'm not gonna use those. I'm actually gonna do them manually and make it very evident that this is manual. And it's like it'll be part of the video process, a part of what makes the video special. And I think that's been a large part of why his videos have been so different.

Zach Honarvar [00:11:38]:
They capturing, like, of attention is because they don't look like everything else. So I agree. I think in in a world where something does become easy and abundant, there's always room in whatever was left over for that thing to become premium. Also, if you extrapolate in any world in which something became common technology, like now what we're seeing with AI, for example, when horse and carriages were, the main port of transportation and then cars were invented, Horses and carriages became a luxury thing that people did. Not the masses. Handwoven clothes were like the thing. And then when machinery came around to, like, machine make clothing, handmade clothes became a delicacy and something that only rich people have. So I think we'll see the same with AI.

Zach Honarvar [00:12:23]:
I think, you know, when our ability for capturing drone footage of a mountain landscape is gonna be something that we don't need a drone to capture anymore because AI will create it. But then there will be a premium on films and content that say, we actually went here. This is real. And I think that will become a whole new part of content and videography and cinematography, because of what we're seeing in these technological advancements in AI.

Jay Clouse [00:12:51]:
Totally. I had this guy named Phil Agnew on the show, and he digs into, like, psychological biases. And this is called costly signaling. When you can signal that you did something that came at a high cost of money or effort, people value that more highly. So all the stuff that is making things cheaper, more accessible, If you use that as a way to say, actually, I'm gonna do the more costly version of that and make it clear that I'm doing the more costly version, that stands out. And so much of this game is standing out. Like, how how do you stand out amongst the sea of people creating videos? Is that a trend that you see people who reach the the heights on YouTube they're good at doing?

Zach Honarvar [00:13:34]:
Yeah. I remember in some early conversations with Eric, you you know, one of the things that he said that's always stuck with me is a lot of people try starting YouTube and then, looking at someone that's doing really well and then trying to make a version of a video that kind of aspires to be that person who's succeeding. And I think that's a great place for, like, very early beginners to start, but people who are at a place where they have skills and they've been doing it for a while and they're really ready to, like, start breaking out or that's a huge ambition of theirs. You can't just do a b tier version of what another creator is doing. You almost have to ask what are other people not willing to do or uncapable of doing that I can do and have resources around me that give me an unfair advantage of doing this. I remember Eric saying, you know, I can't spend more money than mister beast. There's no way I can do that. So my videos can't at the very beginning be that, you know, they can't be this.

Zach Honarvar [00:14:26]:
They can't be that. What they can be is I can do things people aren't willing to do. There's probably not a lot of people willing to go and sneak into this event, or there's probably not a lot of people willing to endure this crazy challenge of, like, skateboarding across Florida and and capturing that. And because of that, I can endure. I know that that's something unique about me. And so I'm gonna go do those things. And I think finding whatever it is about you, whether it's your knowledge, if you have a potential a particular skill set or knowledge set, whether it's where you live, or, you know, the that you live inside of a Venn diagram in the middle of a Venn diagram between a bunch of different industries that is very rare for people to live, at the intersection of and you can share a unique perspective in a way that many other people can't. I think it's those types of things that, help creators really stand out.

Zach Honarvar [00:15:14]:
But, yes, I do think the desire to figure out how do I create something different, that other people can't potentially compete with me on on a fair playing ground, is what lets people, you know, achieve, success in a in a rapid short time span.

Jay Clouse [00:15:30]:
I've heard somebody say, there are no world famous cover bands. You know, it's like, you could be a great cover band. You can make you can you can be very entertaining and it can be great but it's not the same as doing originals and like your cover of the song probably isn't gonna be as good as the original. I mean, I love Luke Combs's Fast Car, but come on. It's like this is Trace Chap Trace Chapman. This is this is the stuff. After a quick break, Zach and I talk about work ethic and ambition. So stick around.

Jay Clouse [00:16:00]:
We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Zach Hanover. I wanna hear a little bit about work ethic because we just talked about like maybe it's not important to publish a new video every week, But I doubt that means that you're sitting around and you just make something a couple days out of the month. The people that you've seen find extraordinary success. What does their work ethic tend to look like?

Zach Honarvar [00:16:26]:
I mean, yeah. I think work ethic is is everything based on what your goals are. And I think where it comes from is not necessarily work ethic, but your willingness to sacrifice things in your life. Because I think it's not just about the time spent working, but also based on how large your goals are, you will likely need to sacrifice certain things in your life in order to even have a chance at achieving the things you say you're going to achieve. So, you know, I'll chat with people that are creators that sometimes are like, I wanna be the biggest creator in the world. Okay? And I'll be like, you know, are you what do you do on your weekends? And like, yeah, but I also, you know, wanna have a 6 pack of abs. I also want to, you know, spend all this time with my family. I also wanna have, like, 10 kit.

Zach Honarvar [00:17:14]:
You know what I mean? Like and there's not to say that sometimes you can't have certain things in combination, but anyone you'll I mean, I've there's a 1,000,000 interviews with MrBeast that say exactly this, which is it's an unhealthy amount of obsession that goes into being the biggest creator in the world. And the things that someone like Jimmy being the biggest creator in the world have had to sacrifice in order to get there, social life, you know, mental health, his level of anonymity of being able to go outside and have a normal, you know, social life or even just life in general is what he's had to give up. And so I often remind creators that whenever you say you want something or just people in general, whenever you say you want something and you have a goal, you have to not only be willing to put in the work to achieve it, but you also have to be willing to say, what am I giving up in my life in order to be able to have this? And so does that mean that I don't have as much of a social life? Does that mean that I can't afford to have an 8 hour job that has nothing to do with making content? I think that's another thing that creators are like, hey. I wanna, you know, I wanna become a full time creator, and I wanna make videos that are at this level. Okay. Well, what do you do from 9 to 5? Well, I work as a waiter. Okay. Well, that's not bad because you gotta pay the bills and content isn't doing that.

Zach Honarvar [00:18:27]:
But what if you had a job that made you a better editor? What if you had a job that worked with a creator and did production where you actually were building a muscle that helps you in that thing? Because the chances of you being able to become the creative level videos that you're telling me you wanna make from the hours of 9 to 5 or 5 to 9 is really, is really low because the other 9 hours of your day, you're trading your time for money. And so I think people, we're in such like a workaholic, romanticizing, economy where we go like, oh, you gotta grind and you just gotta work, but I don't think people should think about it that way. I think people should just think about what is the lifestyle that I need to have and what are the things I need to sacrifice within this lifestyle in order to make space for the work that is needed in order to get to where I wanna get to.

Jay Clouse [00:19:13]:
This has only become clear to me in the last few years. Like, as my platform has grown as I found more success, I get closer to the people that I've modeled after and aspire to for a long time. And it becomes so obvious the trade offs and sacrifices that they make. And you are confronted with the question, am I willing to make the same trade offs and sacrifices? And more times than not, for me personally, the answer has been no. And then you have to reckon with that and say, well, what does that mean for my ambition? Like, what does that mean for my expectations of growth or speed or outcomes? It's kind of a trippy thing. But, you know, I would encourage anyone watching this who is modeling after somebody else. Try to get a full sense of what are the sacrifices and trade offs they're making, you know? And it comes up in conversations and interviews, which I really like sometimes as you really get to hear some clues as to, like, what aspects of your social life or relationships do you not have that I have that I would not be willing to give up I think it's actually a healthy exercise but I agree with you that work ethic whether you let it take over your entire life or not seems to be a common denominator across people who have extraordinary success. They are working a lot.

Jay Clouse [00:20:36]:
And balance balance is not very prevalent in the people that are really at the top end, I find.

Zach Honarvar [00:20:43]:
I will say this too, though, is that it's not just work ethic, but what to work on. I think there's a lot of people that also work on things that they are comfortable working on and then avoid the few things that they know if they spent time on would make the highest ROI difference. But because it's uncomfortable or they suck at it, they avoid it. And then they're like, but I'm working 10 hour days or I'm working all this time, but it's on things that they know are not pushing the needle forward. It's like, I think it's, I forget his name, Chris something. It says the the the the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. I really think that that quote is true in the sense that most people know the thing that's holding them back, but because it's so uncomfortable, they avoid that work. And so it's not just about work ethic, but working smart on the things that you know are gonna push and propel you forward.

Jay Clouse [00:21:35]:
Let's talk about personality a little bit. I think this certainly plays through in in video and probably in other platforms too. But taking YouTube as an example, a lot of people we get comments on some of our videos of people who have been successful and people be like, ah, it's because they're attractive. It's because they have a great personality. And I wonder how big of a role that plays and whether that is something that can be developed or overcome.

Zach Honarvar [00:22:00]:
It's a great question. Kate, who's my my cofounder and business partner and has worked with me for a lot of years, she often describes, you know, we meet certain creators or certain artists, and she says that person's got that sparkle. And I do think that that is something inherent that people have And you just spend around spend time around them and you're like, this person's energy is different. There's something drawing me towards this person. And I don't know how much of that is nature or nurture or their own work ethic. I do think that there's something within people that make them that make people gravitate towards them in, unique ways. So I do think that personality matters a ton. And I don't think that people or creators should spend a ton of time trying to change their personality to be more of what they think works on YouTube or in other social platforms.

Zach Honarvar [00:22:54]:
I think actually one of the super powers that you could have or I think what makes some of those people actually have that sparkle is being really aware of who I actually am and being so comfortable showing that, not only showing that to people in real life, but showing that on camera and not being performative that the person on the under other end of the screen can't help but feel like they relate to someone, you know, or relate to that person that they're seeing. I think the person who has this, and I almost think it's potentially, like, out of their control at this point is Emma Chamberlain. Like, I think Emma Chamberlain is probably so crazily herself on screen that that's what's led to her being able to achieve what she's achieved because she is incredibly vulnerable. She's incredibly herself. And I think she's gotten so comfortable being in front of a camera without actually it feeling like a camera's on her, that, she's able to have a level of intimacy and emotional connection with the viewer on the other side that is really, really challenging. Anyone knows who's tried this, tried to turn on a camera and pointed at them, something in you changes. And there's a level of comfortability that you have to have with that camera and speaking to a lens as if it was a friend, that is a skill that is developed. And I think you get more comfortable over time.

Zach Honarvar [00:24:15]:
But I think the the thing that I see a lot of creators fall into is they perform. The camera turns on and they'll, like, throw on their Mr. Beast voice and they, like, make themselves animated because they think that's what needs to happen. And I don't think that that's the case. I think you will achieve far more success figuring out how do I let my true authentic personality shine through also over the long term, that authentic true personality will be a lot more sustainable to uphold rather than you feeling like every time a camera turns on, you need to wear this mask and be this character.

Jay Clouse [00:24:45]:
What happens over time if you change as a person? Do you build this relationship with your audience where you're authentic no matter how your interests and personality changes? Or I've heard some people say they get to a point where it almost feels like now they're playing a caricature of their self because the thing that got attention is no longer who they are today. And they feel this tension of, do I need to maintain that version of me for the camera?

Zach Honarvar [00:25:13]:
Yeah. It's a great question. Jay, you're a fucking great podcast host. You're absolutely right. There's a lot of big creators that I know or I've met and had a chance to chat with about this where they're like, you know, people expect this or the worst thing, you know, people will come up to you on the street if you're authentically yourself, then you're setting the wrong expectation, and then you will have authentically yourself, then you're setting the wrong expectation, and then you will have to wear this mask and play this caricature. I think the only way to have a sustainable career as a creator is to evolve as your personality evolves. I think, you know, and the example that comes to mind is Logan Paul. You know, Logan Paul is not the same personality on camera today as he was when he first started.

Zach Honarvar [00:26:01]:
He has allowed himself to mature, and it's been one of the main reasons why he's been able to have the longevity as a creator that has grown up with his audience. And he's been able to show I'm not still doing those same pranks. I'm not still doing these same types of vlogs. I'm talking about more serious stuff on a podcast. The format's changed and it's allowed for the format of my content to mature with me and with my own mindset. And I think that that's, the right way to do it in order to have a long career.

Jay Clouse [00:26:30]:
Also talk about work ethic. That guy is incredible as a wrestler. I'm, like, low key a wrestling fan, and he is so good and got so good so quickly. And that only comes from working super hard

Zach Honarvar [00:26:41]:
in the gym 100 percent

Jay Clouse [00:26:43]:
I would love to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and say what are what are some of the red flags you hear from creators who come in and say, I'm gonna be a huge success and this means a lot to me. What are some of the signals that you see that maybe this person isn't cut out for this? Or I think this person is prioritizing the wrong things.

Zach Honarvar [00:27:03]:
If your actions don't back up your words, often that is the biggest sign for me that, like, I I choose to, like, you know, and and when I'm evaluating if I'm gonna collaborate with a creator or something like that, the if we, like, spend time, we have a meeting, it's like 1 or 2 hours. It's like, great. A lot of energy. That's a great idea. This is a great idea. Yeah. I should stay consistent. Yeah.

Zach Honarvar [00:27:25]:
I should work on this project and just, like, you know, stop overthinking it and just get started, and then nothing happens. That's usually a a really bad sign where and then usually that's followed with, like, a bunch of excuses. But, you know, I I thought about it more, and I didn't think that, like, that worked. And so it's almost a, you know, a lack of the work ethic and a lack of following through on on commitments that you have. Yeah. I do think another thing that comes to mind is just, perfectionism. A lot of times the excuses on that side are like, oh, it's not good enough. I'm not sure.

Zach Honarvar [00:27:57]:
The idea is not strong enough. The format's not strong enough. And I often think that perfectionism is just masked insecurity. We think that everything needs to be perfect because we're afraid of being less than when something is published or for people judging us or or, you know, failing. And I think that that's, also, you know, people hide behind this perfectionism mask, or like shield. But at the end of the day, I think people need to be okay failing. So if failure is holding you back, I think that's one of the main reasons I see it not work out for people.

Jay Clouse [00:28:29]:
I see that all the time too. And there is no perfect. You can't make anything perfect. Even the stuff that I, in the moment, thought this is incredible. The best thing I could make, 6 months pass, and I look back at it, and I say that was trash. But I can only feel that way because I published, learned from it, and got better. Like, there is there is no better teacher than feedback on something you actually published. So I 100% agree about perfectionism being a problem.

Zach Honarvar [00:28:56]:
That's a really good point too is it's all about how you feel. Also, people, I think, connect themselves with the outcome of the video in terms of viewership or other metrics like that, and that's completely out of your hands. You ask, you know, I would say 8 out of 10 creators what the most viewed video on their channel is, and I bet you they had no idea it was gonna be that video. And every creator that I've spoken to has the opposite story as well, where they're like, this is gonna be a banger, and then it does not perform. And so does that mean that that video wasn't good? I think we need to disconnect ourselves from the output. And we often talk about inside of Creator Now having a checklist that you go through before you click publish that reflects on did I put in what I felt was required in order to make this the best video it could be? Do I feel proud of myself for the inputs that are under my control? And if you can reflect on that before you hit the publish button and you feel proud of it, then the rest of it is completely out of your hands and you need to be able to disconnect yourself from how it performs or what views it gets or what the comment section say, or else you'll never be happy. And so I think that, you know, you if you are about to click publish and you're like, I could have made this edit better or I took a shortcut and let AI write my script and I shouldn't have done that. Like, we all have those thoughts.

Zach Honarvar [00:30:10]:
We know. And so that is indication that it's not as good as it could be. But it's not because it didn't get views. It's not because it didn't perform.

Jay Clouse [00:30:17]:
I think a lot of people getting into this, they think success is views. They think success is subscribers watch time. But I'm curious from you, and we talked about this a little bit before we started recording. Where do you see the most successful creators focusing in terms of goals? Like, what are they trying to optimize for? Is it views, or is it something else?

Zach Honarvar [00:30:39]:
I think everyone has their own definition of success, and that's what makes life beautiful. I think that one of the most important things that I try to advocate for with the creators that I work with is a sense of peace, fulfillment, and happiness in their day to day lives. And so, you know, having, money is something that is a byproduct of adding value to a lot of people's lives. And so I think that sometimes is a consequence of of, you know, having impact, providing value, solving problems. And and that can be, you know, you provide a little bit of entertainment to lots of millions of people. If you can do that really, really well, you'll make a lot of money. But optimizing for money and chasing that is not, in my opinion, a very good metric of success. Also leaves you feeling very empty and it's a hamster wheel that never ends.

Zach Honarvar [00:31:30]:
On the other side, I think, you know, the optimization or the the pursuit of, can I become the best storyteller I can be? And, trying to master a craft often becomes a lifelong journey for someone, but also provides fulfillment on an incremental basis because it's something that they're working on getting better at, and they're seeing the fruits of, their improvement. And I also think that that ends up becoming a very fulfilling experience because it's not about, you know, achieving an outcome that you're chasing so that you can be happy. It's a day in and day out pursuit of getting better at a certain thing, whether that's storytelling or editing, or creating entertaining content that, you know, whatever that is, I think that that also allows you to not play a game where you're comparing yourself with other people or attaching to these external validations. The other thing is like, if you if you make the goal of I'm gonna be the biggest creator in the world, well, then what happens if you do become the biggest creator in the world? You lose all motivation. You stop. I can guarantee you that, you know, both for mister beast or even for, like, the best basketball player in the world, LeBron James. If his goal was like, I'm gonna be the best basketball player in the world, he would have retired by now. He would have stopped a long time ago or, like, kind of lost motivation, but it's what is the best basketball player I can become ever? And whether you lose a game or whether you win a game stops mattering as much because it's about you and how much better you can get.

Zach Honarvar [00:32:53]:
And so, anyway, I think that that's the that's the thing that I've seen or I try to advocate for as much as I can within creators that I think will leave them at the end of the day feeling as happy as possible.

Jay Clouse [00:33:03]:
Sometimes with these goals too, to use your, like, best basketball player in the world example, If you actually play that forward and say, if I did achieve that goal, what else would be true? And is that what I want? You know, use the example of of mister Beast can barely live a normal life and leave the house. And some people might say that's absolutely not worth it to me, in which case this goal doesn't actually align then with with what you want for your life. And I I think the the question of if this goes as well as it could, am I happy with the outcome? Is a worthwhile, like, question to ask sometimes.

Zach Honarvar [00:33:37]:
Yeah. Thomas, from Yes Theory was on a podcast, and I saw a clip where he said, it's really easy to look at bigger creators and say, wow, that success is shiny. I really want that. But, yeah, you forget to also think, you know, do I wanna also not be able to go into a mall anymore? Do I wanna also, you know, worry about the security and safety of my children or worry about stalkers and all this type of stuff? And then he goes, no. I think Instagram and social media platforms have really only shown us the sexy part in people's lives, and so we romanticize the success. But, you know, Instagram doesn't have another feed that shows us all the shit that's going on in people's lives too that they're, like, worried about or stressed about. And so, like, you know, just a reminder, mister Beast goes through a lot of shit, a lot of stalkers, a lot of stuff, lawsuits, crazy stuff. I don't you know, like, all famous people do because that's the byproduct of getting to that level.

Zach Honarvar [00:34:29]:
And, yes, it's really hard to know because no one prepares you for that. No one sits you down, when you're you're starting to grow and starting to achieve success and says, like, this is where this is heading. And so I I think more people should talk about it. I think it is important.

Jay Clouse [00:34:42]:
After one last quick break, Zach and I talk about the definition of success, and we get really tactical on growing a little bit faster. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Zach Hanover. Something else you and I agree on. The the way we define success, if we were to look at views as the metric that we care about, that implicitly says that all views are equal to me. But I would argue that views from returning viewers, views from your loyal viewers, people who really love the channel are more valuable than views from someone who's meeting you from the first time. Coming from a world where I focused mostly on email and knowing that, hey, when do purchases happen? It happens from somebody who's been reading my emails for weeks, months, years, and has been following this stuff.

Jay Clouse [00:35:36]:
It's inherently a more valuable relationship. I think people on YouTube are starting to sense this too. But what what are you seeing?

Zach Honarvar [00:35:44]:
Very well put also with the returning to new viewer because so much of, I think, YouTube optimization and YouTube gurus have emphasized the, like, look at your retention graph and see what your new user retention is and focus on the new user in the top of funnel, top of funnel, top of funnel. And it's like growth and impression mindset. But, yes, exactly. I think that over the last little bit, we've seen a lot of creators grow in the top of funnel metrics such as views or subscribers, but then not have the connection with an audience that feels loyal to them or feels connected to them or feels part of a community that's larger than just the channel. That also leads to other things that the creator has tried to do, such as, like, launch products or launch businesses or do things of that nature. And not every creator needs to do that. I do think that that's a personal choice that a creator makes in terms of, like, what is the type of channel I wanna have? What's the type of creator I wanna be? What's the type of business model, you know, that I wanna operate under? You don't necessarily need to launch a business just because you're a creator, just because other creators are doing it. But I think that we're also in a time where creators are realizing there's new platforms starting up all the time.

Zach Honarvar [00:36:48]:
There's new features that these platforms are releasing. They're making algorithm changes. You really don't know how long, you know, the thing that you're doing will work for. And the only thing that you can, do to try to create some sort of longevity for yourself and create, you know, like de risk yourself to some of the potential changes that might occur is to build a connection with the people who are watching you so that it doesn't matter what happens to these platforms or it doesn't matter if a new platform pops up because people are a fan of you. And that's not because some algorithm happens to put your content in front of them at a specific time, or in a specific way or because if you added a shiny specific topic, but because they like you and they or the the thing that you stand for and that you provide. And so, I think that creators often don't optimize for connection because it's hard to measure. It's hard to know if someone at the other end of the screen feels something because you don't see it in a number, on your YouTube studio dashboard. So we just end up optimizing for things like watch time or retention or viewership.

Zach Honarvar [00:37:58]:
But, I do think that more people should be aware of how they can measure that, and then try to create proxies in order to do that. I'll give you an example, you know, with yes theory, we used to say, what's our golden metric? And we would be like, is it views? Is it revenue? Is it whatever? And, we didn't try we were like, none of those matter. The golden metric for us is how many people can we get to take a certain action, and that action could be purchasing something. That action could be subscribing and giving their email. It had to be deeper than just a like, it's not just engagement. It's an action that's beyond YouTube. And so that was the metric for us is is if people are taking action or they're going through a piece of friction that takes them off of this platform, pretty good indication to us that they care and they're not passive. And so, you know, we try to create our own proxy to do that, and I think more creators should try to figure out what that is for themselves.

Zach Honarvar [00:38:53]:
Well, I'd

Jay Clouse [00:38:53]:
love to get I'd love to get a little tactical here and say I have several 100, maybe even several 1000 subscribers, but growth feels slow. What should I do to start to increase that a little bit faster?

Zach Honarvar [00:39:08]:
I think it's hard to give general advice in that scenario because so much of that, the thing that might work for you is very case dependent on how your videos are doing. I would say the best thing you could probably do is find a group of creators that are around your skill level subscriber count, potentially even in your niche, ideally, just slightly above, and ask them to roast your videos and ask them for specific feedback on what you could do better. I often talk to a lot of creators who have, let's say, somewhere between 5 1,000 to 50000 subscribers. And they're like, I'm ready to start a business or like, I'm ready for what's next or I wanna launch a podcast or I wanna launch a second channel. And I encourage all those people to not do those things and not take your attention away from the thing that is finally starting to gain a little bit of momentum and just double down. If there's anything you should do, it's double down. Same thing with brand deals. People message me and they go, oh, I'm at 10,000.

Zach Honarvar [00:40:04]:
Can I start, you know, spending a bunch of my time reaching out to 100 of brands? No. Don't do that because you're finally starting to build momentum and connection with an audience and integrating a brand, especially one that, you know, you don't actually use or trust just so that you can get a couple dollars will erode the trust that you're starting to develop with the the audience and also will take away a bunch of time that you could have been spending making your videos better on, like, sending millions of cold emails or, like, trying to be in that coordination process. So I would say, don't do those things. And instead, just find people that can give you the advice that you're looking for, And that's not gonna be blanket advice. It's gonna be from people who are down to spend time watching your videos, are knowledgeable about YouTube and digital content. And so I think that having that brain trust, that's, I think what we try to create within Creator Now is can you meet those people and, get actionable advice that you can then go implement to get to that next stage of your career?

Jay Clouse [00:40:58]:
Distraction and diversifying your attention and effort seems to be one of the biggest pitfalls that I notice in in folks that are otherwise pretty well set up for success because you get to this point where the velocity of what feels like an opportunity quote unquote to you increases and there are things that you couldn't imagine having 3 months ago, 6 months ago. So it's really hard to say no to those things. But it sounds like you're saying that distraction might be one of the biggest risks to the thing that you want, which is growth, success, improvement on the channel.

Zach Honarvar [00:41:35]:
Yeah. I'll give Eric credit here again too. He does this really well. He's always done this really well. Like, he'd be, you know, on a tear being one of the fastest channels growing at, you know, for a long time, and, he would get invited to all these parties, and he'd get invited to all these, like, cool Hollywood events. And he would always be like, nah. I don't wanna go. He's he's like, the only reason I'm getting invited to those is because I'm doing well on YouTube.

Zach Honarvar [00:41:54]:
And if I go to those events, I'll stop doing well on YouTube. And so the biggest thing I can do is just keep trying to do well on YouTube. And so that those are just an indication that it's working. And, you know, that's if I if I indulge in that too much, it's taking away from the thing that got me there in the first place. And so I think that was a really refreshing mindset, and I admire him for being able to to stay within that when all the shiny stuff was getting thrown at him.

Jay Clouse [00:42:17]:
Is there anything that you have a hunch about, something you believe to be true, but you don't necessarily have data to support, but it's impacting the creators you work with or the work that you're doing because you just really believe this is true.

Zach Honarvar [00:42:31]:
And Jay, you've gotten questions. They're so good. It's amazing.

Jay Clouse [00:42:35]:
It's a fun question.

Zach Honarvar [00:42:36]:
It's a great question. Do I have a hunch about something? I think that we're on the verge of it. There's a huge white space for social networks to come back. I don't know if this is huge for the creator economy, but our I don't know if anyone's noticed, but what started as facial social networks so that we can connect with our friends have turned into entertainment platforms. And all of the platforms that used to be about us having a better relationship with people that we go to school with or work with or, you know, care about in our lives, our families, has just turned into algorithmic feeds of strangers making content that we can watch, and Instagram, Facebook, YouTube look a lot more like Netflix than the original social networks that they were promised to us to be. And I think that we're on the verge of a huge white space for more consumer applications to come out that actually give us a place to meet and connect with friends, in a way that's not about getting massive amounts of impressions or viewership, but more about, like, actual real connection with the people that we wanna actually follow in real life. And so what that means for the creator economy, I'm not a 100% sure, but I do think it will fundamentally change the way that we interact with the social media platforms that will almost start to just be called entertainment platforms in the same way we think of Netflix.

Jay Clouse [00:43:46]:
Do you think that there's less opportunity for new creators starting today?

Zach Honarvar [00:43:49]:
No, I think there's there's equal, if not more opportunity, especially with the ease of tools that can teach you. I think shorts was one of the greatest things that could happen for video creators because it just took the bar of entry so much lower. The feedback loop grew so much quicker, because you could create something and not have to, like, put in a month of work to be able to know if it sucked or not. And it always does suck when you start. So it just got the the feedback loop quickened. So I think it's a great time still to become a creator. I think it will only be continue to be a greater time to become a creator as more attention goes towards the entertainment platforms that are user generated versus, you know, studio generated. But where that goes, I'm not entirely sure.

Zach Honarvar [00:44:33]:
I just think that, we're just gonna fundamentally think about these platforms in a very different way, than we have in the past.