Today's Guest

Augie Johnston, the Founder and CEO of VidChops, has established a thriving business focused on editing YouTube videos for full-time content creators, thought leaders, and influencers, allowing them to pursue new endeavors. Augie recognized YouTube's potential in late 2010 and found success by specializing in basketball coaching, drawing from his experience as a former professional player. As his channel and platform expanded, he bumped up against an editing bottleneck and set out to solve this challenge for himself and creators alike. Augie, along with his dedicated team, navigate the complexities of YouTube to empower content creators, helping them regain time and boost their viewership through captivating content that grabs the audience's attention.

Resources Shared

• Augie Johnston | LinkedIn
• Vidchops - Video Editing Service
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:

Hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. We've all seen videos on YouTube, it's the world's number two search engine after Google, but how do you get your business on YouTube to take advantage of the site's enormous reach. This week we're talking all things YouTube with a video and YouTube expert, Augie Johnson. Welcome, Augie.

Augie Johnson:

Hey, thanks for having me. Nice to meet you. Can't wait to talk about YouTube and business.

Gordon Henry:

Quick background on Augie. Interesting, Augie is a 36-year-old expert on YouTube content creation, a former professional basketball player turned entrepreneur. He's currently making waves in the video editing industry as a result of this promising startup called Vidchops. Vidchops is the brainchild of Augie, assists video creators, influencers, digital markers by carrying out the hard work of editing their videos, it allows them to focus more on the content side of their productions to help them create more videos, better videos for their channel or brand. Augie works with full-time YouTubers, online personalities, thought leaders, and anyone that creates online videos for their businesses, which you our listeners get out of this episode. We all need to think about social media and having a presence on YouTube and other places that can help bring your brand and your company to life online, Augie can show you how. So Augie, excited to meet you. Let's dive in. First, just tell us a little bit about your very interesting background and how you got here.

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, sure. After college, I played basketball at a small college, I decided to go and play basketball in Europe. Yes, you read it, it said professionally, but more like semi-professionally I guess is the caveat, because I wasn't making a ton of money. So all I knew is that I wanted to continue playing basketball. I didn't know how long I'd be able to do it because I was getting paid a $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 a month by the end of my journey, but it was a seven-year journey of playing over there. So one day I did do that Google search, how to make money online, that a lot of people have done. So that was step one. That took me down a journey, I tried a million things. And eventually in about maybe... Well it was 2009 or 2010, I started my first YouTube channel. Didn't work out. I took a break and then relaunched it in 2011, 2012. And so I became a content creator.

This is a long time ago. I was creating basketball training tutorials, trying to figure out how to make money online, learning how to create online businesses, released a course, no one came. Eventually figured out how to use YouTube to get traffic to my course, and I grew that business, and that was a fun business to grow because I positioned myself as a basketball trainer. So when I was done playing, I did that for a couple of years as a professional basketball trainer, and flew around, did some camps in other countries, did stuff locally. So it took me about four years and I grew my YouTube channel to about 200,000 subscribers. I created 11 different products that we sold to my YouTube audience, and that was my introduction to entrepreneurship. I don't want to keep this going too long, but throughout the whole process I felt the pain point of video editing and all the hard stuff that it comes with being a content creator. So that's when I came up with the idea for Vidchops, which is a productized video editing service where we can edit your videos. So that's my journey.

Gordon Henry:

So tell us a little bit about Vidchops. First of all, who is your ideal client profile? Who typically comes to you to avail themselves to your service?

Augie Johnson:

So it's content creators, but more specifically I would say it's more in the coaches, consultants, thought leader space. A lot of people want to sell their products or services for their business, but they run paid ads and it's very expensive, and they're always looking for what can we do. So creating content on YouTube is, in my opinion, the best organic content marketing strategy that any business can have.

Gordon Henry:

Do you help out what I call local businesses, businesses that just operate in a single or maybe two markets, either a plumber, a roofer, maybe a mechanic, everyday businesses, do you help them as well?

Augie Johnson:

We do. We have had even a fence company as a client where they had the face of the company, it was his business, and he would create content about building fences and stuff. But, to be honest, it's mostly not in that ballpark. It's mostly people selling e-commerce, selling online, because the marketing funnel just is set up better for an online business, I would say, but we have had some local businesses, but we're talking about online stores.

Gordon Henry:

Online stores and e-commerce, that type of thing?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, software, anything like that.

Gordon Henry:

Let's say somebody comes in who's running the type of client you just described, what do you do for them? What do you tell them? What's the process you take them through?

Augie Johnson:

Our company basically it has a lot of parts to it as far as helping them get on calls and teach them about how to come up with great video topics and how to actually grow on YouTube and stuff, but really when it all boils down to it, we allow you to upload your footage to us, complete a short form to give us some information about that project, we edit it and get it back to you in two days. You review it. If you need a revision, it takes one day. Otherwise, we just mark that thing as done and we start working on the next one in your queue. So just like so many of these other... It's a productized service, there's so many out there now. We work on one project at a time, we finish it up, get it all finalized, and then work on the next one.

Gordon Henry:

So you're doing the editing, it sounds like. Are you also helping them either get noticed online or get clicks online or monetize whatever their video is online? Do you do any of that for them?

Augie Johnson:

So we do have a community where, like I said, we can get on calls with them and help them come up with topics and stuff, because the truth of the matter is if you want to grow on YouTube you have to understand the YouTube game. If you don't understand it at all and you are just publishing videos blindly, then you'll never see an ROI on that. So we do have a community with a weekly call, as well as help and support inside there. But like I said, when it's boiled down to it, the biggest value we offer is the editing. Also, we do offer some graphic design, because a huge part of triggering the YouTube algorithm and getting the YouTube algorithm to show your video to more people and get you more views automatically, a huge part of that is what's called a click-through rate.

So what percentage of people that are seeing your little video pop up right there on their phone or on their home screen, what percentage of people are clicking on that? If it's really low, then that tells the algorithm that it's not a video that people are interested in, it's not going to rack up any views, and it's never going to see the light of day. If it's getting clicked on at a high rate, then it tells the algorithm, "Hey, people are interested in this," and then there's other factors like how long people are watching the video and that too determines whether that video will succeed or not. And when I say succeed, and when I say the algorithm promoting you out, that's exactly what happens. When you open up your YouTube homepage, you're getting recommended a bunch of videos that the algorithm thinks you'll click on, they're hoping, they're testing.

Same with you opening the app on your phone, and that is the algorithm promoting you out, that's why you can have 1000 subscribers and all of a sudden one of your videos gets a million views, because you hit the KPIs that the algorithm wants you to hit. And the first one was click-through rate. So to bring it home, we also offer a service that designs that little thumbnail image for you because that's so important to the click-through rate, along with the title, coming up with the title for the video, those two things are really important for click-through rate, as well as the topic of the video. The topic matters, how to set up an email marketing campaign, that's a boring topic. This email marketing campaign made me $10,000, that's an interesting topic. So topic, title, thumbnail, that's for the click-through rate.

Gordon Henry:

So when you talked about a minute ago you said understand the YouTube game, the YouTube game is what you're talking about there, it's all the little secrets for making sure you get clicked on and then you end up in that... Well, when I open up the YouTube page on my computer, it's usually the right-hand rail I usually have the thing I looked for, and then on the right-hand side is a bunch of stuff they're trying to feed me. That's what you're talking about is getting those videos that are promoted to people?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, exactly. That right hand is when you're watching a video, you have that right-hand bar. If you go to the YouTube homepage, there's no video, it's just all videos right there. And they're recommending videos like crazy that are doing well as far as click-through rate, and then keeping people watching. It's easy for YouTube to design their algorithm because if people click on a video, watch five seconds and leave YouTube and never come back, they're going to stop promoting that video, because they're not getting ad revenue off it or anything. But if people are clicking on that video, watching the whole thing, which there was four ads throughout the video, and then they're clicking on your channel and they're watching 20 more of your videos, a binge-watching sequence, then that's going to tell the algorithm, "Hey, this first video just turned into 30 views on their channel. We showed 50 ads. Show that video to everybody." And then it helps with the experience of the user on the platform too, because you're enjoying the videos you're watching.

Gordon Henry:

And you mentioned the title of the video, the $10,000 thing, what are some of the other tricks, tips that you might recommend to people to make sure their videos have a chance of succeeding on YouTube?

Augie Johnson:

The click-through rate is the first thing. And as far as that goes, it's funny because it's all marketing. You can go back to banner ads, you can go back to anything, but the emotion that you're trying to invoke anytime you want somebody to click is just curiosity. Whether you're running an ad or it's a YouTube title or a thumbnail or whatever it is, if you want somebody to click on something online on the internet, just invoke a little curiosity. So there's the click-through rate. From there, it's the average view duration or the watch time. So not to get too complicated, but if you have a 10-minute video, your average view duration is 50%, people watch five minutes on average. So there's different KPIs you can set on a video for that.

You can say, "I want 70% of the people that have clicked on this video to still be watching it after one minute." And if you can hit that goal, then that actually right there is a pretty good benchmark for most videos. After one minute, 70% are watching that video has got a great chance. So those are just really the main two things. There's a ton of theories and a ton of things that are true I think like likes, some comments, engagement, those things too, but when it comes down to it, if you've got a video that people click on and watch through, then it'll get promoted.

Gordon Henry:

And is there any secret to the content creation? I imagine there is, you said before you were a content creator, regardless of topic, whether it's golf or fixing your fence or how to fix an old car or something, there's ways to do it good and ways to do it not so good. What do you suggest in terms of thinking about making the content compelling?

Augie Johnson:

It's same thing if you were to write a blog post, you would want to start with a hook. If you're going to make a video, you're going to start with a hook. And that's probably the most important part of keeping somebody watching. But I heard someone say it like this, "When you're creating a piece of content, you're trying to hook, you're trying to retain them, and then at the end, you need to reward them." So hook, retain, reward, it's Alex Hormozi in his new book. It's great because that's exactly what it is, because when I click on a video, I want to get hooked at the beginning, throughout the video it's a buildup, buildup, buildup. So it's keeping me, it's retaining me, and then at the end I get the reward where I get satisfied and say, "Oh, wow, that's what happened at the end of the video."

So an interesting hook is a great way. And then, for me, I think what I like to recommend is storytelling, because storytelling is just human nature, you're going to want to stick around. If it's a good story, you'll wait, that'll retain you. But what most YouTube content is, is lists, it's very listicle. So when I help people script their videos, I'll say, "All right, you got your topic, your title, your idea for your thumbnail, give me three bullet points, 1, 2, 3. Okay, now give me three bullet points under each bullet point, 1, 2, 3. So now you have nine pieces of content right there that creates one whole video, which is more of a listicle type."

Gordon Henry:

Interesting. And so Vidchops, when people come to you, you walk them through this process and they're creating the content using your guidelines, and then you do some editing. So the video ends up as something that you think is going to be successful because the client developed it in tune with what your recommendation is, right?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah. Like I said, inside the community, there's an entire course that our clients go through, as well as the calls. The calls we do workshops to come up with good topics, because I think that's probably the one thing that most people miss is they think I got to come up with a good title or a good thumbnail, but it's really the topic that I think makes the video so interesting, and it takes a little bit of creativity to get the topic there, but that would make a big difference.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, cool. So what does this cost a client, by the way? When they come to Vidchops, what is the fee?

Augie Johnson:

We edit four videos a month. It's a subscription base for 495 a month. We have plans that are eight to 10 videos a month, and that's $995 a month. And then we have the add-on service, which is the thumbnails, the titles, the tags, that on service basically just makes it done for you. We'll upload it to YouTube to your YouTube channel, we'll create that thumbnail, title, tags, description, end card. There's a lot of optimization stuff that you got to do. And that's basically our service.

Gordon Henry:

Have you had some big hits, some videos that have gone viral, gotten millions and millions of views, that kind of thing?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah. Our best case study is a doctor who was a practicing doctor, and then eventually she released a brand through her YouTube channel. This is a few years ago, but when she came to us, she said, "I want to do 20 videos a month." So she literally went from four videos a month to 20 videos a month, and we just took care of everything for her. I think she was doing 55,000 views a month, and then after just nine months of 20 videos a month, she was at 2.5 million views a month. So that was pretty cool to see. And her whole brand just exploded. She released a whole skincare line and all kinds of stuff.

Gordon Henry:

Wow. Impressive.

Augie Johnson:

20 videos a month is hard.

Gordon Henry:

What about the monetization piece, how does somebody like that, who's doing these videos and starting to get a lot of these views and likes, turn that into money?

Augie Johnson:

The crazy thing about YouTube is you totally double dip, because you get money off the ad revenue. So YouTube keeps 55% of the money that they make off your videos, off the ads, and you get 45%. So that's really the icing on the cake for a lot of people, but it is substantial amount for a lot of people too. I don't want to talk about numbers, but I've seen some $500,000 months just off the ads. That's the biggest case I ever saw, but incredible. But really it's all about clicking the link. So that's the cool thing about YouTube is you can put links everywhere. So at the very end of your video, you have an end card, and you can put an external link to your website. In the description, you can put a link. In the first comment, you can put a link. You could put like 500 links in the description. On all these other platforms, Instagram, TikTok, all these ones, you get one link in bio and that's it. Nothing else is clickable even.

So that's how you do it, you send them to your website, to your money page. For me, with my basketball training business, I, at the end of every single video, had a call to action where I said, "And hey, if you want a complete basketball workout, a ball handling, shooting, finishing and jumping workout, then click the link in description, head over there, enter your email." And we built our email list to over 50,000 emails all through free traffic and got over 100,000 clicks through that link. And the best part is that traffic is warmer than any traffic you'll ever see off any paid ad. We used to run paid ads for the basketball training business, and that same page would convert 18, sometimes 20% to an email, someone clicking the thing, landing on the page, 20% would enter their email, and with the warm YouTube traffic it was 45, 50%, which was super high. So that's the way. Once they're on your email list, you can promote your products.

Gordon Henry:

Do you still have the basketball training business?

Augie Johnson:

It's not really active, no. It's still all up, you can find all the stuff still, but no, I'm not really working on it anymore.

Gordon Henry:

Mostly focused on Vidchops?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah.

Gordon Henry:

And where in Europe were you playing basketball

Augie Johnson:

In Germany. I was in Germany for five years and two in Luxembourg, small country.

Gordon Henry:

Exciting, interesting. So when you're working at Vidchops, are you spending most of your time on the videos or are you busy building the company? Are you more of an executive these days?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, I'm a CEO, but I focus most of my time on, I would say, 30% marketing, 30% managing the team, and 30% probably just doing visionary stuff, trying to see what's next and build it out. Actually, when we started, we just had everything duct taped together. You completed a type form, you sent an email here, blah, blah, blah, no one had visibility of anything. So eventually we were like, "Okay, what's the project management system we're going to use?" And we looked at a whole bunch of different brands, but in the end I was convinced, okay, we should build our own. Now, I don't know if that was the right choice or not because it starts to get expensive, but we've built our own app that manages... It's just a client portal, it's nothing too crazy or anything, but I'm hoping someday that we can continue to build it out. We want to add some AI scripting in there, we want to just continue to improve our video review tool so we have a timestamp commenting tool. That's where I spend some of my time too is just thinking about the software.

Gordon Henry:

Next steps, sure. I did want to ask you about speaking on camera, because part of doing a video for a lot of people is speaking to the camera, and many people say that the thing they're more afraid of than anything is speaking to an audience. Now, maybe speaking to a camera is not as nerve wracking as speaking to an audience, but what are your experiences with people speaking on camera, and do you do any coaching or helping people so they get more comfortable being on camera?

Augie Johnson:

The truth is I think there's some tips that you can use. A common one is double your energy. When you're on camera, you got to bring it up. You can't just be sitting at kitchen table talk with your wife or something. You got to double your energy. But the truth is it's just practice. Video one's going to be worse than video 20, and that's a fact. And I don't think anybody's gone the opposite way. So you just got to understand that your first couple you're not going to, and then you're just going to get better.

Gordon Henry:

Just practice.

Augie Johnson:

Yeah. If I was to say any tips on that, I would say... Here's some good tips. So if you want to record your video, do this, get your bullet points or your script, you can do it how you want, on a piece of paper that's sitting in front of you that the camera can't see. Look down, just start very minimal, one sentence or less, very minimal. Look up at the camera, deliver the line, and then just look back down, look back up, deliver the line, and just get through it the first couple like that. And then in your editing process, you can just cut out all the mistakes. And that's not going to work for a feature film or a Netflix show, but it'll work for YouTube content.

And that's the good part about YouTube, it's not really professional yet. That's accepted on YouTube. We all see those videos that have 500 cuts in them, that's what they're doing. And it's an easy way to get through it and just it's stressful. My wife used to create videos and I could see her almost tear up sometimes because she would make so many mistakes in a row and she would get so frustrated. But it's challenging, it's not easy to make videos, for sure.

Gordon Henry:

Now, the way you're describing this, are most of your clients doing the videos at home in front of a computer like we're doing a Zoom right now, and then you are on the other end doing the editing and production for them, they're not in a studio physically with you, right?

Augie Johnson:

No. They record it all on their own. That's one of the challenges that we face is so many clients will cancel and just say, "Hey, I didn't record any videos. It's a $1,000. I'm not going to spend it next month." So that's definitely a challenge. But the thing about YouTube is that you don't just go and make five videos and then you call it quits, it's a long-term game, and most people get on a cadence, a release schedule. So if you're serious about it, then, yeah, you need to make sure you're recording your eight videos a month. I also recommend batch recording, sit down and do two or three. Start off with one, nail that, then the next time you do it, try to do two. And if you do that, and the next time you do it, try to do three. And a lot of people just do a whole filming day. Once a week or once a month, they'll just spend the whole day filming, and I think that's a good way to do it.

Gordon Henry:

Sounds good. Hey, Augie, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in 30 seconds with more from Augie Johnson. Don't go anywhere.

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Gordon Henry:

We're back with Augie Johnson of Vidchops telling us everything about making videos and how to get them on YouTube and all what's required these days to promote your business with video. We haven't said the word TikTok yet, but I just said it, so we've been talking about YouTube, are you also helping people get on TikTok and maybe other social media? Everybody seems to be talking about TikTok these days.

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, so short form content, the vertical nine by 16 content's huge. And if you're not using it, you definitely should be. TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts, that's where you want to be posting these vertical videos. So we do offer what we call repurposing. So we offer two free repurposed videos off every long form video. So you might get a YouTube video back, you might mark it as done, approved, and then we'll move it on to create two vertical videos repurposed. Now, in my opinion, the best strategy is to repurpose your videos, because why not? The content's already there. And then also to record originals, because it's hard. It's the same thing, you want a high average duration on your TikTok's, you want to create a video that people not only watch all the way through, but they might watch it multiple times. So I've seen videos get a watch time of 125%, that's because people watched it more than once.

So you'll notice people using little tricks on their vertical videos where you can't tell where the ending is, and at the very end they'll end the video with the word because, and then it goes back to the beginning and they keep you watching. S I've never tried that, but it's a funny little trick. But I think posting on TikTok is important, posting on all those different platforms I have mentioned is important, but I will mention that it's not really the same traffic. It's not as high quality of traffic. People really aren't clicking on links, there really aren't anywhere to click on a link in any of those kind of short form unless they go to your bio. I've seen a lot of people to try to drive leads through short form, say, at the end of their videos, and hey, if you want more information about how to grow on YouTube, comment I want to grow.

Then you get people commenting and then you can DM them information and talk about your services. But I definitely think that short form content can be the gateway to your long form content. And on YouTube you can link a short form video to a long form video, and that's the feature that YouTube has to drive views, and they're just not as valuable of views. Swipe views are never as valuable. On Facebook, people are swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. On YouTube, it's click and it's full screen, and you're watching a YouTube video. So even YouTube Shorts are just swiping. But if you can drive them to your long form or drive that traffic to your business, to your website, then I think you might as well.

Gordon Henry:

And if you're a business, you recommend having your short form seen on all those platforms, you've recommended TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook, because I think of those audiences maybe as not as serious or not as maybe business oriented, whereas YouTube, you do have everything from the funny dance video all the way to real serious business video. So is that just my impression that the audiences are maybe a little bit different?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, I would say that is your impression. I had that impression too. I remember even specifically someone in a Facebook group writing about how great TikTok was, and I shot them down in the comments, said, "It's just for kids." That was three years ago, and I look back at that comment now and I'm like, "I was wrong."

Maybe back then it was more so like that, and I think that's the impression that everyone got, but at this point that's not true. All businesses are on there, people are advertising, there's an ad platform and everything. Now, the question though that you asked, should you be posting on TikTok and Instagram Reels and all these other places? That's up to you. I still think that it's really hard to drive business off those platforms. It just depends on what kind of business you have. If it's high enough ticket, then it's worth it for you to say, "Leave a comment," someone leaves a comment, and then you start DMing them. But if you're selling a $7 product or a $10 product, you're not going to DM people that comment and try to do that.

But it's the virality of those platforms that's so intriguing. These short form videos, you're going to get hundreds of views right off the bat. You could have 100 followers and get 30,000 views on a reel on Instagram or on TikTok. So that's where it's like, "Oh, it's hard to say." You need to track are people actually converting into customers on those platforms. But in my opinion I think if you're going to create vertical video, you should probably post it on those platforms, because you're leaving out a whole audience. And sometimes a video can do poorly on TikTok and do great on Instagram Reels or vice versa, so it might be 100 views over here and then 30,000 views over here. So it just makes sense to post them on both. But I will agree because I know what you're thinking, it is a lot of work.

Gordon Henry:

Augie, we just have a few minutes left. This has been a really interesting conversation. I'm wondering for people who are listening who would like to get into this game and think that maybe they want to work with you, how should they get in touch with you? What are the steps for somebody to get involved?

Augie Johnson:

So if you're thinking about starting on YouTube and you've never made a video or anything, first, before you even look me up or any of that stuff, just start learning the game, because there's a lot to it as far as you have to know videography, graphic design, SEO, marketing, there's a lot you need to know. Lighting, audio, camera presence, scripting, hooking. There's a lot to it.

Gordon Henry:

How would you recommend somebody learn that? You just rattled off a lot of areas of expertise, is there a place or a book or an online course, or where should people go?

Augie Johnson:

So you already know the answer, it's YouTube. You can go there. It's all free. And if you need help with your video editing, then that's us at vidchops.com.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, vidchops.com. And what's next for you, Augie? Is the plan just to keep growing the business, that's your next couple of years ahead of you at least?

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, definitely. We're not super, super big or anything like that. I'm just doing my best to learn and continue to apply what I learn I guess is what I'm trying to do. So I'm focused on Vidchops and a little bit of software.

Gordon Henry:

Well, this has been a great conversation, really interesting to hear about your journey from basketball through Vidchops, it sounds like it's been a pretty exciting ride, and I really want to thank you for coming on the show, and I hope some of our listeners get in touch with you.

Augie Johnson:

Yeah, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Gordon Henry:

And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman and coordinators, Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and families to subscribe, and please leave us a five star review, we'd really appreciate it. It helps us in the ranking. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com/pod. And check out our new free product command center at thryv.com. Until next week, make it a great week.

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